Category ►►► Immigration Immolations

January 20, 2010

The Exception That Tests the Rule

For anyone who still denies either the rightness or existence of "American exceptionalism," consider this appalling story:

Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders sat in the defendant's dock Wednesday, nodding his head as prosecutors read aloud a hundred remarks he has made condemning Islam, Muslims and immigrants -- notably one comparing the Quran to Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

Wilders' criminal trial for allegedly inciting hate against Muslims has resonance across Europe: He is one of a dozen right-wing politicians on the continent who are testing the limits of freedom of speech while voicing voters' concerns at the growth of Islam.

For the tendentious phrasing, "the growth of Islam," read the more accurate "the growth of Islamism." If Moslems were coming to the Netherlands and assimilating, as they do for the most part in the United States, I honestly doubt Geert Wilders would have such a problem with them. But because of the liberal socialism of Western Europe, a member of the Dutch parliament is now on trial for properly representing his own constituents.

Here is the philosophical sequence:

• Liberal socialism ("Stalinism lite") has infected Western Europe for many decades. (One could make a good argument that Otto Eduard Leopold prince von Bismarck, the "Iron Chancellor" of Prussia, invented it in the latter half of the nineteenth century.) Note, this is not liberal fascism; it's the internationalist version. Hence the European Union, the first step on the liberal-socialist (lib-soc) road to global government.
• A primary element of liberal socialism is atheism; lib-soc governments persecute Judeo-Christian religions and to a lesser extent frown upon all other religions: Their religion is "secular humanism" -- that is, the First Church of Fundamentalist Materialism, as Robert Anton Wilson used to put it.
• A secondary effect of official and widespread Fundamentalist Materialism is a dramatic and frightening drop in the regional fertility rate. We can explore the "whys" in more depth another time if folks find the connection puzzling; suffice to say that Western Europe is not replacing its population, hence must import truly staggering levels of immigrant labor.
• Since Europe must draw from those cultures that have a high fertility rate for their foreign labor pool, they tend to draw disproportionately from Moslem populations in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Turkey, and Morocco. For example, in the Netherlands, six percent of the labor pool are Moslems from the latter two countries. (If the same ratio applied in the United States, we would have 9.25 million Moslem immigrants in the civilian labor pool, or about eight to ten times the level we actually have.)
• Another primary element of lib-soc is authoritarianism; socialist states are authoritatian by definition.
• One secondary effect of authoritarianism is that the government not only does not encourage immigrants to assimilate, it typically doesn't allow them to. Instead, immigrants are shunted into enclaves and ghettos and generally treated as "the help," rather than as full citizens... even those who were actually born in the "host" country. Generation after generation can be born in some European countries, but none is considered a full citizen.
• Such "apartness" leads inevitably to a great many immigrants seeing themselves as transients and foreigners in the land of their birth; they often turn against the "host" with a vengeance, rioting and looting, sealing off areas and declaring them "liberated" from the host and instead under the laws -- or the imagined laws -- of the rioters' ancestral countries. For the most obvious example, Moslem "immigrants" may seal off the Moslem enclaves and declare them under sharia law, instead of French, Dutch, or Spanish law. (The same dynamic of separation from the rest of society leads to criminal behavior among native-born full citizens.)
• Yet another aspect of authoritarianism is that, for all their high-minded hectoring of the rest of the world, socialist countries do not actually protect freedom of speech. (This claim should not even be controversial.)
• Ergo, put everything together, and we have the situation in the Netherlands, which applies in a great many other European countries as well: The country has a real, serious, and growing problem with estranged and disaffected Moslem youths; but hate-speech codes make it a criminal offense to discus the disastrous failure of the government's social policy, even by members of parliament.

It's a prescription for catastophe. It could never happen in Ronald Reagan's or George W. Bush's America because of individualism, assimilation, and community; I fear it may be all too plausible in Barack H. Obama's America.

The solution to this terrible dilemma is quite beyond the capacity of any socialist country; but it's the essence, the very core, of American exceptionalism (or simple Americanism):

• Allow immigrants to assimilate;
• Encourage, urge, and demand that they assimilate;
• Require that they be assimilable before letting them immigrate in the first place;
• And treat them exactly like every other American citizen when they do assimilate and naturalize themselves.

This is the ideal, however imperfectly it can be applied in the real world. Alas that we have an immigration system biased against assimilation; and we have two prevailing ideologies, neither of which is geared towards assimilation for different reasons: The Left doesn't want aliens to assimilate because lib-socs tend to dislike America and all it stands for; while the Right doesn't want aliens to come here at all, by and large, because they understand assimilation is a two-way street.

Like the Borg, when we assimilate an immigrant, we add his cultural "memes" to American culture. That's one reason we're such a powerful and irresistable force for social change throughout the world... and it's a positive characteristic, not a necessary evil.

But I think I fight a lonely war on this issue.

Cross-posted on Hot Air's rogues' gallery...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 20, 2010, at the time of 9:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 9, 2009

Yet Another Obama "Sovereignty" Test

A federal lawsuit filed by sixteen illegal immigrants, seeking damages from a rancher for the "tort" of keeping them off his land by making a citizen's arrest and handing them over to the Border Patrol, offers a determinative test for our new president: Will the Justice Department file a friend of the court brief? And if so, which side will President Barack H. Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder support?

An Arizona man [rancher and former sheriff's deputy Roger Barnett] who has waged a 10-year campaign to stop a flood of illegal immigrants from crossing his property is being sued by 16 Mexican nationals who accuse him of conspiring to violate their civil rights when he stopped them at gunpoint on his ranch on the U.S.-Mexico border.

(Violating their civil rights? They must have meant violating their civil liberties. Either that, or sixteen illegal aliens are suing Barnett for preventing them from voting in the next Arizona election.)

His Cross Rail Ranch near Douglas, Ariz., is known by federal and county law enforcement authorities as "the avenue of choice" for immigrants seeking to enter the United States illegally.

Trial continues Monday in the federal lawsuit, which seeks $32 million [!] in actual and punitive damages for civil rights violations, the infliction of emotional distress [oh please] and other crimes. Also named are Mr. Barnett's wife, Barbara, his brother, Donald, and Larry Dever, sheriff in Cochise County, Ariz., where the Barnetts live. The civil trial is expected to continue until Friday.

I don't know for sure whether Arizona has citizen's arrest, but I believe it does. If so, then what exactly is Barnett accused of doing? Does the act of citizen's arrest violate the "right" of foreign nationals to cross into the United States illegally? What other rights could they mean?

The lawsuit is based on a March 7, 2004, incident in a dry wash on the 22,000-acre ranch, when he approached a group of illegal immigrants while carrying a gun and accompanied by a large dog.

Attorneys for the immigrants - five women and 11 men who were trying to cross illegally into the United States - have accused Mr. Barnett of holding the group captive at gunpoint, threatening to turn his dog loose on them and saying he would shoot anyone who tried to escape.

Well, yeah; that's why it's called a citizen's "arrest," not a citizen's polite request to stay and wait for the peelers. This sounds pretty normal to me; if the Border Patrol, rather than a private citizen, had done exactly this, would any federal judge allow such a lawsuit to go forward?

Plaintiffs do not accuse Barnett of shooting anyone or even firing a shot, of siccing his dog on anyone (though he warned them that the dog can bite). The illegals retained MALDEF to press their case -- or more likely, MALDEF recruited them to sue Barnett, hoping to get a federal court ruling that Mexican nationals have the "civil right" to:

• Enter the United States without documentation;
• Trespass on private property;
• Rustle cattle;
• Burglarize houses;
• And threaten American citizens who resist any of the above.

MALDEF does claim that Barnett kicked one woman, but I suspect that's an embelishment. In any event, I find it passing strange that a group called the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund is now representing sixteen Mexican Mexicans suing an American American; but I suppose they know which side of the bed is buttered. Evidently, even MALDEF is really all about "la raza."

I have a big question in mind to ask; but before I get to that, I must answer the big question that I know is in the minds of many of you: Has the lizard flipped? Am I reversing myself and turning into a Tancredoite?

Not guilty on both charges. First, my position today is exactly the same as it was a year, even two years ago. I never argued that anyone has the "right" to trespass, commit crimes, or evade arrest, even arrest for illegal entry. What I did argue is twofold: First, that the crime of illegal entry, all by itself, is a minor offense; even buying fraudulent documentation is, in and of itself, a minor crime.

But there are other crimes often committed by illegals that are much more serious, and I have no quarrel with punishing those more severely. Such other crimes include identity theft of a living person (as opposed to getting a false birth certificate in the name of a person who died in infancy), burglary, car theft, and yes, trespassing. I have always agreed that illegals who are convicted of such crimes should be deported -- but only after serving their sentences.

Second, I argued that a fine and payment of back taxes (plus interest and penalties), plus having to start the residency paperwork all over from the beginning, is an acceptable plea bargain (not "amnesty") for illegals who turn themselves in; they shouldn't need to return to their former country. You may disagree; I'm not arguing the point. But it doesn't contradict anything I said above. (And of course I argue we need to fundamentally reform our legal immigration system to make it more rational, predictable, and just; but that's a different topic.)

So no, I haven't joined the ranks of those who savaged the comprehensive immigration bill; neither have I changed my position on what to do about immigration, "guest" workers, and those already here illegally.

Now to the question that interests me: Barack Obama did not campaign on a promise to throw open the borders, nor on the supposition that illegals have any "right" to enter or trespass. In fact, he reassured us that he opposed illegal immigration. And of course he never said he favored eliminating the right of citizens to arrest criminals apprehended in the act and hold them until the police arrive and take the prisoners into custody. So if Obama comes out now in favor of MALDEF and their patsies, it would be a stunning betrayal of the American people -- and catastrophic to his presidency.

But on the other hand, suppose the plaintiffs prevail at this stage on the theory enunciated by MALDEF; and supposed that, although Obama and Holder don't file an amicus curae brief supporting the MALDEF position, the administration also fails to file a brief in defense of an American citizen (and former cop) who has done nothing more than protect his own property and family by apprehending (so he claims) more than 12,000 (!!) illegal aliens and turning them over to the Border Patrol. Even if the administration doesn't throw in with the illegals, if Obama nevertheless abandons Barnett to his fate, I believe the president would have willfully failed to discharge his oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

If the trial results in a defense verdict and MALDEF does not appeal (unlikely), then Obama is off the hook. But if this ends up in federal circuit court -- as I'm certain it will, no matter what the verdict in district court -- and if Obama (a) ducks the issue or (b) backs MALDEF and the illegals, then the GOP should ride this issue into the 2010 election.

And I would then predict they would, in event (a) -- Obama administration ducks the issue -- recapture one or the other chamber of Congress. And in event (b) -- Obama administration sides with the illegal aliens against they American citizen they tried to victimize -- the GOP will win the whole ruddy thing.

Even if Obama arrives at the same calculation, I just don't know whether he has the cojones to buck the open-borders statelessness of the New Left.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 9, 2009, at the time of 6:39 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 29, 2008

Ultimate Illegal-Immigration Stopping Power

All right, I admit it: Sachi, not I, has come up with the perfect analogy to illegal immigration, the legal immigration system, and everything else... and I believe everyone here will finally understand what I mean -- even if he doesn't agree with it.

Consider this:

Now we move a few hundred miles east and reboot...

Surely the vast majority, probably over 90%, of Big Lizards readers can see that the second scenario is infinitely to be preferred over the first. Surely you understand that Jerome was made into a criminal by a lousy L.A. law, a law that was arbitrary, capricious, vindictive, authoritarian, corrupt, and unjust. Under the more rational, predictable, and just law of the great and sovereign Republic of Texas, people like Jerome and Alberto need not skulk in the shadows.

The law in Los Angeles prevents honest, decent people from carrying the means to protect themselves. A rational law would allow this; but the law in L.A. is irrational, and the law in Slobovia is unpredictable and inexplicable.

The solution is to implement a rational, predictable, and just CCW permit law nationwide. While more people would be carrying guns legally, many, many fewer would be carrying them illegally. This is a trade-off that would tremendously benefit society, as Professor John Lott has shown many times over (i.e., in his seminal work More Guns, Less Crime.)

And I cannot imagine it has escaped anyone's notice that under the L.A. anti-gun law, just because someone is caught illegally carrying a concealed pistol, you cannot assume he is a notorious character up to no good: He could just as easily be an ordinary bloke who wants to protect himself from the violent hoods in the 'hood.

By contrast, since any honest, decent citizen of Texas can get a CCW permit, the only people carrying weapons illegally would be those unable to get such a permit... which in practice generally means felons, hypes, and transient bums. Therefore, it's perfectly reasonable to throw the book at anyone carrying concealed weapons without a permit, because nearly all of them are bad guys.

I suspect most of you can see exacty where I'm heading with this analogy to illegal immigration, so I'll leave off here. But please think about your reaction to the scenarios above, then about your reaction to my call for the reformation of the legal immigration system -- and my argument that this alone would dramatically decrease the illegal immigration problem.

Analogies prove nothing; that is not their purpose. Their purpose is clarity, not proof; they strip away the emotional detritus that blocks clear thinking about controversial issues.

Please use this moment of clarity at least to understand my argument; then if you still want to dispute the validity of my contention, we can debate on the basis of shared understanding of what I'm actually arguing.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 29, 2008, at the time of 11:45 PM | Comments (37) | TrackBack

December 16, 2008

The Party of Pre-Americans

In today's topsy-turvy world, best described by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland --

"Let the jury consider their verdict," the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

"No, no!" said the Queen. "Sentence first -- verdict afterwards."

-- I thought it best to present my conclusions first, then tuck all the boring explication and justification into the slither-on. This will make it easier for 95% of readers to skip the post entirely, and the remaining 8 to proceed to the argumentum already in a state fit to be tie-dyed.

Accordingly, I conclude that the Republican Party cannot survive as "the native-born American party." We have no option but to reach out to all those immigrants and children of immigrants who come here because they love America and what she stands for. Instead of discouraging or even stopping immigration, we must encourage it -- but only by the right people, those who come here anxious to assimilate, who already believe in American values, no matter where they were born. We need more, not less, immigration by folks who were already American in their hearts long before they immigrated here.

I call such folks "pre-Americans." If we don't want to repeat the same mistake with the rising population of Hispanics that we made with blacks, the Republican Party must become the party of pre-Americans. Here are the three main reasons I discover:

• Without Hispanic votes, we are sunk as a viable party;
• Without (pre-American) immigrants, we cannot survive economically;
• Nor can we win the war against the Iran/al-Qaeda axis.

All else is dicta. Please read the dicta before raining katzenjammers on us in the comments section.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that my earlier prediction was correct: The anti-immigration hysteria of some putative "conservatives" during the 109th Congress, while the immigration-reform bill was under consideration, has so poisoned the well that we may never win another national election -- unless we act immediately to undo what a few prominent Republicans did.

I'll call them the Tancredistas, not because Tom Tancredo was the leader of the opposition (he wasn't), but because his anti-immigrant rage -- not simply anti-illegal immigrant, but anti-immigrant, period -- exemplifies all that is wrong with the GOP's approach to the subject. Angry opponents of what they were pleased to call "amnesty" often demanded a moratorium on all immigration; this went far beyond mere opposition to fence-jumping and cut right at the heart of America, which has always been a nation of immigrants.

Worse, whenever any pro-legal immigrationist wondered why the Tancredistas thought we needed to curtail all immigration, the stock answer was invariably that Hispanics "refused to assimilate," or even that it was impossible for Hispanics to assimilate. Sometimes Moslems were tossed into the mix as non-assimilationers, as well; but the Tancredistas never complained about non-assimilating Europeans or Canadians. Evidently, Italians and Albanians were quite willing and able -- just not Hispanics and Moslems. (I wondered aloud about immigrants from Spain, but no one rose to clarify.)

I am quite convinced that the number of out and out racists among the Tancredistas was always very, very small. Most in the anti-"amnesty" camp believe, in their hearts, that they're only opposed to illegality, to lawbreaking, to flouting our national borders.

Alas, even the non-racists adopted exclusionary language, phrases that could hardly be distinguished from those signs during Jim Crow that read "No dogs, Jews, or Coloreds allowed." This sort of cold, harsh language was frequently coupled with irrational arguments: A few La Raza activists parading through Los Angeles carrying Mexican flags and chanting "Aztlan!" were equated to the entire Hispanic population of the United States, for example; any method of regularizing illegals already living here was dubbed "amnesty," even if it involved punishment; and any call to reform the legal immigration system was rejected as "selling out to Ted Kennedy."

Tancredistas offered increasingly pugnacious counterproposals:

• Closing the borders (that permanent "moratorium" on immigration)
• Mass round-ups and deportations
• Kicking "illegal" children out of school
• And denying citizenship to the children of illegals, even if they were born in the United States

All of this energetic and frankly over-the-top anti-immigrant activism has convinced a great majority of American Hispanics, both immigrants and first- or second-generation native-born Americans, that the Republican Party hates them and wants to deport them all -- not just the illegals, but those here legally as well. I believe that most of those I'm labeling Tancredistas (let alone other Republicans) don't really want to deport legal Hispanic immigrants. But that's the way it comes across; and in politics, perception is just as important as reality.

Democrats constantly try to hang a label of racism on us; they hoot that the GOP cannot survive as "the white party." That's certainly true, but it's a vile smear, well befitting their general approach to life: "It's not how you play the game, it's whether you win -- and utterly destroy your opponent." I've never heard anybody inside the Republican Party suggest we should be "the white party."

But a more appropriate and accurate variation on that vile, racist, anti-GOP slander is also true: We cannot survive as "the native-born American party;" we must, must reach out to those who come here wanting to become Americans, those who come here anxious to assimilate, those who come here with American values, no matter where else they had the misfortune to be born. Let's call these folks, those who were already American in hearts and minds even before coming here, "pre-Americans": We must rebrand the Republican Party as "the party of pre-Americans." (Note, I'm not saying exclusively pre-Americans.)

Once our immigration laws become more rational, predictable, and fair, then and only then we can equate pre-Americans with legal immigrants. But our laws are neither rational nor predictable nor fair; they are arbitrary, capricious, and unjust to a staggering degree. (Their only virtue is that they're nowhere near as irrational, unpredictable, and unfair as those of every other nation on the planet.)

Thus, the first step in rebranding the GOP is for the GOP to unify behind a legal-immigration reform law -- which could be separate and distinct from a decision on what to do with illegal immigrants already here, about guest workers, and so forth. The sole purpose of the legal-immigration reform law should be to make the system:

• Rational. Agents should decide who gets residency and citizenship on the basis of assimilability and American values, not irrational criteria such as country of origin or whether the applicant has a cousin with a green card.
• Predictable. Applicants must know in advance how likely they are to gain residency or citizenship... and more important, what steps to take to increase their odds. Thus, those who really want to become Americans and are willing to work for it will have a clue what to do.
• Fair. Agents must decide based upon the individual applicant, not some larger group over which he has no control and may disagree vehemently ("Sorry, we've already admitted our quota of PhDs; we're only admitting plumbers now"). They must also decide based upon known and published criteria that do not change from day to day, depending on which agent or office the immigrant happens to get.

Reform is a good first step, but it's not sufficient to woo back Hispanic Americans who feel betrayed by the GOP. In politics, it's not just what you say but how you say it. Too many Republicans picked an incredibly toxic way to argue against a plan they thought too generous towards illegal aliens... and the words they used convinced tens of millions of immigrants and children of immigrants that they were unwanted nuisances polluting the precious bodily fluids of the United States.

This reaction may be unfair; reality often is. However, given John S. McCain's dismal performance among Hispanics in November -- he was equated with the Tancredistas by a series of Spanish-language ads run by Obama, despite McCain being the leading Republican voice for immigration reform -- it's almost undeniable at this point that the GOP "brand" among Hispanics and other ethnically foreign populations within the country is more unpopular than New Coke.

Therefore, we not only must support significant reform of the legal immigration system, we must start to rebuild our relationship with, in particular, Hispanics. Having given them the impression we were spitting in their faces, we must now show regret for the intemperate language used and begin using much more inclusive language in the future.

There is no need to compromise on the fundamental requirement of controlling our borders; but we must finally recognize that most illegal immigrants are not "criminals," not in the commonly understood sense of a convenience-store robber or a carjacker. Most are simply responding irrationally to an irrational and unjust immigration system. Correct the system -- which we should do anyway for our own reasons -- and we'll see a huge drop in illegal entries, as those pre-Americans who rationally should be admitted are allowed in legally.

But it is important to show sympathy and support for those "huddled masses yearning to breath free" who desperately desire to become real Americans -- those that already have the distinctive American values and virtues. Instead of talking about a moratorium on immigration (which comes across as "There are too many of your sort here already"), we must say, in essence, "While it's important to enforce our territorial integrity, we understand that many folks see America as a 'shining city on a hill,' and we'll do everything in our party's power to open the gates to all those who are truly American at heart... no matter where they were born."

Then actually do it.

When the legal immigration procedure is more rational, predictable, and fair, the honest will use it rather than trying to swim the Rio Grande. With a much smaller rate of illegal border crossings, we could focus much more attention on those who still feel the need to sneak into the United States; likely, there is a very good reason why they cannot immigrate legally. And we would be able to use harsher, more authoritarian means to crack down, since (again) when the honest can enter honestly, only the dishonest persist in entering dishonestly.

Not only do Republicans (and the nation) need pre-American immigrants for economic reasons (they're far better for our country than "guest workers" who feel no affiliation or affinity with the United States), but they would also benefit and strengthen American borg culture, as has every other wave of immigration. American immigration has always been another example, besides Capitalism, of the "creative destruction" that signals a nation rising, rather than the cultural stagnation that betokens a nation in decline. And that's something we desperately need, as we're engaged in a true Kulturkampf (and I don't mean against American liberals).

We're at war with a vicious culture that worships a murder-totem who demands endless human sacrifices; that militant Islamist culture wants to overwhelm the West and institute so-called "sharia" law, enslaving both Christendom and the rest of Islam to its bloodthirsty death cult. All Western, Judeo-Christian and anti-militant Moslem cultures must join forces to defeat the Moloch worshippers.

