The real immigration issue is blue state migration into red states. How can President Bush protect the Southern border when we cannot stop New York liberals getting past South Carolina and messing up South Florida? Arizona and Nevada are under siege as well.

Anyway, I would consider it an honor and a privilege if you would add my blog "The Tygrrrr Express" www.blacktygrrrr.wordpress.com to your list of linked sites if you feel the quality is high. I read your blog after clicking on Michelle Malkin's site, since I enjoy her writing.

Happy Summer, and forgive me in advance if my request was redundant.

eric

China is poisoning out pets, our toothpaste, and our children’s toys. Japanese naval officers are leaking data on our “missile defense system”. Daily Kos wants us to support some “Habeas Corpus Restoration Act”, introduced by Senators Leahy and Specter, which “restores habeas rights to foreign nationals who are detained as enemy combatants”, whilst we are fighting that same enemy who will behead this entire nation (whilst making videos of it) if they win, and America’s right is worried about how many illegal Mexicans are here (and/or how many more are getting in)!?!

Er...OK.

The thing I find most disappointing about lawyers, typically, and especially smart lawyers, is they THINK they understand everything, or enough of everything, just because they understand the practice of advocacy, or law, or lawmaking. But in my humble non-lawyer opinion, nothing could be further from the truth. In most cases, there's a good reason they chose law, and not software- or mechanical-engineering.

If you've got the time, my story of my personal experiences in sponsoring an illegal Mexican woman through the old 1986 Amenesty Program will prove that John Hinderaker is right in his theory. I posted it at my RedState blog awhile back:

http://tinyurl.com/2ojrw2

I spent some time looking at that report today. IT is good. A few thoughts

(1) I am really starting not to like the undertones that present we are talking about "low skilled labor". Quickly it becomes apparent that Americans as all people view these people as Peasants and peasants forever they should ne. First I believe we are probally getting moderate skill immigrants. THey have to have some skills because darn it they are being hired. Second, there seems to be some beliefs that "low skill" workers are for some reason not needed when High skill workers come here. That is just silly. You need a number of low skill workers for all the stuff and output that High skill workers do. In fact have we not see that

(2) Can anyone tell me that there is a huge difference between someone lucky to get a work visa in Mexico to come to work here and those that could not get one of that limited number? THat is one reason why I find this legal vs illegal thing at tomes limiting

(3)IS not keeping off regularization of the illegals causing more problems. Such as lack of promotions, lack of job stability etc that leads to more adverse economic consequences to which we pay for? Also doesnt that a direct impact of the 3,1 million American children of illegals also. Consequences that we might pay for later

(4) When are we going to start realizing that illegals come from all over and not just from ole MExico. 1.5 million are from Asia for instance. What is their education and what positives do they have as well as negatives that must be mitigated. Does the family structure of Asian family even mitigate some problems?

Just some thoughts

One other thought. I think studies have shown that illegal immigration starting skyrocketing in 95. FOr obvious reasons. In then leveled off and in fact reduced in 2001

I am not sure if proper steps are taken and if we can proceed with the probationary sign up with all deliberate spped we will have much of a problem with people coming in late. Also will not the WOrker ID and Work verfication system(In which I view as the real FENCE) stop much of this for all practical purposes espeically when combined with guest worker

CayuteKitt:

It was an interesting story... but somewhere in the middle, you subtlely shifted from telling a personal anecdote about which you had personal knowledge -- to repeating factual claims that you heard somewhere, but about which you really don't have any first-hand information.

When you were talking about Maria, you were telling us something that you were intimately involved in; but when you said things in Part II such as --

Regardless, as word got around down in Mexico back then just how easy it was to get up here into the US and get work, tens of thousands of Mexicans began pouring over the border. I remember an apartment complex in HMB that was actually dubbed the “little barrio” because there were anywhere from 10 to 15 Mexicans living in each two or three bedroom apartment. The landlords didn’t seem to care because they could charge quite a bit more for rent than the market rate if they were willing to look the other way.

...You really have no idea whether that was because of the 1986 amnesty, or whether it would have happened anyway (and had been happening even before the amnesty; we have had such multi-family housing here in Los Angeles for as long as I can remember, stretching back into the 1960s).

Suppose it turns out to be true, as LSUsportsfan recollects, that the big push of illegal immigration began a decade after the amnesty. How could your "Maria" story explain that? How many people sneaking into the United States in 1996, 1998, and 2000 had any idea we had had an amnesty in 1986?

And considering that ten, twelve, fifteen years flowed past with not a single other amnesty, why would what happened 21 years ago have any significance to anyone?

