My last column turned out to be quite timely. Three days later the Senate came up with the "Senate’s Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007." This bill is truly a watershed moment in all of our lives. Significant changes, all mostly terribly negative, will happen in our society if this bill passes.

Innocent sounding bill, isn’t it? It almost brings tears of compassion as you read through it. Secure Borders? No way. This was a key provision that was put in to garner support but was already enacted last year with the requirement to build 700 miles of fence along our southern border with Mexico. As a matter of fact, the last time we passed an amnesty bill, in 1986, affecting 3 million illegal aliens, we were promised that this act, along with strong border control, would take care of the problem. Well, we now have between 12 and 20 million illegals here. Oh yes, a whole two miles of that 700-mile promised fence has actually been completed.

Economic Opportunity? For whom? Certainly there won’t be any for middle- and low-income individuals who have only a high school education or less. Millions of low education-level taxpaying AMERICANS will be denied the only types of jobs that they can hope to get. Proponents of the bill say that these will be jobs that Americans won’t take. Nonsense. The job area where most illegal immigrant labor is found is in agriculture. Even here, only 24 percent of the total labor force is made up of illegal immigrants. If this is the case, who makes up the other 76 percent? Construction jobs, service jobs and other opportunities are taken away from American citizens and legal immigrants simply because the illegals will work for far less.

What about middle-class Americans? Maybe they aren’t losing jobs to these illegals, but they sure are subsidizing their "economic opportunities." Robert Rector and Christine Kim, of the Heritage Foundation, recently wrote an article titled "The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants To The U.S. Taxpayer." Their findings, using conservative figures of 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., found that 9.3 million were adults and 60 percent of these adults lacked a high school education. In 2004, these individuals received government benefits totaling $30,160 per household (direct benefits, means-tested benefits, education, and population-based services in 2004, each defined in the article).

On the other side, these households paid only $10,573 per household in federal, state and local taxes. This imbalance totaled $19,587 per household or a total cost to American taxpayers of 89.1 billion dollars per year. Do you think these figures will go up or down as more illegals enter the country?

Lastly, the "Immigration Reform" section of the act. This can be interpreted as amnesty no matter how much our lying politicians deny it. You don’t have to believe me about this statement, just read Title VI of the above mentioned act. The entire bunch of illegals, with the issuance of a "Z" visa, converts them immediately into legals as soon as the bill is signed. All they have to do is present two documents proving they were in the country prior to Jan. 1 of this year (there’s a toughie) and pay between $3,000 and $5,000 per household in the form of a "fine." This section also allows only one day for the government to do a background check to determine whether the individual is a criminal or a terrorist. ONE DAY!

If you really want to become depressed, read the entire section. Can you imagine the new levels of bureaucracies being created? It would make Hillary’s earlier national health care plan look like a form 1040 EZ tax return.

These politicians are clearly not acting on behalf of the American citizens and the United States. Do you really think they are in tune with what the vast majority of Americans want? We sent them to Congress to represent us. Instead of doing this, they are thumbing their noses at us and pursuing what is best for their own selfish, political interests. I hope we remember this come the 2008 elections, but our "representatives" are probably betting that we won’t.

To conclude, picture Osama, in some cave or spider hole, laughing his derriere off. All he has to do is get his terrorists across a very porous border (don’t count on the fence being even attempted or finished), get them issued two documents showing that they were here before Jan. 1 (easier than underage drinkers getting false IDs), come up with $3,000 per jihadist (from Middle East oil money), and get them through the 24-hour background check done by a severely understaffed ICE staff. Comforting thought, isn’t it? Who is to be held ultimately responsible?

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Tom Sears is a professor of accounting at Hartwick College in Oneonta. He can be reached at SearsT@hartwick.edu. His column appears every other week.