We cannot retreat into ethnic enclaves and still win that war. Yes, admitting massive numbers of pre-American Hispanics will change American culture... just as did admitting massive numbers of Russians, Poles, Chinese, Irish, Catholics, Jews, and of course Africans. Allowing anyone other than British Anglicans or German Lutherans, the dominant groups when the country was founded, to become American necessarily changed American culture.

But there's nothing inherently wrong with changing American culture; what matters is how it's changed. And there is nothing within traditional Latin-American culture that's incompatible with the deepest American values; it's not like admitting tens of millions of Ayatollah-Khomeini followers. If anything, Latin-American values of work, family, and entrepeneurship are a perfect compliment to the corresponding Republican (and American) values.

The same could have been said of black values back before the civil-rights era... and had we taken the route of eliminating institutionalize state racism, empowering individuals through Capitalism and home-ownership, and raising victims of discrimination up to meet the universal standards (instead of lowering the standards to make it easier for the class of all blacks to exceed them), then I believe we would have a black voting population today that cast its individual votes on the basis of individual opinion, instead of a black voting population that is wholly captive to a single party -- one that does not have the best interests of individual black families at heart.

Ergo, if we don't want to repeat the same mistake with the rising population of Hispanics, the Republican Party must become the party of pre-Americans. I reiterate the three reasons, in increasing order of importance:

• Because without Hispanic votes, we cannot survive as a viable American political party;
• Because without pre-American immigrants, we cannot survive economically;
• Because without pre-American immigrants, we cannot win the war against the Iran/al-Qaeda axis.

It's long past time to swallow our pride and accept the inevitable: There are going to be millions of Latin American immigrants into the United States annually for the forseeable future. The only question is whether they come in through the gate or over the fence... and whether we make it easy for the law-abiding and hard for the bad guys by reforming our broken system -- or do nothing, leaving it equally easy for everyone, righteous or rotten, to enter anywhere and everywhere.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 16, 2008, at the time of 8:25 PM | Comments (41) | TrackBack

March 11, 2008

Another Great Issue for McCain to Seize From the Left

If there is any issue that epitomizes John McCain's dispute with the conservative wing of the Republican Party, it would be immigration policy. While they differ over several other issues -- notably the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, a.k.a. McCain-Feingold, and the putative "Gang of 14," which prevented the GOP from enacting the Byrd option in the Senate to rule it against Senate rules to filibuster judicial nominees -- it is immigation over which the Republican Party split the most widely and violently. And certainly it is immigration that many consider to be the "third rail" of the party... thus the one McCain should most steer clear of, right?

Wrong. In fact, I believe that John McCain should grab the elephant by the tail and look the facts in the face: He should jump into the current immigration donnybrook in Congress with both feet and with fists swinging... because this time, he will be squarely on the side of conservatives; and parachuting in to help the conservatives enact a border-security bill is exactly what McCain needs to be doing right now.

It all started when several moderate Democrats in both House and Senate and one Republican senator introduced a "get tough" bill on immigration and border enforcement. It included a big increase in the Border Patrol (8,000 new agents), more money for building the fence, and most especially, a major crackdown on employers who hire illegal aliens.

The Secure America through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act was introduced in November 2007 by Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC, not yet rated) in the House, and by Sens. Mark Pryor (D-AK, 75%), Mary Landrieu (D-LA, 65%) and David Vitter (R-LA, 92%) in the Senate. Nearly all Republicans -- from Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME, 36%) on the left to Reps. Tom Tancredo (R-CO, 92%) and Brian Bilbray (R-CA, 94%) on the right -- signed aboard the act, along with 48 Democrats in the House and three in the Senate. Many anti-illegal immigation groups applauded the bill, led by NumbersUSA, who called it "enforcement by attrition" for its strict, new immigration-status reporting requirements for business.

But a funny thing happened on the way to a floor vote...

Despite clear majority support in both House and Senate, the Democratic leadership under Squeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Haight-Ashbury, 95%) and Senate Majority Leader Harry "Pinky" Reid (D-Caesar's Palace, 90%) -- stop me if you've heard this before -- threw a fit and vowed to bury the bill, squashing the revolt of the moderates like stomping on a banana slug. And bury it they did, refusing to bring it up even for discussion, let alone a vote.

For three months, it languished in committee hell. But now, Republicans are insisting that the Democratic leadership finally allow a vote on the Democratic-written border-enforcement bill... and supporters of SAVE say they have the votes to force it to the floor via a House discharge petition, a rarely used process whereby a majority of Congress (218 representatives) can vote to "discharge" a bill from consideration by a committee, whose chair is simply sitting on it, and bring it to the floor of the House for debate and vote:

Leaders are expected as early as Tuesday to use a parliamentary tactic that would eventually force a vote on the measure if 218 lawmakers - a majority of the House - demand it. Republicans are pressuring Democratic backers of the measure - including several first-termers and dozens from swing districts, all facing tough re-election fights - to defy their leaders and sign the petition.

"Lots of Republicans and lots of Democrats would like to see something done," Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the No. 2 whip, said Friday.

The House Republican leadership filed the petition today, and all Republicans are expected to sign it; they need about twenty Democrats to sign as well. With 48 Democrats signed aboard as of November, it looks good for being discharged and floored.

Republicans in the Senate are also trying to force Reid to bring it up there... though its fate there is less certain; liberal Democrats can filibuster it, even if moderate Democrats support it. Reid can lose up to ten Democrats and still prevent the SAVE Act from being considered.

But as a political issue, there is nothing Democrats can do to stop it entering the campaign. And enter it John McCain should -- with hobnailed boots!

Oddly even the liberals want McCain to join the fray... but on their side, not the Republican side. I think they're nuts and don't understand McCain at all; but they demand that he speak out against the Republican push to enact the border-security bills in the House and Senate:

Democrats are trying to turn the tables, hoping that Republicans' efforts to push get-tough immigration measures will hurt McCain with Hispanic voters and independents, two groups that have supported him in the past.

In a letter to McCain last week, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., called on the Arizonan to reject the GOP leaders' plans, calling them "draconian and divisive."

"Such a rejection will let this nation's 44 million Latinos know that demonizing them for political purposes will not be tolerated and that the more hateful rhetoric in the immigration debate has no place in our country's civic discourse," Menendez wrote.

Note that suggesting that illegal immigrants shouldn't be allowed into the country and that employers shouldn't employ them is now dubbed demonic hate speech. (I think Sen. Menendez (D-NJ, 90%) is auditioning for a leadership position -- in La Raza.)

What John McCain really ought to do is precisely the opposite of what Democrats demand, shockingly enough; he should jump into the fight but add his voice to those Senate colleagues and fellow congressmen in the House of Representatives, calling for a vote on the SAVE Act.

And it wouldn't be a flip-flop, either. Despite the angry denunciations of McCain by conservatives, he has never favored "open borders" or "immigration for all."

McCain supported comprehensive reform that included border-security measires, and it's fair to say he didn't think much of the border security fence. But when his bill died in 2006, he accepted the verdict of the people: He stated in no uncertain terms that henceforth, he would push for a more secure border first; and only after the stick was enacted would he return to the carrots of the bill.

This was widely seen by Republicans as McCain admitting his comprehensive approach had failed, and that he was joining the "enforcement first" ranks as the only route to immigration reform and regularization. While I still support a comprehensive bill, I understand why McCain -- who must, at the end of the day, actually get something enacted after all -- would give up on comprehensive and go for a one-two approach, security then regularization.

In any event, that was long before the presidential campaign really kicked off; through all of 2007 and into 2008, McCain has pushed to secure the border first, then address the other issues surrounding illegal immigration last. Thus, he already took his lumps on the issue and has come round... not in a stealthy way, but by openly admitting his mistake. I find that rather refreshing in a politician.

Here is what John McCain needs to say on the floor of the Senate to turn this entire issue from being a net negative for him to being a huge positive... in my never very humble (but generally correct) opinion:

I think this would delight conservative Republicans and moderate Democrats alike; and most particularly, it would excite independents, who really want to see a bipartisan solution to intractable problems, such as sealing (to the extent possible in a free country) our porous borders.

And most important, it would be one more opportunity for McCain to poke a finger in the eye of the Überleft; I'm certain that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama totally oppose the Pryor-Landrieu-Vitters bill in the Senate... though it's unclear whether Obama can find any voting button on his Senate console except "Present."

If McCain jumps on this issue, it would be the second excellent domestic issue for him to capture this month. But on the other hand, I still haven't heard him chime in on the earmarks issue yet; so he'd better get his Asterix in gear. Time and presidential campaigns wait for no man.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, March 11, 2008, at the time of 6:44 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 25, 2008

Bombs and Bombast

In a post today, Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics gleefully reports that the "virtual fence" program hasn't worked well so far:

Keith Epstein of Businessweek reports that the "virtual fence" all the candidates kept referring to (especially the GOP ones) as the cornerstone of border security turned out to be a miserable failure....

Doesn't this hurt McCain, given that the virtual fence was one of the tools he was counting on to help deliver his promise of "certifying" the security of the border? Will he have commit to building the real "g**damn fence" now?

No, it shouldn't hurt McCain... any more than the early failures of the ballistic missile defense system seriously hurt the BMD program. It just means we have to keep building the physical fence -- while continuing to work on the virtual one.

For some reason, the idea of a virtual fence became the focal point of the ire of immigration-absolutists during the debate last year over McCain-Kennedy. It became vital to anti-plea-bargain conservatives to "debunk" the virtual fence, presumably on the grounds that only a real fence -- three hundred feet high and sixty feet thick, dotted with machine-gun emplacements and sporting a minefield -- could keep out the illegal Mexicans.

They saw the virtual fence as a heavily watered drink some cheapskate bartender was trying to foist on them.

Do I sound a bit caustic? Sorry, I tend to get that way when Republicans act-out like Democrats. In particular, the reflexive bias against technology has always set my teeth on fire.

Democrats in the 1980s became hysterical at the thought of a technological shield against incoming nuclear missiles; and now the conservative wing of the GOP is running around like a chicken with its legs cut off over the possibility of a technological shield against illegal immigration.

I can only conclude that they believe even breathing the words "virtual fence" amounts to "surrender" and "amnesty," as if it were always just a ruse to avoid building a real fence. But the areas suggested for the virtual fence are precisely those that have such rugged terrain that (a) there are hardly any illegal crossings, and (b) it's extremely difficult (if not impossible) to build a "real" fence in the first place.

So that those areas would not be left totally unguarded, various people proposed a network of radar installations, cameras, motion detectors, heat sensors, and a computer system tying it all together... modeled roughly on the Aegis combat system that protects many of our cruisers and destroyers.

Regardless of whether or not this particular version of a virtual fence has worked, we absolutely need one. Believe it or not, keeping out Mexicans is not the only problem we have that requires some sort of barrier:

• The border with Canada is vastly bigger than the southern border, and it would take a long, long time to toss a fence across it;
• And then, of course, there's the Gulf of Mexico; terrorists can boat up the Gulf and hop out onto the beach;
• And there are the Iraqi borders with Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran;
• And don't forget the borders between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and (naturally) Iran;
• Not to mention borders between our allies and their enemiess;
• Finally, any physical fence that can be built -- can be breached; cf. the fence that used to separate Gaza from Egypt. Even if we could literally build fences separating us from all potential enemies, those fences can be tunneled under, flown over, or blown up.

We need to keep working on the virtual fence because we are soon going to need it -- desperately, and in many, many places. Similarly, it's a darned good thing that we kept working on BMD, despite early failures of the components of the original Strategic Defense Initiative (particle-beam technology, railgun ground launchers, nuclear-powered pulse weapons)... because now we really, really need it for a completely unforseen adversary. Thank goodness we have it.

It's quite reasonable to argue that the virtual fence technology is not yet good enough to rely upon, so we need to build a physical barrier. But it's wrong -- one of those few actions that are always wrong -- to heap scorn upon a technological program because the early alpha-tests weren't entirely successful. Worse than wrong, it's foolish, Luddite, and short-sighted.

By all means, build the physical double-fencing along the southern border with Mexico; but don't delude yourselves that that's all we need. Or that we'll never need the virtual fence. Or even that we'll actually be able to build an effective physical fence everywhere that we need to stop people from coming... or even along the entire southern border itself.

The physical fence is a stopgap; we urgently need to do two things. As Caiaphas says in Jesus Christ Super Star, "We need a more permanent solution to our problem":

1. Perfect the virtual-fence, smart-card, and employer verification technologies;
2. Reform our own legal immigration system so that it is rational, just, and above all, predictable, to take the pressure of millions off the wall.

When law-abiding, eager-to-assimilate immigrants see a system that tells them what they need do to be granted residency or citizenship, they will follow the legal brick road. Contrariwise, if they see a system that arbitrarily excludes them, while welcoming much less assimilable immigrants with open arms, the pressure to just give up and sneak into the country, making a better life for their wives and chilren, becomes overwhelming.

(Imagine that you go through four or five years of university, passing all classes and tests; but at the end, somebody hands you a pair of dice... and you only get your diploma if you roll ten or higher.)

Until these two problems are solved, a physical fence is just a very wide target for bombs -- and bombast.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 25, 2008, at the time of 10:09 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

December 10, 2007

Republicans "Stand Firm" on "Toning Down" Immigration Rhetoric?

Another case of dueling headlines that demonstrates how the elite media can slant a story merely by picking and choosing what aspect to highlight.

The New York Times: Republican Candidates Firm on Immigration.

The Associated Press: GOP Hopefuls Temper Anti-Immigrant Talk

Both articles actually say more or less the same thing, that Republican presidential candidates at the Univision debate held last night in Miami (in both Spanish and English via simultaneous translation) avoided the use of harsh rhetoric and name-calling -- but stood firm on the policy of interdicting illegal immigration into the United States. Nevertheless, the foci of the two stories are worlds apart.

The Times focused on making Republicans look like anti-Hispanic bullies and panderers:

In front of what will probably be their most pro-immigration audience, Republican candidates toned down their rhetoric but told Spanish-language television viewers in a debate on Sunday that they would take strong measures to close off the country’s borders to illegal immigration.

The candidates were forced into a difficult balancing act by the debate, broadcast on Univision, as they tried to offend neither the Hispanic audience nor the Republican base many of them have tried to appeal to by taking a hard line on illegal immigration. The topic has led to some of the fiercest rhetoric in past debates....

They sandwiched their remarks between gauzy paeans to legal immigration and the values of immigrants.

By contrast, AP takes a totally different tack. They emphasize the softened language and don't even mention the firmness against illegal immigration until the second graf:

The Republican presidential candidates sought to embrace Hispanics in a Spanish language debate Sunday, striving to mark common ground with a growing voter bloc while softening the anti-illegal immigration rhetoric that has marked their past encounters.

The candidates avoided the harsh exchanges and name-calling of their most recent debate, while still emphasizing the need for border security and an end to illegal immigration. The polite debate came less than four weeks before the first votes are cast in Iowa and amid a topsy-turvy race in which former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has bolted to the lead in the state.

AP goes on to quote a bushel of lauditory remarks the candidates made about Hispanics:

"Hispanic-Americans have already reached great heights in America. I saw that in my city. They pushed us to be better," Giuliani said. "They're coming here to be Americans and they're making us better by being here in America."

Added Romney: "This is the land of the brave and the home of the free, and Hispanics are brave and they are free, as are all the people of this great nation."

...And only then notes that all of the candidates (except Lonely Ron Paul) nevertheless stressed that they cannot support what they like to call "amnesty."

But in the Times version, we discover mean, bitter Republicans who hate Hispanics:

Mitt Romney, who was an outspoken critic of the proposed immigration law and who sent out a mailing on the subject last week with a chain-link fence on the cover, was forced to again defend himself for employing a lawn service that used illegal workers at his home in Massachusetts, where he was governor.

At the debate, Mr. Romney, who once said on Fox News that he would tell illegal immigrants to “go home,” used a different tone to describe his policy....

“When we have control of our borders, when we preserve the legality of immigration, we can then turn to the people who are here, we can have them get the tamperproof ID cards, and the people that come forward and sign up, they can pay taxes,” he said. The people who do not do that, he said, “should be expelled from the United States.”

Mr. Huckabee, who has voiced compassion for illegal immigrants and who has had to defend a proposal he supported as governor of Arkansas to offer taxpayer-financed scholarships to the children of illegal immigrants, recently issued a proposal that focuses on strict penalties for illegal immigration. At the debate he said the illegal immigrants should go “to the back, not the front of the line,” and said they should start the process by going back to their native countries.

Finally, both articles noted that Rudy Giuliani (and, per AP but not the Times, John McCain), in response to a question of what he would say to Oogo Chavez, quipped that he agreed with the suggestion by King Juan Carlos of Spain -- who told Chavez, "¿Porque no te callas?" ("why don't you shut up?").

But while AP article continued a bit longer, discussing a few other topics that the debate had touched upon, the Times ended its article on that snippy (but wholly justified) note, implying that the entire debate was about nothing but immigration, legal and il-.

So there you have it, a textbook case of how to write an article that changes the entire thrust of an event by selectively emphasizing one aspect or a different one. Bear this in mind the next time you crack open your local paper -- online or off-.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 10, 2007, at the time of 4:55 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 10, 2007

Don't Throw Illegals in That Breyer Patch

A San Francisco-based federal judge, who grew up in San Francisco, a graduate of UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall Law School, former Watergate prosecutor, who worked as a counsel at the Legal Aid Society in San Francisco for his first job as an actual lawyer, has put the kibosh on a crazy scheme to send letters to businesses warning them about employees whose Social Security numbers don't match their names.

See if you can guess which recent president appointed Judge Charles Breyer, younger brother of you-know-who, to the bench.

Breyer said the new work-site rule would likely impose hardships on businesses and their workers. Employers would incur new costs to comply with the regulation that the government hasn't evaluated, and innocent workers unable to correct mistakes in their records in the given time would lose their jobs, the judge wrote.

"The plaintiffs have demonstrated they will be irreparably harmed if DHS is permitted to enforce the new rule," Breyer wrote.

The so-called "no match" letters, including a Department of Homeland Security warning, were supposed to start going out in September but were held after labor groups and immigrant activists filed a federal lawsuit.

Can someone please explain to me again why it will be good for the nation if social conservatives cast a "protest vote" for a third-party candidate in 2008, making it more likely that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham (D-Carpetbag, 95%) will become President Hillary, thus getting to appoint the next three Supreme Court justices plus hundreds of other federal judges? Will her nominees be more like Justices Roberts and Alito -- or more closely resemble Judge Charles Breyer and his big brother Stephen?

[P]laintiffs, which include the AFL-CIO, the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, saw the decision as a significant victory against a program they believe would foster discrimination on the work site, lead to job losses by lawful employees and expose businesses to additional expenses and the fear of prosecution.

Remember, we're only talking about DHS sending letters to businsses whose employee names don't match the Social Security number the businesses provided and warning those businesses that there are grim consequences for defying immigation law. I wonder how Judge Breyer would rule on a southern-border security fence?

So the next time "anti-amnesty" conservatives demand to know why we're not enforcing the immigration regulations that are already on the books... rather than blaming Bush first, they should instead try asking Judge Breyer and the scores of other federal judges just like him, who see it as a terrible and unconstitutional burden that businesses be forced to make an effort to determine if their employees are legally allowed to work; that county precincts take at least a quick peek at some picture I.D. before allowing someone to vote; and that the Border Patrol attempt to, you know, guard the border.

While beholdest conservatives the mote in Republicans' own eye, and beholdest not the Rock of Gibralter in the eye of the Democrats?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 10, 2007, at the time of 9:05 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

September 23, 2007

The Human Touch

This post began life as a comment on Patterico's Pontifications; but as it grew and grew, it hatched into a full-blown post for Big Lizards instead. (Sorry, Patterico!) I was reading a post by PP guest poster DRJ about Colin Powell privileging "diversity" over national security in visa applications:

The State Department under Secretary of State Colin Powell refused to implement a 2003 anti-terror recommendation that would have barred aliens from states that support terrorism from obtaining diversity visas....

America must show compassion for people in need of asylum but, after 9/11, I hoped the American government would show compassion for the home folks, too.

One commenter named Steve took issue with the tone of the post, which seemed to favor a blanket restriction on visa applications under the "diversity" category for immigrants from countries that sponsor terrorism. He wrote:

I work next to one of those 3,100 Iranians, M-F.

Should I tell her something for you?

We also let in many thousands more during the Shah’s regime, and probably didn’t check their politics in any meaningful way.

The argument boiled down to a procedural difference: Should immigrants from terrorist-sponsoring countries be barred from "diversity" visas, forcing them to tread the more heavily restricted route of "asylum" applications? (Cf., some months ago, during the great immigration-reform debate, Hughitt opined that illegal immigrants from terrorist-supporting countries be banned from obtaining the so-called "parole cards" that would prevent them being deported while they attempted to legalize. Reading over my response, I see that I made essentially the same suggestion in that case as in this... so it turns out I'm consistent. Go figure.)

But the particular policy itself is not the issue, says I; it really doesn't matter which category we admit or reject them under, or even how many such immigrants we allow into the country. As with virtually everything else in the world, what matters is not so much the policy but how it's applied: We should admit all those applicants, no matter where from, who will benefit the United States... and keep out all those who will hurt us.

The question, then, is how to discriminate between the two. Humanitarians make a good point that immigrants fleeing from terrorist-sponsoring states -- think of Jews escaping from Lebanon and Christians fleeing Sudan -- are often exactly the sort of assimilable immigrant to whom we should grant asylum, and that many -- those who fled Communism in the past -- have made some of the best Americans.

In addition, I would note that they make excellent intelligence and linguistic sources, since few native-born Americans have native-level facility with Farsi, Urdu, Pashtun, Turkish, or even Arabic. (We have many more who can speak Korean, of course.) And not many of us know what it's like to live in countries like Indonesia, Yemen, or Somalia... what the mood of the people is, how they might respond to clandestine American operations, and how close to revolution they might be.

