More on the amnesty bill

Rich Lowry discusses the amnesty bill over on NRO:

The bill gives pretty much every illegal alien here immediate legal status in the form of a probationary Z visa. That’s the amnesty. Then come all the things meant to make the amnesty deniable: a $1,000 fine and $1,500 processing fee for an actual Z visa, which lasts four years; then, it has to be renewed for a $500 fee for another four years; after which, a green card is available with another $4,000 fine; and five years after that — the possibility of applying for citizenship!

Some of the obstacles are clearly for show. Once someone has a Z visa, he has to go back to his home country to apply for a green card. This is pointless. The original purpose of this kind of “touch-back” provision was to make sure an illegal alien was home — not here in this country — when applying for legal status. Then, if his application was denied, he’d already be deported. But these green-card applicants will already have been legal for years and presumably back in the U.S. while their application is processed.

Cynical politics and economics play a role here. Republicans don’t want formerly illegal immigrants voting anytime soon, since poor, low-skilled households aren’t going to produce many GOP voters for a generation or so. And business doesn’t care about citizenship one way or the other, as long as it gets its cheap labor. That’s why employers support the indentured-servitude-style guest-worker program in the bill.

The black slaves were given their freedom by a Republican president and were made citizens with the right to vote by a constitutional amendment rammed through the states by a Republican congress. All of this happened 150 years ago and blacks still vote Democrat by margins anywhere between 88-90%. Are there are really Republicans who think that in "a generation or two" Latinos are going to start pulling the lever for the GOP?

What the frak are these people smoking?