The first part of your story about Maria doesn't actually "prove" anything, because it's just an anecdote about an individual case; and your Part II also doesn't "prove" anything, because you don't give us any statistics or studies to back up your gut-certainty that none of those Mexicans would have come here but for the 1986 amnesty. (Did Maria come here because of the amnesty in the early 1960s -- nine years before she was born?)

We know only one thing: That when Maria got a green card and (one presumes) eventual citizenship, her siblings came to join her. But we also know that many, many illegals got green cards in the 1986 amnesty and did not bring any family members in later (Sachi knows several).

If you want to argue that all the Marias made up for all the others who didn't bring in family, then show me the studies, or other things that constitute actual evidence.

What you wrote on your blog was heartwarming (Part I) and interesting (Part II) -- I certainly did not feel the sense of rage at the siblings who came after Maria that you seem to have felt. But neither constitutes evidence of the bald assertion that if we legalize those already here, it will cause millions upon millions of others to follow (you first say about 36 million Mexicans, and then you say "all of Mexico," which would be 110 million).

I'm not dismissing what you wrote; I found it alternately moving and fascinating. But I do not accept the story as evidence for the claim that legalization causes massive future illegal immigration... especially with the new border security measures, tamper-resistant and fraud-resistant cards required for work, and very significant penalties on employers who do not verify visa requirements before hiring, none of which existed in 1986.

Dafydd

Apparently, we are going about this reform all wrong. We don't need to offer "something" to get all of these workers "out of the shadows" because the Social Security Admin KNOWS the name, address, and employer of 3/4 of them (because they are using fraudulent SSNs), and the rest are most likely the families thereof. The SSA is prevented by law from divulging this information. There should NOT be an amnesty, and there must be some means of rectifying this egregious crime of SS fraud stemming from illegal entry.

I think the bill should be broken up, because there is no NEED for a "comprehensive reform" where we trade amnesty and/or "regularization" for security. Many portions of the bill, as suggested here, are sensible and overdue. Secure borders should be implemented, yesterday. The main sticking point, the Z-visa, can be simply replaced with an "arrest warrant" for fraudulent SS numbers. After that, we could set up the employer verification system (sounds like the SS system is doing a very good job) and decide how we are going to treat these law-breakers, preferably on a case-by-case basis.

Snochasr:

We don't need to offer "something" to get all of these workers "out of the shadows" because the Social Security Admin KNOWS the name, address, and employer of 3/4 of them (because they are using fraudulent SSNs), and the rest are most likely the families thereof.

Er... huh? Can you clarify -- like, with a link?

Thanks,

Dafydd

snochasr You said

"After that, we could set up the employer verification system (sounds like the SS system is doing a very good job) and decide how we are going to treat these law-breakers, preferably on a case-by-case basis."

All 12 million of them onc a case by case basis? I can't even imagine how long that would take. What would be the criteria besides that in the bill?

I see a lot of studies talking about the cost of Amnesty!!! Some are very curious to me especially the Social Security studies lately. One could make a similar argument that we must gkepp abortion legal because if it was illegal look the The RETIREMENT BENEFITS

I would like to see a study that talks about the cost of deportation or startve them accross the border.
(1)What are the projected Social and Economic cost that we will have to pay as to the 3.1 American Children that would be affected

(2)What are the cost of a massive disruption to the labor force and shortage of lbor as to revenue and GNP

(3) What is the cost in the lack of that spending power in the US

Questions like that. One does not just take 12 million people out of the labor force, and markets and it goes unoticed

Well obviously something inspired the millions already here to come to the US besides amnesty and I think it is absurd to believe that some 19 year old working in a motel as a maid is here because of some amnesty passed before she was born. And I also find it ridiculous to believe that all those migrant workers who had been crossing that border years and years before the amnesty came here for that reason.

I think that it is obvious that the present system is not a deterrent either. And yet there are all kinds of people out there fighting tooth and nail to keep things like they are.

Dafydd, here is the link you requested. If I'm reading correctly, we know where most illegal immigrants are already. All we have to do is "arrest" them and decide what to do with them.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/TerenceJeffrey/2007/06/21/americas_hardest_working_boy

Snochasr:

If I'm reading correctly, we know where most illegal immigrants are already. All we have to do is "arrest" them and decide what to do with them.

That's not what it says. It says that the Social Security Agency (SSA) knows many fraudulent SSNs that are used by (one presumes) illegals, and which employers are not actually checking. They do not know where the actual illegals are located (they likely don't give their proper address).

It also says that the SSA is prohibited from disclosing this information to USCIS or to prosecutors by section 6103 of the tax code. But the SSA has a list of the most egregious employers, who could be raided to find perhaps as many as 100,000 illegals (assuming every illegal was found by the raids, and assuming that no significant number of illegals used more than one fraudulent SSN).