But conservatives also have a strong argument: Immigrants from terrorist-sponsoring nations are a potential threat; I can easily imagine Ahmadinejad mocking up a refugee background for a Qods Force operative who then "flees" to America to escape "persecution," preparing to attack us instead.

But perhaps the problem is that, as usual, we're looking for a one-size-fits-all policy for a multifaceted situation. We're trying to set up the perfect set of procedures, from airline security to visa applications, that will keep us safe.

But it's a fool's errand; our strength is not in our procedures but our people... and today, I think it unquestionable that America has the most experienced military and civilian-defense workers in the world. Those who have actually worked on the ground in the hell-holes of the world are particularly asute at distinguishing between someone who is sincere about wanting to help and a terrorist trying to infiltrate the ranks. It's a tremendous national resource, and we're letting it lie fallow.

For a long time now, Israel has urged us to follow their lead on interdicting terrorism. Rather than rely upon "foolproof" procedures, like x-raying everyone's shoes at the airport, Israel relies instead upon her own people. The government has trained a huge bunch of human agents to be extraordinarily good at two tasks:

• Recognizing any one of some number of faces they have memorized, the faces of known or suspected terrorists;
• Spotting suspicious behavior, demeanor, or conversation, even among people not on the watch list.

These agents roam around anywhere that terrorists are likely to congregate: airports, bus stations, malls, theaters, government buildings, and so forth. They look like ordinary people... but like cops, they're very, very good at noticing either weird behavior or spotting someone on a watch or wanted list.

The Israelis say that real, live, well-trained human beings do a better job of preventing terrorism than any number of passive procedures. Of course, they don't have to worry so much about, e.g., allegations of racial profiling; even so, American police officers rely heavily on their own and other officers' intuition... which is one-word shorthand for a cop's ability to notice aberrant situations and investigate more thoroughly, calling in backup as necessary.

I think we should evaluate each visa application, whether under the "asylum" or "diversity" category, on an individual basis; and that the evaluation be performed not by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) alone, but by a group within the wider Department of Homeland Security, each of whose members has personal experience both recruiting agents within terrorist-sponsoring countries and spotting terrorists trying to weasel their way into local or American projects.

By personal experience, I mean people who have confronted terrorists on the ground in Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere. Both soldiers and civilians, government and private, operating in such terrorist killing fields either quickly develop the ability to accurately evaluate the intentions of those with whom they interact... or else they quickly die.

I suggest that each of the thousands of members of this "visa evaluation group," male or female, be a "boots on the ground" military or civilian veteran of counterterrorism or counterinsurgency operations. I would include not only government employees but former private security employees, oil riggers, truck drivers, bankers, and even journalists -- if they actually moved out of the Green Zone and embedded with a military unit.

Hire enough of them to do a thorough job with every applicant; it's expensive, but it's an urgent national-security issue. Pay them enough to lure them away from their previous employment, if necessary. Give them enough authority to make their decisions stick, at least until the president or a federal court overrules them. And give them enough oversight that they don't become petty tyrants: Make it a prestige, career-enhancing assignment from which you can get bounced for acts of neglect, partisanship, or stupidity... more like the "Special Forces" than the heavily politicized CIA.

I agree with the Israeli approach, and I think this would resolve our conundrum: We should welcome immigrants from terror-sponsoring countries with open arms -- and stretched ears. We should rely for our security on investigatory interviews and background checks by men and women whose very lives, in the past, have depended upon their ability to make accurate judgments about people's real motivations.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 23, 2007, at the time of 3:41 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

July 10, 2007

Is "Treasonous" Really Milder Than "Nativist?"

A quick drive-by...

Hugh Hewitt never tires of telling us that it was the supporters of the immigration bill who tore the GOP apart by their inflammatory rhetoric. But how is one supposed to respond to anti-bill rhetoric like this? Here is Arizona State Representative Russell Pearce, speaking on last Saturday's Beltway Boys:

KONDRACKE: OK, did you -- I saw you quoted somewhere as saying that Jon Kyl and John McCain, the former prisoner of war and war hero, were traitors. Did you mean that to the country or how did you mean that?

PEARCE: Well, that was taken out of context. What I talked about and have no regrets for is the bill that was run through Congress was treasonous. Actually, it was the sellout of America. It was amnesty to law breakers. It ignored the damages of the crime. It allowed gang bangers to stay here. It allowed convicted felons to stay here. It allowed terrorists to stay here.

In fact, the bill explicitly excluded all three of those categories from consideration for provisional Z-visas. Someone could argue that the prohibition wasn't strong enough; but to say the bill "allowed" them to stay is a flat, vicious lie.

However, I'm more interested in the fact that, according to Rep. Pearce, I am a traitor to my country, because I supported treason against the United States of America. I see no other way to read that, and the distinction he purports to draw is nonsense on stilts: By definition, anyone who supports treason is a traitor.

I agree that many of the bill's supporters had ham-fisted tongues. But it's time that the bill's opponents acknowledge that the rhetoric of many on their own side was at least as vile, as vicious, as truth-impaired, and as divisive within the party as anything said by supporters.

For heaven's sake, crying "treason!" is at least as egregious as calling someone a "nativist;" and there were plenty others, including other public office-holders, who did exactly that.

Neither side had a monopoly on speaking the inexcusable, and neither side was an innocent victim. Until bill opponents admit that, we cannot "move on" and try to heal the wounds.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 10, 2007, at the time of 2:56 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

June 28, 2007

Spin City, Here We Come

So, hardly surprising, the immigration reform bill is now dead. But before conservatives begin doing their best impersonation of Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Caesar's Palace, 90%) -- pumping their fists in the air and screaming "we killed the Patriot Act immigration reform!" -- we might want to think this through a bit more intelligently.

As you know, I have supported this bill all along; but given the reality that it's dead and buried and not going to rise again until (at the earliest) 2009 (under a new Congress and a new president), I now shift gears to try to mitigate any harm the bill's failure may have on future Republican election chances.

I know that some conservatives insist that killing the bill will have only positive effects; the whole country, weeping tears of gratitude, will rally around the Republican nominees in 2008 and elect a GOP president, Senate, and House. Please pardon me if I'm a bit skeptical that such a big chunk of the electorate is now cheering for the Republican congressmen who heroically skewered immigration reform... I suppose anything's possible, but I doubt it; and that's certainly not how the media are spinning the defeat.

I believe there is a potential for a serious downside effect among Hispanic voters, who have become an increasingly important and volatile share of voters: Ronald Reagan got about 50% of the Hispanic vote in 1984, and I believe Bush got over 40% twenty years later... but those days are behind us, and we'd be darned lucky to get 30% in 2008.

But since I believe people mostly make their own luck, we need to position the defeat of this bill in such a way that we make it much more likely we'll get 30% -- which could still make it possible to win -- than, say, 15%, which would mean a stunning Democratic sweep of both houses of Congress and the presidency. (In which case, kiss goodbye to the war against global jihadism and start pining for the Bush tax rate, the 109th Congress's spending restraint, and even the border security fence.)

The elite media have already started their own spin cycle. AP's version of "the story":

President Bush's immigration plan to legalize as many as 12 million unlawful immigrants while fortifying the border collapsed in the Senate on Thursday, crushing both parties' hopes of addressing the volatile issue before the 2008 elections.

The Senate vote that drove a stake through the delicate compromise was a stinging setback for Bush, who had made reshaping immigration laws a central element of his domestic agenda. It could carry heavy political consequences for Republicans and Democrats, many of whom were eager to show they could act on a complex issue of great interest to the public.

The Washington Post version:

The vote was a major defeat for President Bush, dealt largely by members of his own party. The president made a last-ditch round of phone calls this morning to senators in an attempt to rescue the bill, but with his poll numbers at record lows, his appeals proved fruitless. Bush has now lost what is likely to be the last, best chance at a major domestic accomplishment for his second term.

Chicago Tribune (from "the Swamp," whatever that is):

For President Bush, who invested much of what little political capital he had remaining in the effort to get the bill through the Senate, it was perhaps his last chance of his presidency for a significant domestic legislative accomplishment, further accentuating his lame duck status.

Well, you get the idea; it's divide and conquer: The Democrats and their willing accomplices in the media desperately want Republicans to start attacking Bush on every occasion, setting elements of the party at each other's throat. The New York Times wasn't too bad; but many other media sources have already spun this as a terrible defeat of the impotent, lame-duck president and a victory by hard-core, right-wing conservatives. And sadly, some of the relentless attacks on the president from conservatives have been harsher than anything published in the MSM.

To be fair, harsh attacks have come in the other direction as well, particularly from Sens. John McCain (R-AZ, 65%), Lindsay Graham (R-SC, 83%), and Trent Lott (R-MS, 88%). They need to knock off the bitterness, link arms, and hotly defend all those areas where they agree with other conservatives (which in McCain's case may well be just the war!) But for both sides of the GOP, the "first rule of holes" applies. And we cannot hope to win in 2008 by attacking our own president.

Honestly, people, this is not how you win an election. Too many conservatives are pointing to the election in France of Nicholas Sarkozy, proclaiming that the way for Republicans to win in 2008 is to campaign against President Bush, to be even more stridently anti-Bush than the Democrats will be. As a campaign strategy, this is absolute nutter stuff.

The Sarkozy analogy doesn't work at all; Sarkozy didn't win because he decided to attack Jacques Chirac; he decided he had to attack Chirac because Chirac, along with hand-picked successor and prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, had embraced policies much closer to the Socialists than the conservatives (the dominant party at this time, the UMP -- Union for a Popular Movement -- contains elements of both Left and Right); and Chirac's policies, especially economic, were in tatters. But Bush has never, as a general policy, embraced "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," as Sen. Paul Wellstone used to put it.

In the last presidential election in France:

• Sarkozy won because he was running against a proud Socialist, Ségolène Royal, who edged close to Communism in some of her insane proposals.
• Sarkozy won because the French, especially Parisians, felt themselves under seige by Moslem "youths" in their own country, with daily riots and 20,000 cars torched every year.
• Sarkozy won because the French economy is in a shambles due to the Socialist policies of (among others) Chirac in his second term (he was more conservative the first time around).
• And Sarkozy had to run against Chirac, because the latter had completely tied himself to the Socialist Left... probably because he so feared Sarkozy himself.

Jacques Chirac led the opposition to anything America did to combat radical Islamism, while Sarkozy rightly understood that the West had to unite against al-Qaeda. Chirac (former member of the Communist Party), in his second term, embraced the Socialists' economic plans, including the 35-hour week and virtual ban on firing anyone, even for incompetence. Finally, Chirac is well known to be utterly corrupt; were it not for the immunity granted to French presidents, he would have been indicted years ago.

But President Bush has done none of the above. On a couple of issues (notably immigration reform and affirmative action), he has tried to bridge the gap between Left and Right. But on most issues, especially the most important -- federal judges (which is paying major dividends right now), taxes, the war against global jihadism, reforming entitlement programs, abortion, stem cell research, faith-based initiatives, and at least recently, congressional spending -- he is firmly on the side of conservatives.

Sarkozy considered most of the government initiatives of the last five years a complete failure; since they were all intimiately tied with President Jacques Chirac, of necessity, Sarkozy had to run against him.

But conservative Republicans, no matter how angry they are at Bush today, in fact agree with nearly all of his major initiatives:

• Aggressively fighting the war, expanding and rebuilding the military, and trying to transform it into a 21st-century fighting force;
• Lowering taxes and making the cuts permanent;
• Security measures such as the Patriot Act, the NSA al-Qaeda intercept program, the SWIFT surveillance program, National Security Letters, and so forth;
• Allowing faith-based organizations to fully participate in charitable governmental functions;
• Reform of Social Security, MediCare, and other entitlement programs to introduce at least some element of privatization;
• The various border-security and employer-enforcement provisions of the recently killed immigration bill, all of which Bush supports (and none of which the Democrats support);
• Appointing federal judges who believe in judicial restraint;
• Firm opposition to abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, particularly federal funding;
• Unwavering support for traditional marriage and opposition to same-sex "marriage".

The areas of disagreement, while often intense, are dwarfed by the areas of complete agreement; and in one of the areas of disagreement, federal spending, Republicans are just as complicit as the president and hardly in a position to throw stones.

We now invoke the Big Lizards self-evident article of common electoral sense: You cannot run in favor of the president's policies -- and simultaneously run against the president as an incompetent booby. If he's a booby, then his policies would be boobish... which makes you a booby for supporting them!

This poses no problem for Democrats: They call Bush an idiot, they call his policies idiotic, and they vehemently oppose both. But Republicans intend to run on most of the ideas above; they intend to point to the truly great economy as an example of Republican principles in operation; they intend to vigorously pursue the "Bush Doctrine" of holding sovereign nations accountable for what they allow terrorist groups to do on their soil, and suchlike.

How do you manage all that while "running against the president?"

The long and the tooth of it is that Republicans can only win by embracing President Bush... even while disagreeing on a few subjects important to them. In fact, even in areas where they disagree -- such as immigration -- it's political suicide to attack Bush's motives, his integrity, or to tie him too closely to Democrats... which I've seen a lot of in the past couple of months.

Folks may differ about what path to take; but John Cornyn (R-TX, 96%), Jon Kyle (R-AZ, 92%), and certainly President Bush have the same goal in mind: To drastically reduce illegal border crossings and overstaying of visas, allow in sufficient people willing to work at jobs that most Americans shun, and fundamentally reform the legal immigration policy to entice immigrants who are more assimilable and less likely to pose security threats.

Conservatives killed the bill because they believed it would not move us towards those goals; but the president pushed it because he thought it would -- not because he wants to flood the country with illegals and create an "open border" society. Republicans must not be seduced by a wish-fulfillment theory of the French election, lest we slay any chance of retaining the White House and recapturing one or both houses of Congress.

We might survive conservatives killing comprehensive immigration reform; but we would not survive conservatives polishing off the entire legacy of Pesident George W. Bush.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 28, 2007, at the time of 5:34 PM | Comments (37) | TrackBack

June 23, 2007

The Borjas Objection: Immigrants Just Steal American Jobs and Depress Wages

The George Borjas blogpost that John Hinderaker linked in his post on the economics of illegal immigration argues that immigration in general (not just illegal immigration) costs American workers much more in wages than it benefits America (all the benefits go to rich industrialists, he seems to believe). He claims to demonstrate this by comparing two formulas, both of which he crafted -- one for cost, the other for benefit -- and finding that the former is many times more than the latter.

The problem with Borjas's argument is threefold:

1. The ratio of wage losses to gains to the economy is artifactual... it derives entirely from the way he constructs his formulas.

It turns out that no matter how many foreign-born workers there are, what the GDP is, what percent of earnings are paid to workers, or what level he attaches to "wage elasticity" (which is the ability of a business to respond to higher wages by firing workers and vice versa), his formulas will always yield a ratio of wage loss to economic gain equal to exactly twice the ratio between the percent of native-born workers and the percent of foreign-born workers.

(See the "slither on" for the actual formulas. If you're really interested.)

Thus, if 85% of the population is native born, while 15% is foreign born, the ratio between the two is 85 divided by 15, or 5.67; and Borjas's formulas will always claim that immigrants create wage losses 11.33 times as large as whatever economic gains they produce for the country (which, along with the wage losses, drop as profits into the pockets of CEOs).

This sets up a perfect reductio ad absurdum: Suppose a bunch of Indian programmers immigrate here from Bangalore and create a number of new businesses; the new businesses hire lots and lots of progammers, testers, marketing people, salesmen, managers, and administrative personnel (both native-born Americans and immigrant Americans).

By the Borjas Theorem, these new companies and all the new hires will massively depress wages for everyone.

Yeah. That makes sense.

2. Borjas's base assumptions are purely static: he assumes that immigrants will in no way increase the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States, alter the percent of GDP that goes to paying wages, or in any way affect the ability of a business to hire or fire workers in response to wage changes.

This too flies in the face of our experience: The GDP grows; as it expands, and as new products, services, and entire industries come on line, the percent that goes to paying wages fluctuates up and down; and some industries can have a high wage elasticity, whereas others (such as service industries) cannot afford to let employees go and must instead pass along wage increases in the form of price hikes to consumers. None of these variables is invariant (which is why I call them "variables").

In particular, Borjas treats the GDP as if it were an invariant measurement that neither grows nor shrinks. That is, he assumes from the start that immigrants will never help "make a bigger pie," and every gain by an immigrant must produce a corresponding loss by a native.

Naturally, with such assumptions, Borjas can easily prove that immigration in general -- not just illegal immigration -- is a terrible thing for America. (Amusingly enough, Borjas is himself an immigrant from Cuba.)

The oddest thing about Borjas' estimates is not that he (invariably) estimates that immigration is a huge net loser for American workers, but the reason why... which he displays, perhaps inadvertently, in this passage. Here he attacks another economist's more positive calculation of gain and loss:

This is all based on a particular economic model--and obviously the answers are sensitive to the underlying assumptions. The CEA, in fact, reports an alternative set of estimates (in the $30 to $80 billion range) based on calculations of the wage impact made by economists Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri (here). But that model also faces various difficulties:

1. The higher benefits result entirely from accounting for the possibility that immigrants increase the productivity of natives who have the same education and work experience (although the importance of this point is often glossed over). In other words, the immigration of high school dropouts who are 30 years old makes natives who are high school dropouts and 30 years old more productive! Put bluntly, young low-skill immigrants made young low-skill African-American construction workers more productive. Maybe--but just think about it for a second. Wouldn't most people be skeptical about this?

But this "difficulty" is, in fact, the fundamental thesis of Capitalism: that competition increases productivity. And no, I do not believe most Americans are "skeptical" about the efficacy of Capitalism; it has a pretty good track record here. (None of this applies to Buchananites, of course.)

Borjas appears to believe that all the benefits of both immigration and also the huge "wage loss" went to fat-cat corporate owners, while the workers suffered massive losses every year; I of course have no idea what his political affiliation may be, but he is arguing classical Marxism -- that because workers are alienated from their produce, they will not respond to competition by stepping up their game. Is this really the expert upon whom John Hinderaker wants to rely?

Certainly, empirical data indicates that the Ottaviano-Peri model of the economics of immigration is a better fit than Borjas's model: Over the past hundred years, we have experienced a staggering increase in immigration; by the Borjas model, native-born workers should have suffered a correspondingly staggering loss of wages.

But instead, they have benefited from a huge rise in average wages per capita, even adjusted for inflation: Every category of worker makes more today than corresponding workers did in 1907, in constant dollars. And in fact, there are a lot more wage-earners today than ever before... so total wages are vastly greater than a century ago. How does that comport with the theorems?

Clearly, there is something terribly wrong with the Borjas model; it's even less predictive than the "general circulation models" of the global-warming alarmists! At what point must a theorist be required to come out of his cave and see how his ideas mesh with the real world?

But there is a third bizarre assumption that Borjas must have made:

3. Borjas assumes that immigrants are basically unskilled, wage-earning workers when they arrive -- and remain unskilled wage-earners until they retire. Thus, the arrival of new unskilled workers hurts all existing immigrants.

What else can one conclude by reading his next blogpost on the issue and stumbling across this passage?

But they completely ignored the fact that the same complementarities that supposedly help natives also hurt immigrants, and by quite a bit. In other words, the CEA uses a strange definition of who “we” are: including only native-born workers and ignoring the millions of immigrants already here who are affected by yet more immigrants. This choice is not one that is typically made in the academic studies the CEA borrows from. In recent studies, the simulation usually examines the impact of a particular immigrant influx (say, the 1990-2000 arrivals) on the wage of workers present in the United States in 1990, regardless of where those workers were born.

Had the CEA taken the immigrant losses into account, the Bush administration would have had to report that the net gains from immigration for the pre-existing population are equal to.......ZERO!

But in reality, over time, immigrants do not simply remain at whatever job level they were when they arrived; a huge precent of them improve their job skills and move up to more demanding jobs for higher wages. They are not threatened by new unskilled laborers arriving every year.

And even worse for his theorem, many immigrants open their own businesses and become capitalists! These businesses can be as small as a "gypsy" cab driver or a Mom & Pop carniceria -- or as big as a giant software company or an aerospace military contractor. They hire many, many people (my last job was as a technical writer for a software company owned by Indian immigrants), which increases the total amount of wages paid. How is the immigrant owner of a hotel damaged by the arrival of new immigrants eager to become hotel maids and busboys?

Borjas does not just play games with statistics; he tortures them until they confess whatever he wants to believe. The idea that immigration, wages, and the GDP are all zero-sum -- that any gain must generate a corresponding loss, that an immigrant who gets a job picking strawberries therefore displaces a previous person picking strawberries (immigrant or native) and depresses the strawberry-picking wage to boot, is simply absurd... and is belied by the continuing rampage of GDP growth that we have enjoyed for the past many decades.

We need more and more immigrants because jobs are being generated by our economy faster than Americans are breeding. If there are million new jobs created in a year (an underestimate, by the way), but only 600,000 new American-born workers to fill them (an overestimate -- we're breeding at exactly replacement rate, no more)... then why would importing 400,000 more immigrant workers depress wages?

The jobs are there to be filled; that's why we have such low unemployment. There is no labor surplus; if anything, there is a growing labor shortage, which is why wages are rising.

Borjas sums up his anti-immigration, anti-capitalist thesis:

Imagine the headlines had the CEA reported that immigration during the 1990s led to a $3,333 drop in the average earnings of pre-existing immigrants! This is not the spin the White House was looking for, but it is a direct implication of the spin they did put out. What an inconvenient truth!

I wonder if the compassionate conservatives will shed a tear about the huge wage losses suffered by pre-existing immigrants.

Where are all the wage losses that Borjas predicts as a result of immigration? We have more immigration than any other country on Planet Earth; but our wages have steadily risen, in real dollars, over the years. Even for "pre-existing immigrants." What on earth is Borjas talking about?

Is he using some bizarre economics jargon, where "huge wage losses" actually means "significant wage increases?" If so, then I certainly understand why economics is called the "dismal science."

