Senator Cornyn is floating what he's calling the RESULTS Amendment (I hate these ridiculous acronyms) to tighten up the Schumer-Rubio bill. It's part of the attempt, described by Jonathan Strong over at the Corner, to provide political cover for Republican senators to vote for the amnesty. In a Dallas Morning News op-ed, Cornyn writes that under the current version of the bill, set to be debated on the Senate floor next week, "legalization of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States would be activated by meaningless promises rather than concrete results." So far, so good — sounds like he's attacking the amnesty-first-enforcement-eventually nature of the legislation, and that his amendment would change that.
Except that this amendment would change nothing of consequence. Here's the beginning of the second bullet point in the one-page summary of the amendment:
Requires DHS Secretary and GAO Comptroller General to jointly certify that these triggers are met before Registered Provisional Immigrants (RPI) can adjust to Lawful Permanent Resident ("green card") status
The "Registered Provisional Immigrants" are the amnestied illegal aliens, who get legalized within a few months after Obama's big signing ceremony. So all Cornyn's amendment does is demand "concrete results" before allowing the upgrade from green-card-lite to green-card-premium, but leaves the amnesty itself (the RPI status) untouched. As I wrote the other day, the real problem is not whether the security plans and promises look tough enough; rather, once the illegal population has been legalized, the incentive to follow through on the enforcement promises evaporates.
An amendment that would make a real difference would be one that demanded specified security results before any legalization. Cornyn's amendment does not do that. It's yet another attempt to dupe conservatives into excusing a vote for the Schumer-Rubio bill.