Boiled down, it says that:

• Congress needs to change the tax code to allow the SSA to send this information to federal investigators at USCIS;
• And that Congress needs to change the penal code to institute harsher penalties against employers who knowingly or with reckless disregard file false SSN reports.

I refer you to Sec. 304 of the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007, which specifically amends Section 6103(l) of the Internal Revenue Code to require the SSA to hand over any requested information about fraudulent SSNs, or about two or more persons with the same SSN, to "officers, employees, and contractors of the Department of Homeland Security" -- which includes the USCIS, of course.

Sec. 309 (and probably elsewhere) makes dramatically tougher the penalties for employers misreporting or failing to report employee SSNs.

In other words, the current immigration bill address both of these problems; so when Terence Jeffrey demands that they be enacted separately, what he is really demanding is that the Democrat-controlled Congress voluntarily peel off various enforcement measures contained within the comprehensive bill... and enact them without getting anything they want in return.

Where have we seen this before?

As I think I have pointed out many times, Congress, especially the Senate, is a land of delicate negotiations (like making sausage); often times, even when a senator supports some provision in a bill, he will refuse to vote for it -- unless he gets something else that he wants more.

He knows that his negotiating partner wants that provision much more than he, so he threatens to sink it unless he gets something that is much more important to him than to the negotiating partner. Quid pro quo: That's how Congress operates, has operated, and will continue to operate, world without end, amen.

The quid consists of all the security and enforcement elements of the bill, including sections 304 and 309; and the quo comprises the Z-visas and provisional Z-visas. Even if some Democratic senators support your quids, they're not going to give them away for free... when they can instead use them to gain the much more valuable (to them) quos.

Like any other negotiation, you eventually reach a point where you can't get any more quids for the quos you're willing to offer. At that point, you must judge: Do the quids you receive outweigh the quos you must give up?

If the answer is Yes, then you support the bill; if the answer is No, then you reject it.

But for Jeffrey to demand that he get his quids for free is jejune, counterproductive, and hebetic.

Dafydd

Blacktygrrrr:

Anyway, I would consider it an honor and a privilege if you would add my blog "The Tygrrrr Express" www.blacktygrrrr.wordpress.com to your list of linked sites if you feel the quality is high.

It's not a question of quality; with the exception of the Watcher's Council and the Bear Flag League links -- which are set by membership in those groups -- I deliberately keep my blogroll very, very small, precisely so that each link will be highly significant.

(In fact, now that you bring it up, I think there are a couple of blogroll links I should remove!)

Dafydd

These W-2s go into what SSA calls the Earnings Suspense File (ESF), where SSA deposits what it calls "no-match" W-2s.

About 9 million of these are filed per year, and SSA Inspector General Patrick O'Carroll told Congress last year "the chief cause" of them "is unauthorized work by non-citizens."

This is the item that caught my eye, and it makes sense since, to work in this country, you have to give your Social Security number. Well, not necessarily yours, obviously. Since we know the employer who filed them, we can track back to the real employee easily, especially if they are still working in the same place. Employers who willingly ignore the notices should be penalized, hard. Others I would grant a short "amnesty" period, until the "employer verification system" was fully available.

I'm glad to see it corrected in the "comprehensive" bill, and I don't even object to the provisional Z-visas if they are made MANDATORY-- that is, once we identify you as illegal, you become a "guest worker," like it or not. You then have to leave when your two years are up, unless our background check finds you "undesirable" in which case your Z-visa turns into a bus ticket (better yet a plane ticket to your home country or far southern Mexico, whichever is furthest). Or you have to be committed to returning after x(TBD) number of years of guest worker status, or have applied to become a citizen (at the "end of the line").

But here is what I don't understand. I know Congress works by debate and compromise, but how can anybody compromise on principle? If the Democrats are going to "demand" amnesty from the immigration laws as the price of enforcing the immigration laws, how can any sane person agree to it?

Snochasr:

But here is what I don't understand. I know Congress works by debate and compromise, but how can anybody compromise on principle?

Because there are conflicting principles, and you must weigh one against the other. For example, you have the principle that abortions are murder, and you cannot allow murder; but you have the principle of federalism, which says that the states, not the national government, should have supreme policing power.

Each right-to-lifer must weigh these two principles... which necessarily means "compromising" on one or the other (or both).

Alas, principles are not all mutually compatible.

If the Democrats are going to "demand" amnesty from the immigration laws as the price of enforcing the immigration laws, how can any sane person agree to it?