Addendum: The Borjas Theorems

Here are his two formulas. We define the variables thus:

L = labor's share of income; E = wage elasticity; F = % of foreign born workers; N = % of native-born workers.

Economic gain from immigration = 0.5 x L x E x F²

Economic loss from immigration = L x E x F x N

The ratio of loss/gain must therefore = 2N/F, and both other terms (L and E) cancel out. Since Borjas estimates N = 0.85 and F = 0.15, this always produces a loss over gain ratio of 11.3, regardless of any values of L, E, or (static) GDP. The formula is deliberately crafted to always show a wage loss from immigration that completely swamps any economic gain.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 23, 2007, at the time of 3:22 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

June 22, 2007

Bride of Picking a Blog Feud - Power Line

Constituting my second attempt to get myself drummed out of the blogle corps and to have my epaulets painfully ripped off...

My favorite blogger (John Hinderaker) at my favorite blogsite (Power Line) just "penned" (all right, keyed, phosphored, whatever) a post taking the Bush administration to task for releasing 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; John's complaint is that it didn't specifically break out the effect of illegal immigrants from those of legal immigrants.

His underlying (unstated) thesis appears to be that, since illegal immigrants are probably a net negative, we shouldn't pass the immigration bill:

My biggest concern about allowing millions of illegal immigrants to remain in this country, while permitting many more to enter via a guest worker program--or further illegality, which, having been forgiven once again, will no doubt be encouraged--is its impact on the wages of relatively unskilled American labor.

Please pardon my puzzlement, but isn't this a raging non-sequitur? Nothing facially in the immigration bill would increase illegal immigration, or even increase it relative to legal immigration. John makes an attempt to find a logical connection; but he relies upon a logical fallacy called "begging the question," or assuming that which was to be proved: "further illegality, which, having been forgiven once again, will no doubt be encouraged."

No doubt? I find a great deal of doubt.

I have never once seen any study that showed that the 1986 amnesty (which really was an amnesty, unlike this bill) actually caused illegal immigration to increase. Yes, we estimate many more illegal immigrants here today than in 1986; but "post hoc ergo propter hoc" is another logical fallacy. There are many explanations that have not yet been addressed or filtered out:

• Attempted legal immigration has risen dramatically, perhaps due to increased instability following the collapse of the Soviet empire; that alone may explain a good portion of the increase in illegal immigration, as more people rejected may decide to come anyway.
• The strength of the American economy relative to the rest of the world -- the "world income gap" -- soared during the the last 20 years, due mostly to the dawn of the computer age, which benefited us far more than Europe or the Third World. A greater economic gap between, say, Latin America and the United States, coupled with an overall immigration quota that did not keep up with demand, would of course lead to more illegal immigration.
• Immigration laws (de jure or de facto) may have become more arbitrary and less predictable, leading to more immigrants choosing to jump the border.
• We may well have massively underestimated the number of illegals here in 1986; the census did not specifically try to count illegals until 2000. Where did the 3-4 million estimate then come from? Where does the 12 million estimate now come from?

No research has ever been done, so far as I know, to determine whether post-1986 illegals have ever even heard of the 1986 amnesty. If they don't know about it, how could it have impacted their decision to sneak into the country?

Another point that John fails to address: The most important (in my opinion) element of the current immigration bill changes our legal immigration policy to favor the well-trained, highly educated, and more assimilable immigrants at the expense of the lower-tier immigrants and their extended families. For the very first time ever, the United States would pick and choose immigrants based upon the likelihood that they will contribute to America.

John quotes the study he attacks to show a huge difference between the economic impact of such high-value immigrants (HVIs) and the unskilled laborers (ULs) who are favored under the current system:

Conflating these two groups is completely pointless. No one has ever doubted that Ph.D.s in math, biology and physics contribute to our economy. The report acknowledges this obvious fact. For example, with respect to the impact of immigration on government finance:

From this long-run point of view, the NRC [National Research Council] study estimated that immigrants (including their descendants) would have a positive fiscal impact--a present discounted value of $80,000 per immigrant on average in their baseline model (in 1996 dollars). The surplus is larger for high-skilled immigrants ($198,000) and slightly negative for those with less than a high school degree (-$13,000).

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.

But the system set in place by the immigration bill is also much more flexible than the current system: Because the new system would award points for various characteristics of potential immigrants, it would be easy enough to adjust the points to favor HVIs more, thus encouraging more of them to immigrate here.

Much of John's negative assessment seems to center on the "guest worker" program, which would bring about 200,000 mostly ULs into the United States each year on a three-year rolling basis -- thus 600,000 total, with complete turnover every 3 years:

My biggest concern about allowing millions of illegal immigrants to remain in this country, while permitting many more to enter via a guest worker program--or further illegality, which, having been forgiven once again, will no doubt be encouraged--is its impact on the wages of relatively unskilled American labor. The CAE report acknowledges the legitimacy of this issue:

Fully 90% of US native-born workers are estimated to have gained from immigration. ***

[B]ased on Chart one [the chart reproduced above], one might expect the remaining least-skilled natives to face labor market competition from immigrants. Evidence on this issue is mixed. Studies often find small negative effects of immigration on the wages of low-skilled natives, and even the comparatively large estimate reported in Borjas (2003) is under 10% for immigration over a 20 year period.

This sounds disturbingly as if John argues that we should not allow immigrants to work at low-paid jobs in order to protect the native-born ULs who currently work in those jobs. This sounds an awful lot like labor protectionism, à la Pat Buchanan... which in other contexts John vehemently opposes. I don't think he has carefully thought through this argument.

In any event, the final sentence of the paragraph that John quotes above is relevant and extremely important, and John should not have omitted it:

The difficulties faced by high school dropouts are a serious policy concern, but it is safe to conclude that immigration is not a central cause of those difficulties, nor is reducing immigration a well-targeted way to help these low-wage natives.

There are many legitimate reasons why someone could oppose this immigration bill, including:

• A strong desire not to reward people who broke the law;
• The belief that the punishment is too slight;
• Suspicion that the immigration security enhancements won't be fully implemented or won't work as well as anticipated.

But unless this study is completely wrong -- which one economist argues; I'll deal with the suspect Borjas objection in the next post -- the argument from economics is a lousy reason to oppose this bill; national economics actually supports some form of comprehensive immigration reform.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 22, 2007, at the time of 3:47 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack

June 14, 2007

The Steyn Shine

I always try to listen to Mark Steyn's weekly segment on Hugh Hewitt (Thursdays, first hour, first segment); we disagree on much, but he's such a joy to listen to because of the wit and the accent, which always make American me feel shabby and undereducated). Today I succeeded.

But during his brief chat, Steyn made a claim that flummoxed me: He said that a little-known provision in the immigration bill (currently on hiatus) was that, as soon as the bill was signed (if resurrected), all legal immigrants, no matter where they are in the system, who arrived here after May 2005 -- millions of them -- would be forced to return to their home countries and start the application process over again from scratch.

Steyn did not cite the provision that requires this.

I searched through the provisions of the proposed bill but failed to find any such passage. (I did, however, find Title V, Section 511: POWERLINE WORKERS:

Section 214(e) (8 U.S.C. 1184(e)) is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:

'(7) A citizen of Canada who is a powerline worker, who has received significant training, and who seeks admission to the United States to perform powerline repair and maintenance services shall be admitted in the same manner and under the same authority as a citizen of Canada described in paragraph (2).'.

So John, Scott, and Paul may safely hire Canadians for upkeep of their blogsite.)

I would at least have expected Hugh to question this assertion and ask for some more facts; but he has chosen to absent him self to Walla Walla or Okefenokee or Chicago or some other God-forsaken wilderness. His anointed successor, Dean Barnett, is such a fanatic immigration-bill hater that he simply gasped and squealed in horror and sought no further clarification.

Now, I have been following this debate since the beginning. I have neither seen nor heard of this provision before. It has not been reported in any news story I've seen. No opponent of the bill has trotted this out before, to my (admittedly not omniscient) knowledge. I haven't even seen any "immigrants' rights" organization make this claim.

Does anybody here know what the heck Mark Steyn is talking about -- to the extent of actually giving me title and section, so I can look it up? If this is true, then of course it's a horrible, horrible section that should be eliminated by amendment -- and if not eliminated, would probably cause me to reconsider my support of the bill.

But honestly, I have never even heard of this; and I have the unnerving sense that we have passed into the modus operandi argumentum where opponents simply invent any crazy provision and claim it resides somewhere in the bill, secure in the supposition that, as Barnett demonstrated, nobody will call their bluffs.

Help me out here, please.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 14, 2007, at the time of 4:07 PM | Comments (30) | TrackBack

June 10, 2007

Hugh's Second Amendment

Hugh Hewitt is trying to codify his two basic amendments that would make the immigration bill (currently on ice, pun noted) more acceptable to him.

The first is his "let's do all the enforcement first, and only after everybody including all the conservative Republican majority in Congress agree that all the enforcement is finished can we even consider letting the minority Democrats have the scraps they want" proposal. I still find it surreal that he thinks Democrats -- who don't currently imagine themselves to be the powerless minority party -- will go for it.

But leave that aside; I find more interesting his second amendment: the "no parole cards for anyone but illegal English, Canadian, Australian, or Latin American immigrants" proposal. Here it is in its (brief) entirety:

(i)Treatment of Applicants whose primary language is not English or Spanish --

(1)IN GENERAL -- At such time as the president certifies and the Congress by joint resolution agrees that the "Effective Date Triggers" of Section 1 of this act have been implemented, an alien may apply for Z nonimmigrant status. An alien whose primary language is neither English or Spanish who files an application for Z nonimmigrant status shall not be eligible for probationary benefits provided in Section 601(h). These aliens may apply for the Z nonimmigrant status, and will be granted such status upon a showing that

(1) the alien is loyal to the United States and does not support any organization identified as supporting terror by the Department of State or the Department of Justice.

(2) during the pendency of the background investigation into the loyalty of aliens covered by this section, such aliens may not be employed and may not leave the country or the state from which they have applied for Z nonimmigrant status except in such cases where an employer has requested a work authorization and has undertaken to file monthly reports on the status of the Z nonimmigrant applicant.

All right, riddle me this: I understand how one can tell that an alien doesn't "support any organization identified as supporting terror," though of course the alien himself cannot show that -- it must be investigated by the authorities: If the alien's name and fingerprints don't show up anywhere linked to al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, or suchlike, then we assume he is as clean as Barack Obama. (Though I wonder with what alacrity the immigration authorities will move to investigate; will they trouble to do so at all? It would be awfully convenient to spare scarce resources by just letting all such non-English, non-Spanish applications sit in limbo forever.)

But how on earth is anyone to show that "the alien is loyal to the United States?" Bear in mind that by definition, the alien has been living underground, hiding from the authorities -- who could deport him if they knew of his existence.

Will opponents argue that the mere act of being here illegally demonstrates "disloyalty" to America? If so, then among those whose primary language is other than English or Spanish, the only illegal aliens eligible for a Z visa are those who are not illegal aliens.

What other evidence could be adduced to prove "loyalty?" Illegals cannot serve in the military, they cannot vote, they cannot run for office. What would Hugh demand -- a lengthy written history of defending Israel and Jews and attacking jihad in their home countries before they left and came here?

Also, why, exactly, does Hugh Hewitt have such animus for illegal immigrants who came here from Japan, from Norway, and even, alone among all Latin American countries, from Brazil? Somehow, Hugh has expanded his list of exclusions from parole cards from "illegal immigrants originating from countries with well-established jihadist movements" to "illegal immigrants whose primary language is neither English nor Spanish." I find it particularly risible that illegals from Brazil cannot get parole cards -- but illegals from Hugo Chavez's Venezuela and Castro's Cuba can!

Not to mention that illegals from one specific country on the European continent do get access, while the others do not. Yet this one country, Spain, has perhaps the most active jihadist movement of any Western European country.

For that matter, many Israelis' primary language is Hebrew, not English. It's a puzzling anti-jihad measure indeed that extends, with little scrutiny, the privileges of legal residency and a work permit to Communist Cuban illegals -- but not to Jewish Israeli illegals.

I understand Hugh's motive: He wants to apply "special scrutiny" to potential jihadis. But the way he has crafted his amendment displays a frankly disturbing equation of language to privilege: Mexicans, Pervians, Venezuelans, and Cubans get special treatment; Europeans (except those from Spain, including Basque separatists and Moorish-descended Moslems still pining for "al-Andaluz"), Japanese, Taiwanese, South Koreans, and even Brazilians do not. And I don't see how it will help in the war effort at all, as the jihadis will simply accelerate their already extant program to recruit more Jose Padillas and Richard Reids (not to mention expand ever more aggressively into Chavezistan).

I would propose instead that we take a leaf from the way Israelis have successfully protected their airports and El Al from terrorist attack for decades. They reject the absurdity of race-based, culture-based, or language-based profiling, which both denies individualism and has a weak spot a jihadist could find groping in the dark.

Instead, we should hire and train a large number (several thousand) of USCIS employees whose job it is to scrutinize parole-card and Z visa applicants for behavioral clues that they might be jihadis... and then empower them to single such people out, put a hold on their applications, and order weeks or months of extra scrutiny before granting them.

As the applicants are neither American citizens nor even legal residents -- they are in fact illegals -- I think a very good case can be made in court that anti-discrimination laws don't apply to them. Hugh must hold that same belief, as his own amendment requires it, too. Thus, there is no legal barrier to granting behavioral profilers the authority to freeze granting of parole cards to anyone they believe is acting suspiciously.

The profilers would also -- as in Israel -- commit to memory the photographs of all those individuals we have already identified as jihadis, so they can spot them in a crowd and call security. They should also memorize known criminals... including Spanish- and English-speaking drug smugglers and other known undesirables. (The Israelis have done this for many, many years, and it has been 100% effective -- in the face of the most concerted terrorist campaign against airports and an airline in the history of the world, there have been no successful terrorist attacks there since the 1970s.) Scores of cameras feeding images to facial-recognition software can also help immeasurably in this task.

And of course, any whose fingerprints are already on file and in our possession (from previous arrests, here or abroad) should be caught by the pattern-spotting software in the ICE system.

That would be a far more effective method of guarding against jihadis or other gangsters or terrorsts getting residency and a work permit here (and, incidentally, far fairer -- though the former is much more important). Better still, it would not allow jihadis to easily skate past the additional scrutiny simply by learning really good Spanish.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 10, 2007, at the time of 1:13 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

June 9, 2007

Immigration as a GOP Talking Point in 2008

With the deep freeze of the immigration bill, spin season begins now. We cannot afford to wait until the Democrats establish the storyline that the immigration bill died because "Bush didn't push the radical right hard enough;" that would be politically catastrophic for Republicans candidates in the next election, branded as both extremist and feckless.

The best position to take -- and the one that, coincidentally, is closest to the truth -- is that it was Senate Majority Leader Harry "Pinky" Reid (D-Caesar's Palace, 95%), a Democrat, who pulled the plug on the immigration bill... not because there wasn't enough enforcement, but because it was becoming clear that conservative Republicans were making headway in getting more enforcement into the bill.

Democrats were upset at Sen. Ted Kennedy's (D-MA, 100%) deal to expand the list of criminal offenses that would bar illegals from getting a Z visa, which was the only reason that the similar but harsher amendment by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX, 96%) was defeated. And there were upcoming amendments, e.g., to force the deportation of illegal aliens convicted of crimes within the United States after they served their sentences and a good shot at revisiting the issue of "sanctuary cities" -- either in this bill or (more likely) via other federal legislation. (I can picture the campaign Democrats would have to run against such a measure.)

Republican supporters of the immigration bill were far more amenable to increased enforcement measures than were Democratic supporters; Republicans such as Sen. Jon Kyle (R-AZ, 92%) were the ones who insisted upon the strong enforcement measures in the bill in the first place, including the triggers. And judging from the mood of the country, Republicans might well have been able to increase the "trigger level" for the fence, for example, to construction of the entire thing, rather than just half, before any regularization could occur.

The other element that most bothered conservatives was that the "Parole Cards" (as Kyl called the provisional Z visas) were open-ended: Once an illegal signed up and got one, there was no inherent pressure to upgrade to a full Z visa; the only pressure was that it was a necessary step for citizenship, so only those immigrants who ultimately wanted to become citizens were motivated to move any farther than a Parole Card.

But with the pressure from not only Republicans but even Democrats and independent voters for much stronger border-security measures, I think it entirely possible -- especially as the bill worked its way through the House of Representatives -- that the Parole Card would have been given an expiry date, forcing illegals who received one to take steps towards actually undergoing the deeper background check, paying the larger fine, and having the head of the household leave the country in order to apply for the full Z visa (the alternative is to be deported when the Parole Card expires -- a strong incentive).

Thus, any reasonable analysis of the bill is that, in order to pass through both the Senate and the House, it would have to become tougher on border security and enforcement in a number of ways.

And the longer the process continued, the closer it got to passage, the more the onus would be on the majority party, the Democrats, to make whatever compromises and sacrifices were necessary to drag it over the finish line: With enough modifications, even former opponents like Sen. Cornyn and Rep. John Boehner (R-OH, 88%) could defend to their constituents. With the proper amendments, the bill would become very, very hard for Democrats to kill. (No, I don't mean an amendment to strip out everything but enforcement; that would be easy for the majority to kill without suffering any pain at the polls.)

So I believe the Democrats were becoming increasingly worried about the monster they had created by allowing Kennedy to bulldoze them into agreeing to the enforcement measures, especially "triggers," in the first place. I suspect the Majority Leader was starting to think the Democrats had made a big mistake by starting this snowball rolling... and if they didn't find some opportunity to kill it, it would roll right over them in 2008.

So Reid forced a pair of premature cloture votes, knowing that even Republican bill supporters would vote against them, since they had given their word to bill opponents to give them an opportunity to amend it. And when the second cloture vote failed -- even though it did much better than the first -- Reid seized the opportunity to pull the bill from consideration... and blame President Bush and the Republicans.

I believe we must move quickly to prevent the Democrats from spinning this as some "failure" of the GOP. Let us make clear that the GOP was willing to embrace any level of security to make the bill palatable to voters... but it was the Democrats who panicked and yanked the bill in order to prevent future border-security amendments from passing.

That leaves only one culprit for the failure of immigration reform... and he hails from Searchlight, Nevada.

If the president is incapable of communicating this to the American people (likely), then it's up to the Republican candidates for president to stop attacking Bush and stop attacking those Republicans who supported this bill -- and instead fix the blame where it rightly belongs: On the Democrats who demanded a "grand deal" as their price for border security, then broke their word when it looked as though they might get more border security than they meant.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 9, 2007, at the time of 7:24 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack

June 7, 2007

Republican Party Gets an Unexpected Mulligan - at Reid's Expense

Yesterday, we reported that there was a strong possibility that the immigration bill would go down... not because it was rejected by the Senate in an up-or-down vote, but because of the impatience of Senate Majority Leader Harry "Pinky" Reid (D-Caesar's Palace, 95%).

Tonight it became official: The bill failed a second cloture vote -- with all but a handful of Republicans opposing the end of debate -- for the simple reason that bill opponents had been promised the right to offer amendments they thought would better the bill, and even GOP bill supporters intended to keep their word.

The Democrats, however, demanded premature cloture... so even the main Republican defenders of the bill -- Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY, 84%), and Sens. John Kyl (AZ, 92%) and Trent Lott (MS, 88%) -- all voted to sustain the filibuster:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made a last-ditch offer to try to persuade GOP conservatives to whittle down their expansive list of amendments if Reid put off the procedure vote, but Reid declined. McConnell, Lott, and even Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the bill's chief GOP architect, voted to sustain the filibuster -- a measure of Republican frustration with what they saw as heavy-handed Democratic efforts to deprive Republicans of a chance for votes on the floor.

Regardless, when the vast majority of Republicans (38 out of 45 voting) and a handful of Democrats insisted that the Senate continue considering amendments for a while longer, before silencing bill opponents (and proponents) with a cloture vote... Harry Reid shut down the process, pulling the bill from the agenda, most likely for the rest of the year.

The bill had successfully fended off a bunch of poison pills, but one slipped through: an amendment by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND, 95%) to sunset the entire guest worker program after 5 years. The amendment initially failed two weeks ago; but just after midnight Wednesday night, four Republican senators, including Jim DeMint (SC, %) and Jim Bunning (KY, %), changed their votes, leading to the amendment passing by a single vote, 49 to 48; DeMint and Bunning both admitted they changed their votes deliberately to kill the entire bill -- a "poison pill" indeed.

The net effect, however, is to give the Senate a "mulligan," a do-over... which in practice will help the GOP far more than the Democrats. And it benefits Republican opponents and supporters alike of comprehensive immigration reform:

• For those who oppose the bill, the benefit is obvious: The bill does not pass. It has been laid upon the table, and Harry "Pinky" Reid seems determined not to pick it up again for a long, long time... probably not until sometime in 2008, when the bill can be turned into a Democratic amnesty wish-fulfillment bill instead for campaign purposes.

• But we supporters also benefit. The bill had generated such a toxic environment, with Republicans drawn into a circle to stab each other in the back viciously and repeatedly, that it threatened to split the party. Some seemed almost giddy at the thought of "bringing down" the GOP.

  Reid's impatience and arrogance gives us all a many-month-long "time out," during which more fence will be built and other subjects will come to the fore... subjects that bring Republicans together, such as support for our troops and extending the Bush tax cuts.

So let us take great advantage of the breathing space that the (even more tone deaf than George Bush and Hugh Hewitt) majority leader gave us. Let's all just take a deep breath, calm down, forget about the immigration bill for a while... and can't we all just get along?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 7, 2007, at the time of 8:22 PM | Comments (80) | TrackBack

June 6, 2007

Immigration Bill Fends Off Poison Pills Left and Right

We've now entered the phase of immigration legislation where opponents offer "poison pill" amendments whose primary purpose is not to tweak the bill to make it better -- but to change it enough that it can no longer get majority support.

