Any amnesty bill that emerges from the Senate will most certainly have Chuck Schumer’s name on it. The New York Democrat is the chairman of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee, and has been one of Congress’s most vocal advocates for amnesty.
Schumer is no newcomer to the immigration debate. Back in 1986, the then-Congressman from Brooklyn was instrumental in passing the first (or as it was billed at the time, the one-and-only) amnesty for illegal aliens. Or, as he described the amnesty plan shortly after President Reagan signed the bill, a “riverboat gamble.”
His exact words, as reported in the ABA Journal on January 1, 1987, “This bill is a gamble, a riverboat gamble. There is no guarantee that employer sanctions will work or that amnesty will work. We are headed into uncharted waters.” We know all too well now how that gamble turned out.
Twenty-six years later, the riverboat gambler is ready to double down with the nation’s future. Like the song says,
“You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.”
I’m thinking it might be time to run.