Because the laws as currently written are unenforceable. Congress did not know this when it wrote them (probably didn't); the Executive discovered it over the years as it tried to enforce them, only to see the courts strip away much of the ability to enforce due to elements of the law that were in conflict with other elements.

For example, the tax-code section referenced in that article was certainly not intended to shield illegal immigrants; it was designed to prevent the SSA from forcing taxpayers to hand over information upon pain of imprisonment -- information that was then passed to the IRS and used to imprison them. (It implements the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, I presume.)

But it was written clumsily, and now it shields illegals who use fradulent SSNs.

Thus, saying "just enforce the law" is completely unhelpful -- as the law is de facto unenforceable. But laws can be changed to make them more enforceable... at the expense of empowering the government over the lives of individuals and possibly making the system more frightening and offputting to completely legitimate immigrants.

That entails Congress actually voting to change the law -- and that means getting the Democrats to agree to that bargain: They must agree to give some illegals a guarantee against deportation -- in exchange for being able to prosecute other illegals (and legal employers who help them evade the law) much more harshly.

As often the case, what seems like a contradiction turns out not to be, when stripped-away details are reintroduced.

Here is another example: We have laws against voter fraud; but they are by and large unenforceable, because there are too many protections and loopholes.

We could change the law to fix them; but those changes might frighten new citizens away from voting by threatening to take away their citizenship if they do something wrong. Democrats are more worried about suppression of legitimate voters than about voter fraud; Republicans are more worried about the latter than the former.

Thus, if we want to tighten up voting laws to prevent more voter fraud, we either must outvote the Democrats -- currently impossible -- or else give them something in return that is even more important a principle to them than soothing the jangled nerves of newly minted citizen voters.

That is the way Congress works, and there is nothing necessarily dishonorable about it: Rights, duties, obligations, and other principles often exist in tension against one another; and how one resolves that tension determines what one's party stands for: individual rights vs. public order, raising up the poor vs. property rights; right to life vs. freedom over one's own body, and so forth.

Dafydd

a study by the Council of Economic Advisors of the economic effect of immigrants on the United States, which they found to be strongly positive;

This is incorrect. The study, which was rife with flaws, found that the gain from immigration to the economy was two tenths of one percent of the overall economy.

Nothing facially in the immigration bill would increase illegal immigration

You shouldn't play with lawyer speak.

The strength of the American economy relative to the rest of the world -- the "world income gap" -- soared during the the last 20 years

Interesting theory. But not true.

This creates a strong prima facie case that the benefit to our economy from legally bringing in a greater percentage of HVIs than ULs would far outweigh the disadvantage of an increased population of illegals, who most likely would be primarily ULs. The argument depends critically upon the exact number of "extra" HVIs and ULs, which nobody claims to know at this time.

This is embarrassing. The number of highly educated legal immigrants is known with a high degree of accuracy. It's about 200,000 per year. The exact number of low skill illegals is not known with great accuracy, but the low estimates place it at about 700,000 per year.

Of course, the high skill immigrants also have the effect of driving down wages for the Americans whose jobs they compete for.

national economics actually supports some form of comprehensive immigration reform.

No, it does not. Immigration provides no net benefit to the national economy. The Presidents own hand-picked experts had to cook the books to claim a statistically insignificant gain from it.

You should take the trouble to compare the American economy to those of the other advanced nations of the last few deacdes. It has grown at the same rate as these competing nations, even with the supposed Miracle Grow effect of mass immigration to help it along.

This is not surprising, as there is no serious theory of economics under which economic growth, as measured by rising productivity and standard of living, is linked in any way to changes in population size. You can pore over The Wealth of Nations or The Road To Serfdom for the rest of your life and you will never find such an idea.

You are a Hollywood writer, correct?

That Bush chose this bucket of bilge to fight tooth and nail over, while we are in the middle of a war, is disgusting.
That he has arrogantly and deliberately ignored calls to incrementally refor this by securing our borders is infuriating.
That he cynically signed a bill promising to build a fence he is declining to build is outrageous.
That a government that cannot issue passports to American citizens is now asserting it can clear and issue Z-visas by the millions is a cheap and unfunny joke.
Yet the other side of this issue is increasingly becoming shrill, and appearing racist. Instead of focusing on the aching need for securing borders, actually counting the number of illegals, identifying and protecting American intersts and making sure that Americans are treated fairly, the government in a bipartisan fixation is more worried about those who should not be here in the first place and making them happy.
Keep up the good work, Big Lizards. You are one of the only voices of reason left in what is becoming the Great American Meltdown.

Thanks for hissing in, . Now you can slither in with a comment, o wise. (sign out)