Every controversial bill goes through this phase; it's traditional. And it's usually clear when a bill does, in fact, have majority support... those amendment votes fail.

That is just what's happening now to the immigration-compromise bill; the coalition in the Senate is holding the line. In the last 24 hours, the Senate has rejected:

• An amendment by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX, 96%) that would have prevented legalization for illegal immigrants who had ever defied a deportation order or had committed any act of document fraud of identity theft... which of course would mean virtually all of them! This amendment was, essentially, to eliminate the Z visa for all but a small fraction of the 12 million; it was rejected 51 to 46.
• An amendment by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC, 100%) that would have required illegals to get health insurance (high-deductable) before allowing them to get Z visas; it was defeated 55 to 43. This wasn't exactly a poison pill, and arguably it has merit; but it would definitely have hit the poorest illegals very hard: Since they cannot get reasonably good jobs until after they get a Z visa, but they must buy health insurance before they get the visa and the job, it's rather a Catch-22. But perhaps an amendment requiring them to get health insurance within one year of getting the Z visa, on pain of having it revoked, might do better.
• On the other side, an amendment by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM, 100%) that would have removed the requirement that guest workers return to their home countries for a year in between each two-year stint of working here; that one went down by 57 to 41. This would have turned the guest workers into a permanent camp of foreign nationals parked here, defeating the purpose of requiring them to come, work, and leave again.

Poison pills still in the batting cage:

• A Democratic amendment to reinstate "family reunification" as the primary reason to allow immigrants to legally enter the country, rather than the point system (one amendment from, I think, Sen. Barack Obama, D-IL, 95%, would actually sunset the point system after five years; but I don't know if that has already been voted on);
• Another flurry of Republican amendments to deny legalization to those who have been officially deported but haven't left.

One amendment that passed was by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA, 100%); it adds several crimes to the list of those that would permanently bar legalization. Z visas were already made unavailable to illegal immigrants who had committed serious felonies, including violent felonies; the Kennedy amendment, designed to give political cover to Republicans to vote against the Cornyn poison pill, would add domestic violence (presumably even if it was only a misdemeanor), non-felon sex offenders (felonious sex offenders were already barred), and gang members, even those not convicted of any crime -- at least, that is how it reads in the Times article (I haven't read the text of the amendment). This amendment passed by 66 to 32, so it clearly had bipartisan support.

I am quite convinced that unless Majority Leader Harry "Pinky" Reid (D-Caesar's Palace, 90%) pulls the plug on the whole shebang -- which he has threatened to do -- it will pass the Senate. The House is much dicier, of course; we won't have a good idea there until after the first blizzard of amendments.

Senate Majority Leader Reid has threatened to lay the entire bill on the table (that is, kill it) if it doesn't pass a cloture vote immediately -- which it likely would not; the bill's supporters (on both sides) have promised opponents more time to offer amendments... presumably in exchange for subsequent support, whether their pet amendments pass or are rejected (that's usually the way it works):

Mr. Reid’s assessment that the Senate was making progress was important, because he said on Tuesday that the chamber would vote Thursday on whether to limit debate on the bill, a process called cloture that requires 60 votes to succeed. If the cloture vote fails, the bill could be blocked indefinitely by a filibuster. Mr. Reid said he would pull the bill from consideration if he fails to get the necessary votes.

The majority leader said he wanted to complete work on the legislation this week, and he suggested that Republicans were trying to stall the bill with amendments.

“When is enough enough?” he asked, asserting that Republicans were looking for excuses to kill the bill. His announcement provoked an outcry both from Republican supporters and Republican opponents of the compromise bill, who said the Senate needed more time.

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the chief Republican architect of the bill, said “it would be a big mistake” to try to invoke cloture this week.

“A motion to cut off debate would be an extreme act of bad faith,” Mr. Kyl said, and he asserted on Tuesday afternoon that “we are not anywhere near finishing this bill.”

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said, “The overwhelming majority of our conference would insist on having additional days to make sure that all of our important amendments have been given an opportunity to be considered.”

Even Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, a strong supporter of the bill, said, “I would not support cloture at this point because I don’t think that enough of our members have had an opportunity to have their amendments heard.”

If, in fact, Reid pulls the bill while proponents and opponents on both sides of the aisle are clamoring for debate to continue, amendments to be voted on, and the ultimate bill to get a final up or down vote... then the onus of failure will be on the Democrats, not on the Republicans. GOP senators, whether they support or oppose the bill, can campaign against the Democrats for having pulled the bill just when it looked like things were coming to a head.

In fact, Republicans might even make headway with Hispanics, who very much want this bill, by saying the GOP was unified in wanting the measure to go all the way to a floor vote, win or lose. I believe that would be a position nearly all Hispanics would accept -- and respect. Their anger at the failure to pass will rightly shift from Republican opponents to the impatient Democratic majority leader. But that is only if Republicans, even bill opponents, uniformly and loudly object to Reid pulling the bill.

The Democrats, for their part, would have no effective counter argument: "We had to table the bill, even though it was making progress, because we were afraid that Republicans would delay it." The voters, who are always more perceptive than Democrats give them credit for, would realize the obvious: Tabling a bill delays it forever!

I hope the bill passes; but for those who oppose it, you should be hoping that it's Harry "Pull My Pinky" who pulls it... because then Republicans would escape all the negative fallout from failure.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 6, 2007, at the time of 2:56 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack

May 31, 2007

Hewitt Responds - Sort of - to Big Lizards Point!

During today's interview with Mark Steyn, Hugh responded, vaguely and without attribution, to the point we raised in Where's Walid? He could at least have mentioned Big Lizards.

Referring to his interview yesterday with Tamar Jacoby -- that was the female journalist whose name I couldn't recall in the last post -- Hugh said that she had argued that terrorists could be traced using the Z visa, as they worked inside and traveled outside the country. Actually, she didn't... Big Lizards did. She tried, but she couldn't get the words out, being only a journalist (heh).

But Hugh then offered the most unanswerable argument I have ever heard; it's hard to see how anybody could fail to be moved by it. (Moved to something, at least; I was moved to scorn and mockery, but that's just me.) Note: Except for the last three words, this is a paraphrase to the best of my recollection; it's not word for word accurate until the very end:

Hewitt: Jacoby said they could be tracked as they moved around and worked and went in and out of the country... and that's laughable.

Well! Who could argue with that?

Hugh then turned to Steyn; "that's just laughable, isn't it?" Steyn -- who also calls the bill "amnesty" -- dutifully agreed that the scenario was laughable.

Both Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn failed to tell us exactly why it was laughable. True, Hewitt's baccalaureate is in government, so he probably took no science classes and only the barestly minimum of math classes; and Steyn is a high-school dropout. But surely Hugh's experience as a lawyer and Steyn's as an art critic, and the experience of both of them as pundits, should make up for complete ignorance of science and technology, even when the subject is technology.

Steyn then rambled on, saying that it didn't matter what anybody did about visas or immigration law, because "nobody ever checks anything anyway." Of course, if this is true -- then what makes him think a strict, enforcement-only bill would be, well, enforced? Or does he, perhaps, believe there should be no further law whatsover, since it's all useless and hopeless?

For some odd reason, when I heard Hugh's argument against using the Z visa and the Total Information Awareness data-mining system, I had an LSD-like flashback to that afternoon at the Omei restaurant at UCSC.

At first, hearing what Hugh said and Steyn eagerly seconded, I took offense; I shouted at the radio. But upon further reflection, I suppose expecting either Hugh Hewitt or Mark Steyn to even understand a technological, information-science argument, let alone craft an informed response, would be like expecting me to write a brief for a tax-law case.

I just wish they would follow "Dirty" Harry Callahan's advice in Magnum Force: "A man's got to know his limitations."

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 31, 2007, at the time of 4:20 PM | Comments (26) | TrackBack

Where's Walid?

I listened in mounting frustration yesterday to Hugh Hewitt grilling some poor woman journalist or blogger or somesuch whose name I didn't catch; she supported the immigration bill, and Hugh was -- er -- "interviewing" her. I was frustrated because Hugh had gone into total prosecutor mode, and he was running her through a cross-examination harsher than Spencer Tracy gave Fredric March in Inherit the Wind.

Hugh would ask a question, and two seconds into her answer, he would ask another, loudly cutting her off in mid-sentence. It was clear he had no interest whatsoever in allowing her to make her case; he wanted to get her so rattled she would say something incriminating, so he could convict her.

On the other side of the coin, she was probably a good journalist or trial lawyer or whatever political worker she was... but she didn't know Jack Squat about the various technologies involved in tracking bad guys. In particular, she could not give a coherent explanation to the bellowing Hugh how the smart Social-Security card could possibly help catch a terrorist hiding among the other Z visa or Parole Card holders.

This, of course, allowed Hugh to conclude that it wouldn't help a bit; after all, it's a well-known syllogism that if one particular flustered person cannot answer your question, then clearly the question has no answer, and you have refuted the other guy's argument.

So please allow me to step in and make the case that Ms. Whatsit couldn't; let me explain how we could use Z visas to catch evil-doers.

As Rudyard Kipling wrote...

(All right, he didn't really write that. But he should have.)

Ms. Whosit couldn't figure it out, and neither could Hugh, because you have to make connections between seemingly unrelated scientific or technological processes... and that is more within the purview of a science-fiction writer than a lawyer. Let me explain what I mean...

Suppose the bill passes, and a bunch of illegal immigrants apply for Parole Cards (the provisional Z visas -- at least, that's what Sen. Jon Kyl, R-AZ, 92%, calls them). Hugh's worry is that among all the Gonzaleses and Ramirezes and Garcias will be hidden a few Mohammeds and Zarqawis... or even a Padilla or two.

Hugh is terrified that these terrorists could also apply for Parole Cards, and then be able to move around the country, get work, and even exit and reenter the United States at will. Of course, they can do that today... but Hugh seems to believe that they're more likely to be caught and deported today, with no bill, than they would be next year with a bill and Z visas and Parole Cards. (I have no idea what current mechanism for capturing and deporting them Hugh sees; it certainly eludes my sight.)

Let's carefully break down what it means to exit and reenter the country and to work: The border-crosser must show a passport and a SmartVisa. Specifically, he must swipe the card through a reader; this necessarily creates a record of leaving and reentering. Too, moving from place to place within the U.S. and working also creates a phosphor trail. But so what? How does that help capture terrorists?

Enter the CIA's old computer connection-tracking program, Total Information Awareness. Congress got hysterical in 2003, defunding it -- or so they thought; but it's widely believed still to be in existence, just shifted under the umbrella of black-ops programs and funded by secret accounts.

The reason it was so effective is that it was simply an object-oriented database data-matching application. It was not programmed with any pre-existing biases for one type of connection above the others; it noted and kept track of any and all connections between datapoints -- between Walid the terrorist and Guido the Mafioso, for example. Then it allowed for queries at any level of complexity.

The operators looked for connections where they would not expect to find any. Of course you could find a connection between the Secretary of State and various unsavory political leaders; that's the secretary's job. Nobody thinks Condoleezza Rice is in league with Bashar Assad simply because she met with him during a trip to Syria.

But suppose some dentist in Minneapolis calls Zarqawi in Iraq, then is called by a known terrorist in Pakistan, then is spotted by the FBI having lunch with an arms dealer in Minneapolis, then shows up as a co-signer on a loan to buy an airplane, when the other co-signer is a radical imam operating at a mosque out of Idaho.

Those connections are completely unexpected; why would one lousy dentist know all these people? In fact, that pattern is so suspicious that we should initiate surveillance to see what our "dentist" is up to.

But without TIA, the authorities would never have stumbled across the connections because they cross jurisdictional boundaries: The CIA identifies the terrorists abroad; the NSA records the calls; the FBI is tracking the arms dealer; and nobody is paying any attention to the imam. Without a single, unified database to bring all these observations together, nobody would notice the previously unknown dentist at the center of the web.

Now we take the TIA database... and we add to it the Parole Card and Z visa. Suppose we're looking for Walid Achmed Mohammed, a suspected jihadist who is thought to have sneaked into the United States in 2006 under an unknown alias. Today, we would have no idea where Walid could be found; because he is underground, he could be anywhere, under any name, working for anyone.

We make some educated guesses; let's suppose, just as Hugh fears, that Walid gets himself a Parole Card so he can move about and in and out.

CIA informants report that Walid was spotted at a "terrorism convention" in Pakistan in January of 2008; then another source believes Walid was at a training and planning session at a safehouse somewhere in Madrid in July. But that's all we know.

Under today's rules, that doesn't help us at all. But under the rules established by this bill, the very first thing we should do is query the TIA database to see which holders of Z visas traveled to Pakistan in January 2008 and to Madrid in July of 2008... I'd bet there were not that many. (Check not only direct routes but the roundabout routes that terrorists tend to use; the CIA is actually pretty good at that nowadays.)

Then you take that list of Social-Security numbers, winnow out the obvious non-targets, and plug that into the Z-visa employment database. This will tell you where the eight or nine potential "Walids" have worked in the past year. Since the real Walid has no reason to believe he has been outed, he will probably follow the same pattern... criss-crossing the country carrying messages and money and working for the same set of employers along the way.

By staking out each of those employers around the times he usually shows up, we suddenly have a very good plan for grabbing Walid Achmed Mohammed and hustling him off to Gitmo. And the best part is, neither he nor anybody in his cell would have the slightest idea how we did it!

And there you have it; that is just one way that the provisions of this bill could help us catch terrorist infiltrators who are completely unlocatable today. There simply is no disputing that by putting themselves into the database, terrorists become much more likely to be caught.

But what if Walid is afraid of this very scenario, so he does not get a Parole Card? But if that's the case, his movements will be severely impeded... because we will require anyone crossing our borders (whether by car, boat, or airplane) to show not only a foreign passport but also some form of visa -- whether tourist, student, former illegal (Z visa), guest worker (Y visa), or permanent resident. (For citizens, the United States passport itself could be remade as a smart card, at least including the mag strip or bar code or whatever.) If Walid doesn't have a visa, or if the name on his passport doesn't match the visa, he gets caught.

If he tries to get multiple visas, the fingerprints will out him.

And if he doesn't have a visa that permits working, he will not be able to find a job after this bill is enacted. Again, his operations will be severely impacted, because he will have to rely upon smuggled funds to survive.

The question "where's Walid?" has no answer today; but if the bill passes, it could be answered with a reasonable degree of certainty for a lot of little Walids now hiding among us.

Make sense, Counselor Hewitt?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 31, 2007, at the time of 4:59 AM | Comments (36) | TrackBack

May 27, 2007

Let Their Victims Come

Hugh Hewitt appears to keep wavering between wanting only intense scrutiny of immigrants from countries with extensive jihadist networks -- and wanting to ban such immigrants entirely, without concern whether they're jihadists or refugees; but maybe I'm just misreading him. Often, his sentences are so ambiguous it's impossible to tell:

Bensman's focus today is on the plight of Iraq's Christians, 600,000 of whom have fled the Islamists of their home country, many into America. The article again details just how porous our borders are, and though Bensman's writing elicits great sympathy for the refugees, it also underscores just how easy it has been for Middle Eastern people to enter the country through the past few years. Even if the ration [sic, he must mean "ratio"] is 1,000 refugees to 1 jihadist, the number of terrorists or terrorist sympathizers in the country illegally is not small, and the idea of giving them legal status strikes me as insane.

Is the referent of "them" in the last sentence (highlighted blue) "refugees" or "terrorists or terrorist sympathizers"? Obviously it would strike any sane person as insane to give the latter legal status; the question is whether we throw out the bathwater with Rosemary's baby.

I'm disturbed that Hugh keeps quoting from counterterrorism experts whose attitude appears to be "ban them all, let God sort them out." They argue not that we should scrutinize immigrants from such countries -- which is a reasonable proposition I favor -- but that we should simply prohibit immigration into the United States from them; or at least, from countries that do not have a national database of terrorist suspects -- which is likely nearly all of Moslem and strong-minority-Moslem nations.

Here's a section from the latest "expert"; this is actually all one paragraph smushed together; I have reparagraphed it for easier reading:

You want solid reform, here's how you do it.

First, if you're going to let these &^%$# in, you give them a background check they won't forget. You crawl up their &&%$ so much they'll want to leave. Each day, every day you monitor them. This way even if you get a phony name, you got a better chance of nailing them.

It's either that or you end all emigration from those nations I listed above. And believe me, that list is by no means complete. Secondly, you create a computer system that will connect to ALL national computer databases to track these guys, and if the nation in question says "no," then emigration [sic] from that country ends immediately. If they claim they don't have a database, emigration ends until they do.

Those that do come here are still subject to scrutiny that would make any American citizen squeamish. That's OK though because they're not citizens. They don't like it? Screw them. Move to Britain then.

Lastly, if they come from one of those suicide-loving countries, you follow them like the plague until such a time that they become a citizen and are subject to the laws and protections of the nation. And personally ______, that won't happen. These %$#@& never want that. They just want to hurt us worse than the last guy.

His list of countries whose immigrants here are subject to such tactics is: "China, North Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the UAE, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Niger, Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Angola, Liberia, and the Congo." (No word which Congo: the the Republic of, a.k.a. the French Congo, or the Democratic Republic of, a.k.a. the Belgian Congo. Perhaps both.)

First, it's quite clear that this unnamed "expert" in counterterrorism doesn't believe for one moment that people immigrating here from, say, Iraq or Iraq could possibly be "1,000 refugees to 1 jihadist," as Hugh put it; it's clear this fellow thinks it's the reverse... or perhaps that such immigration is 100% jihadist.

Second, the expert describes earlier how jihadists coming from those countries could evade detection via checking the records by changing their names: "'Abdul ____' will become 'Mohammed ____' or some such," he writes.

But if it's that easy, or if the passport is forged in any event, what is to prevent "Abdul ____" from becoming "Gerhard _____", and the nationality going from Jordanian to German? Or for that matter, there are more and more jihadis who actually are Europeans or Americans of non-Arabic descent: Richard "Failed Shoe Bomber" Reid (English) and José Padilla (Puerto Rican American), for two examples. Both attempted to commit their crimes in 2002, even before Operation Iraqi Freedom began... so evidently, for some time now, al-Qaeda has been planning to shift from using operatives from nations in the ummah to those from Christian countries.

We still end up with all the terrorists, who will enter under passports from "clean" countries (not on the list) -- but we won't get the honest to God refugees.

All right; I know many people will say so what? So a bunch of Christians and Jews fleeing majority-Moslem countries must stay and be persecuted, or even deported back there to be tortured and beheaded. Big deal; as the expert points out, they're not American citizens. "Screw them," to quote both the expert and an earlier, identical sentiment expressed by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga about earlier victims of the same persecutors.

And after all, we have done such things before: In Operation Keelhaul, crafted at the Yalta conference after World War II between Josef Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill, Allied soldiers (mostly British, but we connived) forcibly "repatriated" tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Communist Europe back to Stalin's tender mercies. Most were summarily executed; most of the survivors were sent into the Gulag. And both Churchill and Roosevelt knew that this was to be their fate; but hey... "screw them."

All right, fine. Some don't care. But consider this: Those refugees are our best source of human intel about those countries.

Also, assuming that we have any intention of sending CIA agents into any of China, North Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the UAE, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Niger, Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Angola, Liberia, or either Congo... recent refugees from those countries are the absolute best instructors to train our spies how to speak and act like natives, and what contemporary residents there would know and -- just as important -- not know.

By arbitrarily cutting off all immigration from a laundry list of countries, we also cut ourselves off from all human intelligence and training sources from precisely the areas that most threaten America. It would be as foolhardy as refusing all immigration from Warsaw Pact nations during the Cold War, because among the thousands of anti-Communist refugees, there might be some Soviet agents.

So yes, let's scrutinize them; let's segregate them and insist they be personally interviewed and thoroughly checked. But we must not arbitraily cut off that supply of refugees fleeing from our worst enemies, because those very people can be our best and most helpful allies.

And we must not get so fixated on the "cheap grace" of nationality fixation to avoid the hard work of actually evaluating everyone we can for possible terrorist sympathies. Otherwise, we're going to be blindsided by the next 9/11-style attack by terrorists who understand just how shallow and facile Western thinking can be.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 27, 2007, at the time of 3:14 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

May 25, 2007

NYT Backs Up Big Lizards!

In a bizarre twist of fate, a New York Times/CBS poll was just published... and it shows that Americans heavily support every element -- and I mean every element -- of the immigration bill... so long as you don't mention the immigration bill.

Complete poll results here.

This firmly supports our analysis yesterday of the Rasmussen poll which found widespread rejection of the immigration bill -- but also a huge majority, two-thirds of all respondents, supporting a comprehensive immigration bill that contained -- well, all the elements that are in the current bill. I believed then that respondents were unaware of what was in the current bill, and that if they knew, they would support it; and the NYT/CBS poll buttresses that belief.

The problem, as I said before, is that this particular bill has been egregiously and deliberately misrepresented by a large number of opponents on both Left and Right. It has been distorted so badly that a huge number of pro-immigrant people think the bill is anti-immigrant; a mass of pro-enforcement people think it's anti-enforcement. Evidently, the pot and pan bangers on either side have gotten half the population furious at the other half, and vice versa.

The great majority of the country, however, is actually in agreement on most issues; and every element of the bill gets majority support. Look:

61. If you had to choose, what do you think should happen to most illegal immigrants who have lived and worked in the United States for at least two years: They should be given a chance to keep their jobs and eventually apply for legal status, OR They should be deported back to their native country?

Chance to apply for legal status: 62%; Deported: 33%

63. Would you favor or oppose allowing illegal immigrants who came into the country before January to apply for a four-year visa that could be renewed, as long as they pay a $5,000 fine, a fee, show a clean work record and pass a criminal background check?

Favor: 67%; Oppose: 27%

64. ASKED OF THOSE WHO FAVOR: Should they be allowed to apply for U.S. citizenship just like legal applicants, or should they have to wait until legal applicants have been considered first?

