Gang of Eight bill suspends immigration enforcement for 2.5 years

Breitbart:

A provision in the “Gang of Eight” bill would amount to a 2.5-year-long law enforcement holiday, during which time law enforcement will be forced to suspend deportation efforts against criminal illegal aliens and allow them to apply for legalization.

What that means is that while illegal immigrants "come out of the shadows," as Gang of Eight members like to say, and fill out their applications for legalization or amnesty, enforcement of America's interior immigration laws will be suspended completely. Essentially, the bill's provisions create a few-year-long period of suspeneded immigration enforcement immigration while illegal aliens apply for legalization.

The provision, which applies to all illegal aliens who would seek legalized Registered Provisional Immigrant (RPI) status and to all “blue card” status applicants for illegal immigrant farm workers, has been in the bill since its introduction. As the Gang of Eight and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid attempt to speed this bill across the finish line in the U.S. Senate on Thursday, some who are worried about the bill's potential future impact are trying to highlight these specific provisions more.

For instance, NumbersUSA director of government relations Rosemary Jenks wrote in a recent op-ed for Breitbart News that the senate bill would make "the United States essentially an enforcement-free zone for a minimum of 18 months (six months for the Secretary of Homeland Security to write two plans to secure the Southern border, then a one-year amnesty application period), but more likely three years (since the Secretary can extend the amnesty application period for another 18 months)."

"During this entire period, no illegal alien can be deported without being given an opportunity to apply for amnesty," Jenks wrote.

Jenks wrote that President Barack Obama’s current “executive amnesty for so-called DREAMers is instructive on how this will play out” as under that policy if ICE agents encounter illegal aliens, “and such encounters generally occur because the alien is in jail for another crime--and the alien says he is eligible for the amnesty, ICE must take him at his word and release him with instructions on how to apply for amnesty.”
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There is much more.

Why would they do such a thing?  I think they believe the immigrants will "stay in the shadows" without it.  But that is no excuse for suspending the rule of law.  They aren't fixing what is broken about the immigration law, they are exacerbating them.   We need inland enforcement to act as a deterrent to coming here illegally or overstaying a visa.