Should be like legal applicants: 16%; Should have to wait: 69%

On the question of increasing penalties on employers who knowingly hire illegals, 75% favor increased enforcement including higher fines, 15% favor increased enforcement without higher fines, and 8% oppose increased enforcement. On "guest workers," 66% favor and 30% oppose.

And here's the biggie:

73. When the US government is deciding which immigrants to admit to this country, should priority be given to people who have family members already living in the U.S., or should priority be given to people based on education, job skills, and work experience?

Family: 34%; Workers: 51%, Depends: 5%.

So there you have it.: When Americans are asked about the specific elements of the bill currently wending its weary way through the whitewashed walls of Washington, they are strongly in favor of each and every part: enforcement, regularization, guest workers, and reforming legal immigration policy.

But wait; this is a poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS! How do we know it's at all representative of Americans as a whole? Amazingly enough -- this really is unusual, you may not know how unusual -- they give us exactly the sort of indexing information that will tell us. Here, to me, is the most telling question: When asked who respondents voted for in the 2004 presidential contest, they answered 35% for John Kerry, 36% for George W. Bush, 2% for Ralph Nader, and 5% say they voted but refused to say for whom.

Adjusting to remove the 22% who didn't vote, and we get this: 48% for Kerry, 49% for Bush, and 3% for Nader.

The actual figures in 2004 were 48.3% for Kerry, 50.7% for Bush, 0.4% for Nader, and 0.6% for everybody else.

For a poll of "adults," not registered voters or likely voters, that is astonishingly close to the actual vote. That tell us that this is a fairly good cross-section of the American voter: The Kerry vote is dead-on; the slight drop for Bush matches well with the drop in the president's approval rating since the November election from low 40s and high 30s back then to low 30s now; and the rise in support for Ralph Nader matches with the increasing disenchantment with both parties (the Democratic Congress's job approval is also mired in the mid 30s).

There are various other index questions; they're all at the back of the survey, if you're interested. They all point to a very respresentative pool of respondents.

So this looks to be a very solid poll; it has some bad news for the GOP on a number of fronts, but nothing particularly worse than other polls. And where we can match the respondents here to an actual vote, they fit extremely well.

So I think it fair to say that the hardliners are simply wrong, wrong, wrong to imagine that they represent the majority; and I mean the hardliners of both Left and Right. Americans want every part of this deal.

The task now is to convince them of the truth, that the bill contains exactly the provisions Americans want, instead of the convenient lies spread by those more interested in posturing than probing.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 25, 2007, at the time of 6:06 AM | Comments (50) | TrackBack

May 23, 2007

Rasmussen Discovers: Many Americans Are Ignoramuses!

A flurry of anti-immigration-bill conservative pundits are about to start quoting (selectively) from the new Rasmussen poll on immigration. Most will only tell you about two of the questions:

• "From what you know about the agreement, do you favor or oppose the immigration reform proposal agreed to last Week?" Favor: 26%; Oppose: 48%; Not sure: 26%.
• "How Important is it to improve border enforcement and reduce illegal immigration?" Very important: 72%; Somewhat important: 16%; Not very important: 8%; Not at all important: 2%.

And from this, the opinion-makers will conclude that the very idea of a comprehensive immigration bill should be dropped, and we should move to the enforcement-only approach, which "everybody wants."

This leaves aside the political dilemma: Since we live in a country that has a political government, not a military dictatorship, how can we simply ignore the majority in Congress -- which overwhelmingly wants regularization? Is the president supposed to issue an executive order dissolving the legislative branch?

But the conclusion that Americans oppose any regularization also pretends not to notice a much more proximate point: Those were not the only two questions asked; and among the other questions is one that utterly upends the first question, transforming it instead into a pop quiz on current events:

Still, 65% of voters would be willing to support a compromise including a “very long path to citizenship” provided that “the proposal required the aliens to pay fines and learn English” and that the compromise “would truly reduce the number of illegal aliens entering the country.” The proposal, specifically described as a compromise, was said to include “strict employer penalties for hiring illegal aliens, building a barrier along the Mexican border and other steps to significantly reduce the number of illegal aliens entering the United States.”

That would be 2/3rds of Americans willing to support such a compromise; but only 26% willing to support this particular compromise.

Putting these two answers together, we find that a minimum of 39% of Americans (but probably much more) do not read Big Lizards... because, in fact, every single one of those provisions is in the current compromise legislation.

Now there are two possibilities here:

• Those Americans who support the idea of a compromise along the lines above but oppose this particular bill have all studied the bill closely, read commentary about it from both sides, carefully weighed its pros and cons, and have come to a cautious, reasoned decision that this particular bill doesn't quite live up to the high standards demanded by the American people.
• A huge chunk of the American electorate are complete ignoramuses who haven't the foggiest idea what enforcement elements are found in the bill; they hear "amnesty, amnesty!" -- and they freak. If asked, they would probably say, "Yeah, on Day-1, they'll make all the illegal aliens into citizens, and on Day-2, they'll all vote to kill the fence!"

Gosh, wouldn't you love to see polling on what Americans think is in the bill, and what they think is not... along with an actual legislative analysis of what's actually there, for comparison?

Not very surprisingly, many Americans think that's what's in the bill because that's what the unions have told them: They play to latent racist fears about "foreigners" coming to seize what few jobs remain after NAFTA and GATT. What with the 38% unemployment that already sweeps America, the unions argue -- much worse than during the Great Depression! -- this bill will mean all white people will soon have to go on welfare.

Alas, another bunch of Americans probably believe the bill is simple amnesty with no security provisions because that's what a bunch of "conservative" demagogues are saying about it, too. They are equally happy to leave their listeners in ignorance -- worse, lead them there -- because they intend to defeat this bill or any subsequent compromise "by any means necessary."

In the end, they prefer to keep the issue around forever unsolved as a political bludgeon; they don't want to fix the problem... they just want to use the fear of illegal immigration to recruit, raise funds, and perhaps get themselves reelected to their "75-25" congressional or legislative seats (I mean districts where the primary election is the real election; the general is an afterthought).

There are three important take-aways from this poll:

1. A very, very large chunk of the electorate has no idea what is in the current bill;
2. An overwhelming majority of Americans are willing to accept compromise legislation, so long as they are assured that the security aspects will be enforced (hence the importance of "triggers");
3. Neither the Bush administration nor the Democrats nor the Republicans in Congress have the slightest idea how to communicate with the American voter.

Any attempt to shoehorn this poll into an attack on comprehensive immigration reform is sloppy thinking and evidence of too much eagerness and haste. And you know what that makes.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 23, 2007, at the time of 6:44 PM | Comments (53) | TrackBack

May 22, 2007

Fleshing Out the Outline, take 2

Another couple of things that I've heard. As always, the changed stuff is in blue type color...

The new material comes from Michael Medved; take it as you will:

Immigration reform compromise package

1. Reform of legal immigration. The compromise sets up a "point system" (as in Australia) for future immigration; immigrants would be accepted or rejected on the basis of the number of points they accrue [WSJ2 -- today's WSJ article.];
2. Points would be allocated for English-language facility, education, advanced job skills that the country needs (I'm guessing high tech), and for family connections to other citizens more tenuous than spouse or children under the age of 21. Family relations will be deprivileged, while skills leading to faster, better assimilation will be privileged (I don't know if "country quotas" will be retained) [WSJ2];
3. The only family connections that would allow automatic issuance of a green card would be spouses and children under the age of 21; older children and any other family relation would simply accrue some points but would otherwise have to satisfy the point-quota requirement in (2) [WSJ2];

4. Border security. The following provisions must be "implemented" before either regularization of illegal aliens or enactment of the temporary-worker program can occur:

   1. 370 miles of additional border fence; this is actual, real double fencing, not virtual fencing.

      Note that "the law from last year remains in effect," according to presidential spokesman Tony Snow, referring to the law mandating 800+ miles of actual fence: The 370-mile figure is just what must be built before regularization or the guest-worker program can begin [Tony Snow interview on Hugh Hewitt radio show, May 18th, 2007];

   
   
   2. 200 additional miles of vehicle barriers: concrete barriers, berms, chicanes, caltrops, and so forth [Tony Snow interview];
   
   
   3. An unknown number of additional miles of virtual fencing [Tony Snow interview];
   
   
   4. 18,000 additional Border Patrol agents;
   
   
   5. "Effective, electronic employee-verification system for the workplace;"
   
   
   6. Crackdown on employers who hire illegals;

   "Implemented" means completed [all from WaPo -- the Washington Post article except as noted above];

5. After the bill is enacted, any person who subsequently crosses illegally into the United States and is caught will be permanently barred from ever receiving any kind of a visa or becoming a citizen; this evidently extends beyond green card and work visa (or Z- or Y-visa) to include even a tourist visa [Medved -- Michael Medved on the Michael Medved radio show, May 22nd, 2007];
6. Regularization of currently illegal aliens. Current illegal aliens can come forward, give full information about themselves, pay a $1,000 fine, demonstrate continuous employment since arriving, undergo a records check, and only then obtain a "probationary" Z-visa card that would allow them to stay legally and continue to work but would not allow them to apply for citizenship [WSJ2, Tony Snow interview on Hugh Hewitt radio show, May 18th, 2007];
7. Regular and probationary Z-visa holders are barred from receiving any welfare or welfare-like government handouts; they must maintain continuous employment while here (presumably they are allowed some brief transit time between leaving one job and starting another) [Medved];

8. In order to get a regular Z-visa, allowing the alien to begin the path to citizenship, he must meet several requirements:

   1. The head of the household must return to his country of origin and apply from there [WSJ2];
   2. The family must undergo a criminal background check [WaPo];
   3. They must pay a $4,000 fine in addition to the $1,000 fine paid to get the provisional Z-visa, for a total of $5,000 [WSJ2, Tony Snow interview on Hugh Hewitt radio show, May 18th, 2007];
   4. They must pay back taxes -- I don't know if this made it into the final compromise, but it was in the talking points memo [TPM] that Hugh posted earlier;
   5. They must pay processing fees [WSJ2];
   6. They must go to the back of the line of legal immigrants -- see (9) below [TPM];

9. Before Z-visas will be granted, the United States Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) has eight years to work through the backlog of already pending legal residency applications from those who are trying to immigrate here legally.

   Only after those are granted will USCIS turn to illegal aliens who have applied for residency per the process delineated in (8) above; this will take up to five additional years.

   After a green card is granted, citizenship requires an additional five years. Thus, from illegal status to citizenship requires a minimum of 13 years, possibly as long as 18 years. [WSJ1 -- the earlier WSJ article];

10. Separate "guest-worker" program. A separate guest-worker "Y-visa" will be created which does not lead to citizenship; a guest worker cannot apply for citizenship unless he returns to his country of origin and applies in the normal fashion anyone else would (no line-cut privileges); up to 400,000 such Y-visas may be granted each year [WSJ2];
11. Guest workers can apply for a two-year stint working in this country. After that time expires, they must return to their country of origin for at least a one-year "rest" period. They could then reapply, again for two years here followed by a year back in their country of origin. They could apply one more time for two years here... after which they must return permanently to their country of origin [WSJ2].

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 22, 2007, at the time of 5:20 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

May 21, 2007

Mending and Amending

I've been increasingly ebullient today, in response to what I've heard on Hugh Hewitt's show: Out with the truculent vows never to vote for "amnesty;" in with the determination to use this compromise as a starting point, then offer a series of amendments to make it better, more effective, and more palatable to conservatives!

I think the bill is fairly good; I don't think it's perfect or anywhere near, and it's in desperate need of both mending and amending. Here are eight amendments I support -- plus one that I think is a poison pill.

1 The Patterico Amendment - kick out the slams!

This amendment is based upon a long-standing demand from Patterico: He notes that there are a lot of inmates serving time in prison who are also illegal aliens; and he wants to know why, once they finish serving their prison terms, they're not immediately deported:

So if deporting millions won’t happen, what can we do? I am for firmer enforcement in two areas: border security and aggressive deportation of illegal aliens who commit crimes other than illegal entry. I have spoken about the latter idea until I am blue in the face. Why would we employ a single ICE agent to arrest illegals who are working and producing for society, when there are tens of thousands of unidentified illegals in our jails in prisons -- 34,000 in Los Angeles jails every year -- who will serve their sentences and hit the streets again to commit more crime? [Yes, I know two of those links are identical; I'm just quoting Patterico!]

No question about it, this is a great idea. The only thing I would add, and I hope Patterico would agree, would be some sort of review process during the deportation hearing that would examine exactly what the crime was and see if there are any special circumstances... for example, some elderly illegal immigrant who is mugged, and he defends himself with a concealed handgun -- for which he doesn't have a CCW permit, and for which some Mike Nifong clone prosecutes him.

But for the normal cases that a prosecutor like Patterico must see every day... serve time in the slam (or even get probation), and adios.

2 The sanctuary, shmanctuary amendment

In a typically psychotic overreaction to our "draconian" immigration laws -- that is, to the demand (just like the Nazis used to demand!) that immigrants should come here legally instead of illegally -- a number of very leftist city councils have declared their burgs to be "sanctuary cities," meaning the city cops are ordered not to enforce any federal or state immigration laws, or cooperate in any way with USCIS, or even to inquire into the immigration status of those they arrest.

(No word what the residents of those usually crime-ridden cities think about this; in true Democratic fashion, the people as such are discouraged from confusing matters by participating in the discussion.)

I think federal law is a little confusing about the status of these "sanctuary" cities: I would love to see an amendment that clarified that any mayor, governor, or other city or state executive who enforced a city ordinance or state law that violates, impedes, or interferes with federal immigration law is guilty of a felony and prosecutable in federal court; and perhaps he should also be sued for damages in federal civil court, though I'm not sure how such damages would be calculated.

Even more devastating, any city which enacts such an ordinance should see all federal funding suspended until such time as they are again in comliance with federal law. For big cities like San Francisco, this could amount to an abrupt budget hole tens of millions of dollars wide... about which, I'm sure the voters of that city would have strong feelings.

It's hard to imagine a law that is more obviously federal in scope than protecting the borders and determining who should or should not enter (or leave) the country. This is not a city-level decision!

And I think this is passable: Even though some really left-leaning Democrats will vote against it, the expansion of federal power will lure many Democrats to vote for it, as well.

3 Dreier's exit-strategy amendment

No, nothing to do with Iraq; Rep. David Dreier (R-CA, 72%) noted on Hugh Hewitt's radio show today (I think it was he) that, while any non-citizen, non-permanent-resident entering this country is required to show a passport and visa, and a record is made of the entry... there is no corresponding entry made when he leaves. This means we have no way to tell whether he has overstayed his visa.

Drier amendment number one would require persons here on temporary visas -- tourist, student, and of course the "guest" worker Y-visa -- would be required to show the visa when leaving the United States. At that time, the record would be checked to see whether he was within his legal visitation period; if he overstayed, he should be put on a blacklist, where entry would be forbidden for some period of time. (Again, we assume review is available.)

The computer system should also send out an alert when a temporary visa expires, but the person has not exited the country: Let's at least get a handle on who is overstaying his visa and by how long.

4 Derier's one-stop shopping amendment

The second amendment proposed by Congressman Dreier would be to get back to the idea that we would have only one, tamper-proof Social-Security or Immigration card for each person. The card number would link to a database that showed the immigration status of the cardholder; just stick it in the USCIS card reader, and it would show the immigration status of the cardholder, whether he was allowed to work, whether he was legally resident (and until when), and should also show on the screen a digital picture, front and side, of the actual cardholder.

At the moment, we still have numerous different cards -- Dreier said it was more than thirty types (!) -- which creates huge confusion in the minds of employers. I wholeheartedly endorse anything that simplifies the employer's duty to determine whether the person standing before him is legally allowed to work in this country.

5 Hewitt's retired servicemen's full-employment bill of 2007

Hugh Hewitt also proposed a couple of amendments in today's show. First, he noted that conducting the interviews and background checks for however many illegals come forward is going to be a monster task: It's potentially 12 million applicants, though in reality, I think it will be far fewer than that.

Still a very large number, though; in fact, it's essentially the same problem as mass deportation, with one very significant difference: Deportation requires a hearing by law, and nobody is going to passively accept it without getting his day in immigration court. By contrast, anybody would be perfectly happy if his application for a provisional Z-visa were granted without a face-to-face interview.

So Hugh suggests a "pre-sort" to reduce the stack of those that actually require some thought and an actual interview, the tough cases. I think the idea is to use existing records to sort all applicants into one of three buckets:

1. No-brainer acceptance: people here a long time, no criminal record, continuously employed, owners of real property, etc.
2. No-brainer rejection: people with a criminal background, people who are wanted by the police, have a history of alcoholism or drug use, have been rarely employed, have more than one name, move around a lot (not just following the harvest, I mean from city to city), and so forth.
3. The toughies: everybody who doesn't fit either category.

Hugh also suggests hiring retired policemen, servicemen, firefighters, and so forth to perform this initial screening... men and women with many years spent making life and death decisions and being held accountable for them. It's mostly a paperwork job, though I suppose they might have to make some phone calls, too; so it would be ideal for older people and the disabled.

Those in bucket 1 get their provisional Z-visa right away. Those in bucket 2 not only don't get one, they're brought to the attention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). And those in bucket 3... well, they're the only ones who need to be interviewed.

This pre-sort should reduce the total number of face to face interviews down to a much more manageable number.

6 Hewitt's "stink-eye" amendment

Originally, Hugh appeared to be saying that people from countries that have extensive jihadist networks should not be allowed to get a provisional Z-visa at all... at least until after an extensive background check.

But this is self-defeating: Once a person from, say, Iran applied for a provisional Z-visa, he would immediately thereby come to the attention of ICE. But since he is disallowed from getting the immediate provisional Z-visa that applicants from Mexico or South Africa or Japan get, he would have no protection from swift and automatic deportation.

The mere act of applying for a provisional Z-visa would get him kicked out of the country!

Therefore, nobody from one of those "funny" countries could ever get a Z-visa, even if he were in the United States precisely because he was a political dissident who feared for his life. Hence the very people we most want to keep track of would remain forever in the shadows.

But today, Hugh clarified and extended his previous remarks (as the politicos say); he now suggests that if an applicant for a Z-visa is male, between the ages of 18 and 33, and from a country with extensive terrorist activity, he should go into a separate bucket -- one that receives much more scrutiny and perhaps even surveillance. He would still be protected from arbitrary deportation while his application was pending; but he would also be watched, and his application would be examined in greater detail.

The reason for this should be obvious.

7 The lax tax amendment

Captain Ed noticed an article in the Boston Globe that supposedly, the Bush Administration requested that the requirement that Z-visa applicants pay back taxes be removed from the immigration bill. I'm a little skeptical; the Globe is a notoriously unreliable (and very liberal) newspaper... but if true, I think this should be restored via amendment.

The Bush administration has a good argument that it would be virtually impossible to calculate precise back taxes plus penalties for years of working sub-rosa, cash in hand. But several others have suggested a workable solution: Require the applicant to pay an "estimate" of back taxes based upon various factors, such as how long the illegal immigrant worked here and what sorts of jobs.

This only works if the figure is not so absurdly high that nobody would ever apply for a Z-visa. Suppose, for example, you could only get the Z-visa if you meet the requirements -- clean background, continuous employment, etc. -- pay $5,000 in fines... and then fork over $298,440 in back taxes and penalties; then nobody would ever do it.

This is clearly a "poison pill" that would kill the entire deal. The Democrats, many congressional Republicans, and the White House will never go along with it (so stop dreaming about using this to stop the bill!)

But if the estimate were reasonable, with a workable installment plan for repayment, then I think it might fly. Careful, however!

8 The tick-tock amendment

This is one of mine that I just thought up. I don't like the idea of people applying for a provisional Z-visa... and then saying, "I won't get deported, so that is good enough for me."

I want people to assimilate, move on to a full Z-visa, then to a green card, and then to citizenship. I don't want anyone permanently living here who has no intention of ever becoming a citizen of this country... it's just the sort of thing that causes rioting by "northwest African youths" currently living in France or Sweden. Or Spain. Or Germany, Italy, Great Britain, or Australia.

So how about this: The provisional Z-visa comes with an expiration date. The timeclock starts when it's issued; but every time the Z-visa holder takes another step forward towards citizenry, the clock is restarted. For example, taking (and passing) citizenship classes, applying for a full Z-visa, applying for a green card, and so forth. The idea is to prevent the potential citizen from entering immigration stasis.

When your clock is about to run out, you get notices that you had better get off your butt and do something... at least contact USCIS and they will make suggestions. If you ignore the letter, then when your time runs out -- the ICE shows up on your doorstep and starts deportation hearings.

Again, a review board is necessary... especially if the holder claims that he has been trying to get the next step, but the USCIS is sitting on his application. (Long-time readers of Big Lizards know that Mr. and Mrs. Lizard speak from personal experience here!) But let's gradually turn up the heat on the stovetop, so that nobody turns it into an easy chair.

Finally, the amendment that tempts me, but is probably a deal-breaker for the Democrats... hence the one I reject:

XXX Hewitt's full-fencing saber cut XXX

Hugh made one more suggestion, but I really don't like this one: He wants an amendment to the effect that not one, single, solitary provisional Z-visa be granted until the first half of the fence is completed. That is, rather than start the process of granting provisional Z-visas now, and make the holders wait until half the fence is completed to apply for the full Z-visa -- Hugh wants to make all the applicants wait for completion of half the fence even to apply for the provisional Z-visa.

This is a perfect example of yet another "poison pill": It will take years to build 370 miles of double fencing. And when the time comes for granting provisional Z-visas, if the GOP is back in control of Congress, how does the Democratic Party know that Republicans won't pass a bill undoing the whole provisional Z-visa system? "Hah, hah, fooled you all!"

It's exactly the same problem of trust as Republicans face: We refuse to accept any bill that says, "I will gladly let you have border security Wednesday for regularization today." That's why the GOP senators negotiated border-security "triggers" for regularization.

So why on earth would the Democrats accept what Hugh Hewitt proposes -- which amounts to, "I will gladly let you have regularization Wednesday for border security today?"

I like the current system: Both the granting of provisional Z-visas and the border-security provisions of the bill begin now; and when border security is half done, then we can start granting full Z-visas.

So that's my run down on the possible amendments (and a very run-down lot we all are, now). Have you guys and gals any other suggestions?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 21, 2007, at the time of 9:50 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

May 20, 2007

Regularization: the Immigration Sideshow

It's a tragicomic commentatry on the immigration-reform "debate" that 90% of the discussion (and angst) is wasted on the least important issue -- whether or how to "regularize" those illegals already here -- while virtually none is spent on the most important issue: reforming our legal immigration procedure to make it fair, predictable, and rational.

The "12 Million" were here last year; they are here today; they will still be here a year or two or five from now. Whether they're regularized or not won't make much difference to the United States... so let's leave that question aside for the moment.

What matters is what kind of immigration we get in the future: legal or illegal, skilled or unskilled, assimilated or unassimilated, working or on welfare:

• The fence and all other aspects of criminal and immigration law enforcement are important, because they help determine whether we'll get legal or illegal immigration, and in what mix;
• Reforming the legal immigration system is important, because that determines whether our future immigrants will be skilled, educated, English-speaking people who will easily assimilate... or unskilled hewers of water and carriers of wood, pulling down sub-minimum wage. A rational, predictable, and fair immigration policy will allow into the country both the former and the latter, but will encourage the latter to become the former;
• And the question of a "guest worker" program is important, because that determines whether our actual immigrants, those who want to become Americans, will have jobs available to them while they develop the education, skills, and English proficiency to become citizens... or whether all those jobs will be taken by "guests" who have no interest in America -- disaffected workers and their children, alienated from society and ripe for the "messages" of street gangs, La Raza, and even al-Qaeda.

But what do we spend nearly every second of debate time arguing about? The 12 Million. Naturally!

To read blogposts and comments from both left and right, you'd think that was the only element in the bill, or at least the only important one -- rather than the element that will have the least real-world effect on anybody or anything, hence the least important of all issues to chew on. To the extent other elements of the bill bubble up in conversation, it's nearly always in the context of how it affects the 12 Million. This Power Line post, for example, starts off talking about enforcement; but then, as expected, the subject degenerates into the 12 Million:

For these two reasons, my skepticism is not an argument for not passing "get tough" only legislation at the next opportunity. It is, however, an argument for making no adjustments to the status of illegal aliens, and no promises of additional adjustments, until we see how attempts at enhanced enforcement play out....

Between them then, Paul and John produce a most wondrous circularity. Paul kicks it off:

As it stands now, amnesty (or path to citizenship) cannot gain acceptance on its merits, but instead can only be enacted by holding enhanced enforcement legislation as a hostage.

John then echos his own addendum, which includes this point... the irony of which appears to completely escape my two friends:

Like Paul, I have little faith in the reliability of the "triggers." But it strikes me as more important that the illegals now in the country will be, in effect, legalized immediately. While not all of them will go to the trouble of paying $1,000 and getting a card, this matters little, since any appetite for enforcement will disappear once this mechanism is in place.

Or in other, more familiar words: As it stands now, border enforcement (or a fence) cannot gain acceptance on its merits, but instead can only be enacted by holding regularization of the 12 Million as a hostage.

Both statements are true... but that is a truism, because the underlying point is that neither side in this debate is prepared to render up something for nothing: The Left won't allow border security without regularization; the Right won't allow regularization without border security. Which is what I have been saying here since All Hallow's Eve Day, 2005.

Here is another non-argument against the bill: The paralogical idea that the adolescent explictave hurled by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ, 65%) at Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX, 96%) -- the john calling the john unscrubbed -- "proves" that the bill cannot be justified.

This is patent nonsense; it only proves that John McCain cannot be justified. The bill stands or falls on the merits of the argument, not on the ability of one notoriously thin-skinned talking head to rein in his hair-trigger temper [a smooth smoke from a blend of four fine metaphors]. The argument is easy and near impossible to refute, which is why so few even bother trying:

1. We desperately need more border security, especially including the fence, but also including more Border Patrol agents, deportations of illegal aliens who commit crimes, and significant employer sanctions.
2. The Democrats will never allow that without regularization of the 12 Million. No, no, it's completely irrelevant why the Democrats won't allow it; I'm sure everything you're thinking about them is correct. But the fact remains that they will not.
3. The Democrats will allow (1) if regularization comes with it... probably. (If not, then the deal doesn't happen, and both sides whine.)
4. The Democrats control the Congress.
5. Ergo, we desperately need to cut a deal with the Democrats that more or less resembles the current bill.

But now we go back to our starting point: It makes no difference to the country whether the 12 Million are legal or illegal. They're never going to be deported; the economies of several states would be wrecked if we tried. And it's not physically possible... at a rate of one immigration hearing every five minutes, 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year, without even a break for lunch or a Christmas holiday, it would take forty years -- to deport the first one million of the 12 Million.

And we'd only have another 11 million to go!

So because the question is trivial, and because it makes no difference to the country whether the 12 Million stay here as illegals or pay a fine and stay here as legals, and because we so desperately need the border security... then for God's sake, leave the Demmies to their obsession and cut the deal.

Just structure the "triggers" in such a way that they can't cheat (which is the Democrats' other obsession). It shouldn't be that tough... is there a lawyer in the House?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 20, 2007, at the time of 11:47 PM | Comments (32) | TrackBack

May 18, 2007

Fleshing Out the Outline, take 1

I've learned some more detailed information about the bill, mostly from the interview Hugh Hewitt just conducted with Tony Snow. Here is the updated outline; the changed sections are in blue:

Immigration reform compromise package

1. Reform of legal immigration. The compromise sets up a "point system" (as in Australia) for future immigration; immigrants would be accepted or rejected on the basis of the number of points they accrue [WSJ2 -- today's WSJ article.];
2. Points would be allocated for English-language facility, education, advanced job skills that the country needs (I'm guessing high tech), and for family connections to other citizens more tenuous than spouse or children under the age of 21. Family relations will be deprivileged, while skills leading to faster, better assimilation will be privileged (I don't know if "country quotas" will be retained) [WSJ2];
3. The only family connections that would allow automatic issuance of a green card would be spouses and children under the age of 21; older children and any other family relation would simply accrue some points but would otherwise have to satisfy the point-quota requirement in (2) [WSJ2];

4. Border security. The following provisions must be "implemented" before either regularization of illegal aliens or enactment of the temporary-worker program can occur:

   1. 370 miles of additional border fence; this is actual, real double fencing, not virtual fencing.

      Note that "the law from last year remains in effect," according to presidential spokesman Tony Snow, referring to the law mandating 800+ miles of actual fence: The 370-mile figure is just what must be built before regularization or the guest-worker program can begin [Tony Snow interview on Hugh Hewitt radio show, May 18th, 2007];

   
   
   2. 200 additional miles of vehicle barriers: concrete barriers, berms, chicanes, caltrops, and so forth [Tony Snow interview];
   
   
   3. An unknown number of additional miles of virtual fencing [Tony Snow interview];
   
   
   4. 18,000 additional Border Patrol agents;
   
   
   5. "Effective, electronic employee-verification system for the workplace;"
   
   
   6. Crackdown on employers who hire illegals;

   I don't know if "implemented" means completed, begun, funded, or what; presumably, this will be hashed out during the actual Senate debate [all from WaPo -- the Washington Post article except as noted above];

5. Regularization of currently illegal aliens. Current illegal aliens can come forward, give full information about themselves, pay a $1,000 fine, demonstrate continuous employment since arriving, undergo a records check, and only then obtain a "probationary" Z-visa card that would allow them to stay legally and continue to work but would not allow them to apply for citizenship [WSJ2, Tony Snow interview on Hugh Hewitt radio show, May 18th, 2007];

6. In order to get a regular Z-visa, allowing the alien to begin the path to citizenship, he must meet several requirements:

   1. The head of the household must return to his country of origin and apply from there [WSJ2];
   2. The family must undergo a criminal background check [WaPo];
   3. They must pay a $4,000 fine in addition to the $1,000 fine paid to get the provisional Z-visa, for a total of $5,000 [WSJ2, Tony Snow interview on Hugh Hewitt radio show, May 18th, 2007];
   4. They must pay back taxes -- I don't know if this made it into the final compromise, but it was in the talking points memo [TPM] that Hugh posted earlier;
   5. They must pay processing fees [WSJ2];
   6. They must go to the back of the line of legal immigrants -- see (7) below [TPM];

7. Before Z-visas will be granted, the United States Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) has eight years to work through the backlog of already pending legal residency applications from those who are trying to immigrate here legally.

   Only after those are granted will USCIS turn to illegal aliens who have applied for residency per the process delineated in (6) above; this will take up to five additional years.

   After a green card is granted, citizenship requires an additional five years. Thus, from illegal status to citizenship requires a minimum of 13 years, possibly as long as 18 years. [WSJ1 -- the earlier WSJ article];

8. Separate "guest-worker" program. A separate guest-worker "Y-visa" will be created which does not lead to citizenship; a guest worker cannot apply for citizenship unless he returns to his country of origin and applies in the normal fashion anyone else would (no line-cut privileges); up to 400,000 such Y-visas may be granted each year [WSJ2];
9. Guest workers can apply for a two-year stint working in this country. After that time expires, they must return to their country of origin for at least a one-year "rest" period. They could then reapply, again for two years here followed by a year back in their country of origin. They could apply one more time for two years here... after which they must return permanently to their country of origin [WSJ2].

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 18, 2007, at the time of 4:13 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

Captain Ed On the Deal

Captain Ed linked our post on the comprehensive immigration-reform compromise; but that's not why I'm linking him here. This post of his does an excellent job of refuting some of the most common arguments against the bill:

1. Congress will never enforce the border-security provisions/triggers
2. The bill will prompt a flood of illegals
3. It rewards illegal behavior; the penalty for illegal entry should be deportation
4. Once we start cracking down on the border and on employers, the illegals will self-deport

This is not to say that there aren't good arguments against the bill; but first we must clear away the poorly thought-out dross, so we can focus on the logical worries -- for example, that there aren't enough "triggers" or safeguards built into the current version, and we should have more.

Here are two other irrational non-reasons against the bill:

This bill is so bad, even doing nothing would be better

"Doing nothing" means no fence, no increased Border Patrol, no prosecution of employers for knowingly hiring illegals, and no federal law requiring automatic deportation of illegal aliens arrested or charged with committing crimes.

Hey, wait! That last one isn't in the current bill, either. Well, yeah... and wouldn't that be a much better negotiation point than "let's do nothing instead?"

During our long phase of "doing nothing," the number of illegals permanently residing here has grown by millions and millions. Hidden among those millions -- as we have just seen with the Fort Dix Six -- are jihadis preparing horrific attacks on us. But we can't find them, because there are so many illegal immigrants who aren't plotting any attacks inadvertently functioning as human shields.

Yeah. Let's do nothing. That will be much better.

If we defeat this bill, the next one will be just enforcement only

Hint for those who aren't good on current events: The Democrats control both houses of Congress. They control the agenda. They control committee chairmanships and how many of each party gets to sit on the committees.

The committees generally write the bills.

The committee membership picked by the majority Democrats does not include many Blue Dogs (conservative Democrats); rather, it's far more left-liberal than the Democratic Party itself, and even more liberal than the Democratic conference in Congress. Liberal Democrats oppose border security; they are ideological true-believers in totally open borders... and they also believe that immigrants (both legal and illegal) who vote (both legally and illegally) tend to vote Democratic.

And you know what? They're right. Hispanics in general tend to vote, oh, 55-45 for Democrats; but among recent citizens, the ratio is much worse for Republicans.

Finally, the nutroots, which drives elections for Democrats much more than the rightroots does for Republicans, is 100% against securing our borders, for a variety of reasons. Thus, the very people who write the bills have an ideological reason, a practical reason, and a political reason not to enact border security.

So why did they support it this time? Because there is a ton of border-security pressure coming from Main Street, and the Democratic leadership was afraid to buck it. But lo! If they were to offer this bill with lots of border security, and if the Republicans defeat it by filibuster -- then the Democrats are off the hook: They can blame the lack of border security entirely on the GOP, and we'll get hammered even harder in 2008 than we did in 2006.

But that's all right, because the GOP leadership all have safe seats... so they're not worried. Most of them spent many, many years in the minority before and may actually be more comfortable there; in the minority, you get to fulminate and make grand gestures, but you needn't do the hard work of actually governing.

Believe me, the immigration dynamic is exactly the same as that of the troop-funding bill: Whichever side is seen by the voters as making impossible demands, thus killing the bill, is the side that gets hammered. Killing a bill because it dares to address a problem -- the illegals already here -- that most people do want to see resolved (however they want to resolve it) is an invitation to catastrophe.

And the next immigration bill won't be anywhere near as good for the GOP as this one.

Jihadi screening

Finally, let me address an intelligent argument that Hugh Hewitt is making this very minute in his discussion with Tony Snow on the former's radio show: Hugh wants to know why illegals from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan will receive the same treatment as illegals from Mexico and Nicaragua. He wants the bill modified, it appears, to include a list of "suspect" countries whose immigrants, when they apply for provisional Z-visas, will be held up while the FBI performs full field background investigations.

Hugh worries that if some undercover jihadi comes up and gets a provisional Z-visa, this will lend "legitimacy" to his cover story. Tony Snow responded that in order to do so, he would have to make himself (and his location) known to federal authorities... and the array of terrorism-intelligence programs will thus make it more likely that he will be identified and captured.

You mileage may vary, but I honestly believe that our jihadi would have to be an idiot to bring himself to our attention: He knows that biometric characteristics will be recorded and compared to our database -- but he does not know whether we've already picked up intel that incriminates him.

Hugh argues that he can operate better if he's above ground, but I say that's silly: The more visible he is, the more chance someone will notice, e.g., his attempts to obtain bomb materials.

Finally, if we make it clear that people from Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries will receive special immigration screening... then al-Qaeda will throw Jose Padillas at us by the bucketful. The jihadis are not utter fools.

Thus, I would much rather expand the NSA-al-Qaeda intercept program, the SWIFT surveillance program, Total Information Awareness, and other terrorism surveillance and intelligence programs... and then hook the terrorism-intelligence database up to the USCIS along with the National Crime Information Center. Then, as part of the records check -- not full field background investigation, which takes months, as I know from personal experience -- every illegal seeking a provisional Z-visa will be checked against every possible datum that might identify a terrorist.

Even if he comes from, oh, I don't know... England.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 18, 2007, at the time of 3:48 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

May 17, 2007

Grand Outline of Provisions of "the Compromise"

The main purpose of this post is to pull together everything we currently know about the immigration-reform deal announced today. I had to go through six different sources to find it all; but here it is, all in one place.

For future reference, as this stuff works its way through Congress, I will repost the outline below and make changes, additions, and emendations as required. So consider Big Lizards your one-stop shopping center for the grand plan that will occupy as much of Congress's time as can be spared... after the urgent requirement to investigate every Republican, living or dead, who ever worked for George W. Bush (or said anything nice about him).

Sources: I have now read several thousand words on the Senate immigration-reform deal announced today by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ, 65%), Ted Kennedy (D-MA, 100%), John Kyl (R-AZ, 92%), and others:

- I read the AP, Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal (subscription required) stories on the deal.

- I read yesterday's WSJ's story (subscription required). I read the responses by Hugh Hewitt, Dean Barnett (buried in his American Idol post), John Hinderaker, and Paul Mirengoff (addendum on John's earlier post).

- I read the angry commentary by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC, 100%) -- John quotes it. I read Hugh's earlier "talking points" post, in which he revealed what the GOP wanted from the bill -- and Hugh's own guess as to what will make it into the final compromise (nearly everything he said the GOP wouldn't get -- they got).

- I haven't read anything on the subject by Michelle Malkin, the Center for Security Policy, nor Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO, 92%), and for a very good reason: their prior hysterical opposition to any immigration reform that even hints at anything other than a wall, imprisonment of employers, and mass deportations of 11 million illegals. They have collectively become "the boys who cried 'amnesty!'" -- at everything, without exception, that goes beyond enforcement. They have marginalized themselves (like the black vote) by being 100% predictable. They have made themselves nought but cosmic background radiation on this issue.

Sadly, Hugh and Dean now join those ranks. By contrast, John and Paul make reasonable arguments and explain their positions, rather than simply screaming "amnesty" at me. I disagree with them, but I will continue reading and mulling what they write.

Before getting into my own thoughts, let me summarize what is known about the deal; unlike anybody else here, I will include references for each datum. What a concept!

Immigration reform compromise package - original

1. Reform of legal immigration. The compromise sets up a "point system" (as in Australia) for future immigration; immigrants would be accepted or rejected on the basis of the number of points they accrue [WSJ2 -- today's WSJ article.];
2. Points would be allocated for English-language facility, education, advanced job skills that the country needs (I'm guessing high tech), and for family connections to other citizens more tenuous than spouse or children under the age of 21. Family relations will be deprivileged, while skills leading to faster, better assimilation will be privileged (I don't know if "country quotas" will be retained) [WSJ2];
3. The only family connections that would allow automatic issuance of a green card would be spouses and children under the age of 21; older children and any other family relation would simply accrue some points but would otherwise have to satisfy the point-quota requirement in (2) [WSJ2];

4. Border security. The following provisions must be "implemented" before either regularization of illegal aliens or enactment of the temporary-worker program can occur:

   1. 370 miles of additional border fence (unknown whether that means actual wall the whole way, wall plus fence, or wall plus fence plus virtual fence);
   2. 18,000 additional Border Patrol agents;
   3. "Effective, electronic employee-verification system for the workplace;"
   4. Crackdown on employers who hire illegals;

   I don't know if "implemented" means completed, begun, funded, or what; presumably, this will be hashed out during the actual Senate debate [all from WaPo -- the Washington Post article];

5. Regularization of currently illegal aliens. Current illegal aliens can come forward, give full information about themselves, and obtain a "probationary" Z-visa card that would allow them to stay legally and continue to work but would not allow them to apply for citizenship [WSJ2];

6. In order to get a regular Z-visa, allowing the alien to begin the path to citizenship, he must meet several requirements:

   1. The head of the household must return to his country of origin and apply from there [WSJ2];
   2. The family must undergo a criminal background check [WaPo];
   3. They must pay a $5,000 fine [WSJ2];
   4. They must pay back taxes -- I don't know if this made it into the final compromise, but it was in the talking points memo [TPM] that Hugh posted earlier;
   5. They must pay processing fees [WSJ2];
   6. They must go to the back of the line of legal immigrants -- see (7) below [TPM];

7. Before Z-visas will be granted, the United States Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) has eight years to work through the backlog of already pending legal residency applications from those who are trying to immigrate here legally.

   Only after those are granted will USCIS turn to illegal aliens who have applied for residency per the process delineated in (6) above; this will take up to five additional years.

   After a green card is granted, citizenship requires an additional five years. Thus, from illegal status to citizenship requires a minimum of 13 years, possibly as long as 18 years. [WSJ1 -- the earlier WSJ article];

8. Separate "guest-worker" program. A separate guest-worker program will be created which does not lead to citizenship; a guest worker cannot apply for citizenship unless he returns to his country of origin and applies in the normal fashion anyone else would (no line-cut privileges) [WSJ2];
9. Guest workers can apply for a two-year stint working in this country. After that time expires, they must return to their country of origin for at least a one-year "rest" period. They could then reapply, again for two years here followed by a year back in their country of origin. They could apply one more time for two years here... after which they must return permanently to their country of origin [WSJ2].

Immigration reform compromise package - Mishnah

You won't be surprised -- you who actually read Big Lizards attentively -- that my least favorite part of this compromise is the guest-worker program. In fact, I hate the very idea of a guest-worker program.

I go along with Mark Steyn on this one... I think such programs in European countries have been prescriptions for disaster, bringing the great Moslem influx to Europe. Even here, I don't like the idea of a huge chunk of people coming here to work, even in two-year bursts, when they have no desire to become Americans and no sense of "Americanness."

But frankly, the rest of it doesn't sound all that bad, depending on how it actually works in practice. There's the rub, as John and Paul noted: They're both skeptical that the federal government can actually enforce the border-security provisions and actually make the guest workers go home after two years... but they have no doubt of the government's ability to regularize current illegals.

I concur in part and dissent in part: I agree it's more difficult to get the feds to fulfill the enforcement part of the deal; that's because Democrats are less trustworthy than Republicans, as a rule... the former are apt to decide that the Vision must be achieved by any means necessary. But "more difficult" is not equivalent to "impossible," and Democrats don't always get their way.

We must move forward; so long as we stand here, foot in hand, we continue to have wide-open borders. Even a scant 370 extra miles of fence is better than what we have now (duh). Remember, "not making a decision" is in fact making a decision, the decision to do nothing.

I think border enforcement and guest-worker control are both doable... provided we have a commitment to do them. But of course, if we don't have such a commitment, we certainly wouldn't be able to enact a Tancredoesque "enforcement always and only" reform. Dig?

The most important take-away from the compromise is this: It really, truly is a compromise. Many of the provisions above -- i.e., the "trigger" that prevents implementation of regularization until border security is implemented, the point system that privileges assimilability over extended family connections, and the limitations on how long guest workers can stay -- were opposed by the Democrats and only accepted to ward off a Republican threat of filibuster.

The Democrats were actually anxious enough for the deal that they gave as much as did we. This was the best we could get; but amazingly, it's actually better than the version floating around the Republican-controlled Senate in the 109th Congress -- which passed the Senate on May 17th, 2006... but couldn't become law, because the Republican-controlled House opposed it.

I am very, very pleased that the bill actually addresses my main concern: That we reform our legal immigration system to make it predictable.

Immigrants should know what they can do to make acceptance more likely, what standards they must reach, and that acceptance or rejection will be based upon individual merit, rather than arbitrary, capricious, collectivist, and corrupt. The immigrant is told what skills and education generate how many points, so he can work towards becoming an American citizen. This alone makes illegal immigration far less attractive.

This point is far more critical to our long-term interests and national security than anything we do about the 11-12 million illegals currently here; they constitute only a temporary problem, because they won't live forever. The other point critical to national security is securing the border with some combination of wall, fence, and virtual fence, in order to keep out the next 12 million potential illegal aliens. Compared to these two points, every other immigration suggestion is mere dicta.

But please, folks, take a deep breath and read, read, read about the compromise. This Big Lizards post is a good starting point, since I worked like the Dickens to organize everything into a grand outline. Then you can follow the debate as it flows across the Senate and eventually the House.

A knee-jerk rejection of anything other than enforcement as "amnesty" does absolutely nothing to secure the border... and a knee-jerk vow never to vote for any Republican ever again does nothing but fill the congressional carriage team with Democratic squirrels... and then give Hillary Clinton the driver's whip.

Even if you hate the very idea of regularization, remember this:

• The lesser of two evils is still evil...
• But by definition, the lesser of two evils is also still less evil than the other one.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 17, 2007, at the time of 6:46 PM | Comments (31) | TrackBack

September 29, 2006

Secure Fences - Do They Make Good Congressmen?

I don't recall if I ever posted this prediction on Big Lizards, but in a private e-mail I sent to John Hinderaker, speaking of the "fence first" bill that was being discussed then in the Senate, I wrote the following:

I'll be quite surprised if cloture is even successfully called -- and if it passes, I'll be surprised if the president doesn't veto.

Well, color me surprised: the Senate just yesterday voted cloture on the Secure Fence Act of 2006 by a large and impressive margin of 71 to 28... which means I'm quite certain it will also pass, whenever they actually hold the vote.

So the question is, will President Bush sign or veto the bill? I hope he vetoes; but he may see that as a political negative.

Assuming he signs it, at that point, I will desperately hope that I'm likewise wrong in my other prediction about a "security-fence first" bill, which is that in reality, fence first = fence only; that once the House Republicans get their fence, they will never make good on their promise to allow votes on the three other major immigration reforms (or at least not on two of them):

1. Some form of regularization of the 11 million illegal aliens already here, at least the portion of them who are only illegal because our immigration system is so messed up that it is arbitrary, capricious, and unjust (see 3 below).

   In this case, "regularization" shall mean sentencing them to some legal penalty that does not include deportation; to have the illegal entry not prevent them from being granted a work visa, assuming they should have been granted one in the first place (that is, if they have not committed unrelated crimes in the meanwhile). The legal penalty resolves the crime; the illegal immigrant has "paid his debt to society" and can get on with his life without fear;

2. Some way to allow some number of non-permanent-residents legally to work for below minimum wage for any employer who will hire them. I personally would prefer those "guest workers" be fresh immigrants still trying to get their "green cards," rather than imported foreign labor with no intention of staying here... but that's my schtick (and Mark Steyn's);
3. A rationalizing of the entire immigration system, so that those immigrants who work the hardest at Americanizing themselves are the ones who get to become Americans.

I still believe that the "fence-first" members of Congress will not fulfill their promise to allow votes on 1 and 2, now that they have their fence (assuming Bush doesn't veto the bill, which he still might). Ne'ertheless, I really and truly hope to be proven wrong, that they're more honorable than I pegged 'em, because I think the fence won't work without those other reforms.

Reform 3 is the most critical... and interestingly, I'm more sanguine about that one being enacted at some point than the other two, for the simple reason that neither party has expressed any position for or against it: thus, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans is locked into any position on rationalizing the system; neither side has painted itself into a hole.

Suppose I suddenly jumped in front of Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO, 100%), and before the Capitol Police could wrestle me to the ground, I asked him: "Sir, do you believe that those immigrants who work hardest to Americanize should be the ones who get to become Americans?" I am convinced that he would say, "uh... yeah. Sure. Why not? But aren't they?"

And from my prostrate position, as they clapped me in irons back and front, I would shout out, in my best James Boswell impersonation, "No indeed sir; there is in fact, sir, no correlation between Americanization, sir, and becoming an American, sir... sir, it is a complete crap shoot!"

And maybe he would ponder and think a bit as they bunged me into the paddy wagon and beetled off.

I greatly fear that we won't even have the debate about 1 and 2, and I think it only 50-50 at best that we'll ever get 3 (all right, it's a 50-50 chance that it turns out to be a 50-50 chance). But this is one of several instances where I jolly well hope my prediction will fail!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 29, 2006, at the time of 5:29 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack

September 25, 2006

"Immigration" Bill... Frist, That Is

(All right, all right; a weak title. Don't blame me... it was that darned rough questioning by Chris Wallace; he's always on the phone, demanding to know what I did about the USS Cole bombing... and I wasn't even in the government, then or now!)

Interesting post by Power Line, which follows a post on Real Clear Politics:

Mickey Kaus poses the question whether Senator Frist was signalling an imminent flakeout on the border fence legislation on This Week yesterday. There is a cynicism in Kaus's instincts that I hope is not warranted, especially given the high regard in which we hold Senator Frist, but it is a cynicism that has been amply warranted in Kaus's past analysis of the politics of immigration reform.

The gist of the Kaus column is that he saw Maj. Leader Bill Frist (R-TN, 92%) on This Week With George Snuffleupagus, and he could tell by Frist's "guilty, knowing grin" -- as he said "right now I got a feeling the Democrats may obstruct it ["it" = the border-fence-only bill]" -- that Frist was really "feckless" about the whole immigration question, cynically bringing it up, only to drop it a few days later.

I read the Kaus column late last night, and I must say that cynicism is very unbecoming... particularly when it's not warranted. There is a simpler explanation:

• Perhaps Frist really did think that everyone in the Senate, on both sides, would rise above what Frist sees as petty bickering to enact the plans for the fence;
• But then, when the Democrats made it clear that they were going to filibuster, and a handful of Republicans joined them, Frist now realizes that the yolk's on him -- the bill he so loudly touted was going nowhere, and he (Frist) was going to look like an idiot.

This alternative explanation perfectly explains Frist's initial enthusiasm, his current probable intent (which we don't actually know yet to be true) to drop the subject again, and even the so-called "guilty, knowing grin" that Kaus insists he saw. It's certainly true, as Micky Kaus writes, that:

It's easy to let the fence bill drop and blame Democrats. Wink, wink. But a forceful majority leader who actually wanted either a) a vote or b) a sharpened issue against the Dems wouldn't give up just like that. He'd call a press conference to demand that the Democrats allow a vote. Put a spotlight on the issue. Make Harry Reid come up with an equally well-publicized explanation for why the Democrats oppose this popular common-denominator measure. That would be hard for Reid to do without hurting Dem election chances, and he might not do it--resulting in a Democratic cave-in and a vote. And the fence Frist says he wants.

But the problem with Kaus's reasoning is that, like so many others, he starts from his honest admission that "I can't think of any other possibilities" than "phoniness, fecklessness, or a corrupt bargain;" but then he makes the illogical leap from "I can't think of" to the conclusion that there are no other possibilities. I suppose his idea is that if he can't think of any, how could any lesser mortal?

But of course, there is a good reason -- one that we Big Lizards ourselves support -- for rejecting the enforcement-first approach to immigration reform. And it would be easy for Sen. Harry Reid (D-Caesar's Palace, 100%) to give exactly that press conference that Kaus so knowingly asserts cannot be given. And if Reid gave it (and did a better job than he usually does), it could indeed flip the whole immigration issue around and hang it like an anvil around the Republicans' necks.

Simply put, the fence is great; I'm all in favor of the fence; but there are other reforms equally vital, without which the fence alone cannot work. And here's the kicker: once we get the fence, the enforcement-first crowd in Congress will turn into the enforcement-only mob, and I am 100% convinced that they themselves will do everything in their power to obstruct and disrupt every other element of immigration reform.

The only incentive for "enforcement only" Congressmen to support other reforms is to tie those reforms to the border fence. It's a sad state of affairs for the nation -- but one that is forced upon reformers by the monomania of the enforcement-only representatives and senators. Both moderates and conservatives have immigration ideas that are vital to solving this problem; but the hard right refuses even to consider the moderates' ideas... even to the point of letting the border fence go unbuilt, if to build it means they have to accept some other reforms.

Let's put it in an analogy that everyone can understand, I think. Even after welfare reform, there are still way too many people on "perpetual welfare." Most conservatives want to cut a number of welfare programs, and I support those: welfare reform worked very well in the past, and I think it would work well in the future.

But at the same time, for a lot of people on welfare, it is the only life they have ever known; they literally have no idea what job skills are or why they're important. Thus, moderates believe that intense training in such job skills (starting from the basics, such as actually showing up at eight and staying until five, speaking respectfully, dressing and acting appropriately, and such) is necessary for the current generation of hard-core welfaristas to get jobs and become productive. (For sake of argument, assume the training itself is actually productive, not some liberal, namby-washy, self-esteem and preening course.)

So a grand compromise is proposed: cut welfare programs drastically while funding intense job-training. A number of moderates, who ordinarily resist program cuts, say they're willing to accept that compromise; it can work, they say, if the job training is also present, so those cut from the rolls will have some idea what to do to avoid ending up on the streets. But the conservatives dig in their heels and insist that we do nothing but cut the programs.

Impasse; the bill goes nowhere. And then suddenly, one of the conservatives proposes a new "compromise": "we all agree on one part of the solution, cutting the welfare programs," he says; "so therefore, let's start by doing only that... and then, some number of months or years in the future, we'll have a separate discussion about whether we should have the job training programs too!"

It would be reasonable and responsible to debate exactly what sort of job training we should do. It's also perfectly responsible to debate exactly what other immigration reforms we need in addition to building a wall.

But it's disingenuous to the point of flat-out lying for the hard-core conservatives to suggest a "compromise" that consists of giving them everything they want -- in exchange for their promise to someday consider what the moderates want. That's no compromise at all; it's simply saying "I get everything I want, and you get bupkis!" It's unAmerican; it's downright Palestinian.

So what are these other vital elements of immigration reform? We've talked about them many times here on Big Lizards (and going back to my stints on Captain's Quarters and Patterico's Pontifications:

1. Making the immigration system itself rational, predictable, and just: an unjust and irrational system will always lead to millions coming here illegally. When people are arbitrarily and capriciously denied entry, while others less deserving get right in, the hopelessness and resentment inevitably lead some of those irrationally rejected (or worse, simply forgotten in the bureaucratic shuffle) to take matters into their own hands. The scum that we desperately need to keep out of the country hide among the millions who sneak in only because the system is so badly broken.

   If we create a path that is predictable, rational, and just, then no matter how long and hard it may be, the immigrants we actually want here will remain within the legal framework, because they can see progress.

2. Allowing those who haven't yet earned "green cards" to work to support themselves, and to get another job if they lose one, without the fear that if the company they work for goes belly-up, they'll be instantly deported. They need to be exempt from the minimum wage laws... not only because many businesses rely upon such low wages (not just lettuce and grape picking), but also because most recent immigrants are not really worth minimum wage yet. (Neither are a lot of native-born Americans, but that's a whole 'nother argument.)

   I actually oppose minimum wage laws altogether; but if we must have them, temporary resident aliens who are in the process of becoming permanent need to be exempt: having a job is more important than having a job that pays well.)

   But I totally oppose so-called "guest worker programs," having been convinced by Mark Steyn that a permanent population of immigrants who see themselves as not really a part of America is very dangerous... even if they are primarily Mexican, not Algerian.

3. Finding some method of regularizing that portion of the 11 million already here illegally who only resorted to sneaking across the border because of the irrational and unjust nature of our broken immigration system -- while deporting those who sneak in for more nefarious reasons, or who break the law simply because they're lawbreakers: just as in point 2, we cannot allow a permanent underclass of millions of people here, seething with resentment; and yet we likewise cannot simply "deport them all," both for practical reasons (it's not physically possible) and also the moral reason: most of them do not deserve deportation. They wouldn't be illegal aliens if the failures of our own immigration system did not leave them so despairing of ever getting in legally.

   Again with the analogies: you get accepted to university; you move there and attend for all four years, taking the same classes as all the other students, passing the same tests, doing the same projects. And then, at the end, you and about half of your fellow students simply don't receive your degrees.

   You may be told that the university decided it was awarding too many of them, or that they've changed their minds about the degree requirements. Or you may be told nothing at all. You call, but you can never get through. You show up, and after waiting seven hours in line, the officials say they can't find your records: come back in a few months and wait again. But even then, they won't even talk to you; someone suggests you simply apply again as a freshman and go through the entire university program a second time.

   But the other half of the class, who did no more than you did, get their degrees with no problem. If, in your hopelessness, you simply told everybody you had that degree, and maybe even hired someone to forge it, would you really think of yourself as a criminal who should be fired from your job, arrested, and forcibly removed from the state? (If so, you're a harsher person than I.)

I passionately believe -- as do the president and many sincere Republicans and a handful of sincere Democrats on the Hill -- that without these additional reforms, merely putting up a fence is doomed to failure. But I also believe that giving the anti-immigrant hard-liners their wall -- and I do mean anti-immigrant for many of them, not merely anti-illegal -- without linking the wall to the other reforms, guarantees that nothing but the security fence will ever be adopted.

Hence, while I love the fence, I oppose a fence-only bill like the one Frist is pushing. Life is a series of tradeoffs; and a political position that seems harsh today may turn out to be be vital tomorrow. In any event, those of us arguing that it is vital are just as sincere as those arguing the opposite.

Even if we occasionally grimly grin when we realize it's just not going to happen in this Congress.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 25, 2006, at the time of 2:18 PM | Comments (26) | TrackBack

June 20, 2006

Immigration Man 2: "No Reason"

Yesterday, I posted a piece called Immigration Man, noting that none of those who so readily call normalization "amnesty" had yet posted -- at least that I have seen -- a blog article that recognized the hell that so many legal immigrants must pass through like a kidney stone.

No anti-normalization blogger that I've read has called for reform of a system that shattered long ago, which is now run by career "civil" "servants" who have as much concern for immigrants, legal immigrants, as cock fighters have for their roosters.

I finished by begging to be proven wrong:

We have quite a few readers here; can anyone show me even one, single post by an anti-Hagel-Martinez hardliner about the troubles faced by legal immigrants? Can I see a post where a hardliner argues that we should reform immigration law to make the system more rational, fair, and comprehensible, less time-consuming, and less likely to induce despair or even the very bypassing of the immigration laws that hardliners fear? May I please see some evidence that the anti-illegal-immigrant hardliners care much -- or at all -- about government maltreatment of legal immigrants and potential immigrants?

(I will define a "hardliner" as anyone who opposes what he calls "amnesty" so much, he will even give up the border fence, if that's the only way to stop normalization.)

After nineteen comments (to this point), only one person so far has linked to a blogpost by a hardliner who has published a post agreeing that our legal immigration system is in dire need of overhaul to make it more rational, predictable, and just. And that post linked Big Lizards as its source!

Instead, commenters have been answering quite different questions. Several seem to think I'm arguing for more immigration; I'm open to the possibility, but I never argued the point in Immigration Man. Others are convinced I oppose the fence; in fact, I'm 100% behind it.

Still more seem to think I said that all conservatives are anti-immigrant: no again; read the post closely.

What I point out in Immigration Man is that I've yet to meet even one person who refers to normalization as "amnesty" -- yet who is concerned enough about the insanity of the current legal immigration system that he's written a blogpost about reforming it.

Maybe people really don't know; here are the two examples closest to me:

Sachi

My wife was a legal immigrant; she jumped through all the hoops, did everything by the book. She got a green card; she went through the whole citizenship procedure, satisfying every requirement save one: her swearing-in ceremony.

Along the way, she was bullied, threatened, shouted at, belittled, insulted, and once made to wait from 3:30 am on the sidewalk outside the INS... only to be told at 9:00 that they were only seeing twenty people that day. She was number 27 -- and there was a very long line behind her. (I waited with her that day; she had to forcibly restrain me from strangling the moron who didn't bother putting a sign up the night before.)

But in the end, she satisfied all the requirements and needed only to be sworn in... and they simply wouldn't give her an appointment.

No reason. She wasn't missing any papers, she had passed all the tests, she had been here for years and years, she spoke excellent English, she was perfectly legal. They just didn't give her an appointment... for years.

It finally took the direct intervention of our then Republican representative to finally get the damned INS to set a date for her to get sworn in; she went, raised her hand, and finally became an American.

Please don't brush this off by saying, "oh, the government is always bureaucratic." This goes far beyond mere bureaucracy into despicable abuse.

Takao

I've told the story of our friend Takao here several times. He came from Japan legally, but the most he could get was a work visa. He lived here, worked here -- all legally -- paid his taxes, bought a condo and a car, had health and auto insurance, learned English, got a bachelor's degree and a master's degree from an American university, never got in the least bit of trouble with the law... yet in all that time, he was never even able to get a green card.

Not in sixteen years.

He hired an American attorney, but it made no difference. No matter what forms he filed, the INS simply never bothered responding, beyond sending a receipt of the filing. They never told him what he lacked, what he had to do, why he couldn't get a green card.

That is because there was no reason: there is no reason why some breeze right through in five years; no reason why others get stuck in a holding pattern for three times as long.

In the end, Takao was laid off from the Japanese hotel where he had worked for so long; it was shortly after 9/11, and Japanese were afraid to travel to America... so the hotel got into financial trouble and had to lay off many workers.

Takao's work visa specified that hotel; he filled out the forms for the INS to apply for another job. Instead of granting it -- they ordered him home... that's it, sayonara, it's been a slice having you.

Because he would not break the law, he found himself on an airplane back to Narita Airport. He lives in Tokyo today, but he still loves America... even after what America did to him. God knows why. He still hopes that someday, he will be able to come here as a permanent resident.

Random Chaos

I hear about others who come here and have no problems: they get on the green-card track right away, they get residency, they're given an appointment for being sworn in... no problem. Others live through the nightmares depicted above.

There is no rhyme or reason, no logic why one is waved through at a trot while another is thrown to the ground and made to crawl. It's entirely random -- or worse, the caprice of the interviewer -- who gets a pass and whose paperwork is lost for two and a half years on somebody's desk, with nobody at the INS (now the USCIS -- same car, different plastic) caring enough even to go look for it.

The system is entirely arbitrary. It is the most unpredictable agency in the United States government, except in one respect: immigrants are routinely treated like animals. That they can expect.

People are told what is happening; people are told what they need to do. People are treated with respect, even when they have to fill out eighty-five forms in triplicate.

Immigrants, legal immigrants, are not people... not as far as Immigration is concerned.

What I Want for Christmas

I will wait until I see a hardliner finally understand why this is a vile betrayal of the American promise. I long for the day when he spends at least a tenth as much time arguing for reform of the legal immigration system as he does calling illegals "lawbreakers" and "criminals."

(I wonder how many of these "lawbreakers" were just like Takao, except, having a family, they made the decision that rather than be arbitrarily sent back to whatever blot they left, they would stay -- and perhaps their kids could have the life the "lawbreakers" could only experience vicariously.)

I eagerly anticipate the hardliner's insight that a system that is unpredictable, uninformative, unconcerned, vindictive, and that is run by petty tyrants who have life-and-death decision-making power over immigrants who have played by all the rules, is in urgent need of reform.

Not to bring in fewer immigrants, nor more immigrants, but simply to have a system where someone who follows every law scrupulously can actually be told what he must do to become a permanent resident and eventually a citizen.

For God's sake, even a horse is taught what commands it must obey; it doesn't have to guess.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 20, 2006, at the time of 6:06 AM | Comments (39) | TrackBack

June 19, 2006

Immigration Man

I have been thinking a lot about the hard-line, anti-illegal-immigration crowd, especially in the House, but also in the conservative blogosphere. I start to wonder about the defensive claim that they're just opposed to lawbreaking -- not immigration itself.

Let's leave aside those who nakedly oppose immigration, calling, e.g., for a "moratorium" on new immigrants for five years or three years or any other length of time. Those bloggers and pundits are simply being honest about their dislike; and while I fervently disagree with them, I always prize honesty and clarity in political debate (it's a rare and valuable commodity).

I begin to become quite skeptical of those who say "I'm not opposed to legal immigration; but these illegals are criminals and lawbreakers, and they should not be rewarded with amnesty."

For weeks, we at Big Lizards have focused on the tail end of that statement: not only the misleading misuse of the word "amnesty," which doesn't mean what the hard-liners pretend it does, but more generally the question of what balance to strike between security, the needs of businesses for cheap and acquiescent labor, and a just resolution for those who bypassed the immigration system to come here illegally.

But all along, I have taken at face value the first part of the argument above: that the opponents of comprehensive immigration reform actually have nothing against legal immigration. Clearly, however, if I'm misinformed -- if they do have a deep-seated distrust of immigration in general, whether they recognize it or whether it is subconscious -- then there is little hope of ever crafting a compromise of any sort. As Ronald Reagan often said, you cannot rationally argue someone out of a position that he was never rationally argued into in the first place.

So forgive my brashness, for I am only an egg; but I would like to see some reasonable evidence that any of the "hard-liners" against compromise on normalization actually supports legal immigration, or has the slightest concern about the arbitrary, capricous, and often discriminatory way that completely legal immigrants (and would-be immigrants) are treated in this country -- earlier by the Immigration and Naturalization Services and today by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

We have quite a few readers here; can anyone show me even one, single post by an anti-Hagel-Martinez hardliner about the troubles faced by legal immigrants? Can I see a post where a hardliner argues that we should reform immigration law to make the system more rational, fair, and comprehensible, less time-consuming, and less likely to induce despair or even the very bypassing of the immigration laws that hardliners fear? May I please see some evidence that the anti-illegal-immigrant hardliners care much -- or at all -- about government maltreatment of legal immigrants and potential immigrants?

Anything?

I believe that the vast majority of those who are anti-affirmative-action (including myself) are at least equally concerned about racist laws that hurt blacks: just as I would march against affirmative action, if any such marches were planned, I have also in the past marched against the Klan. But on the other hand, I believe that nearly everyone who is anti-Israel just uses it as cover for being antisemitic -- so these sorts of things can swing either way.

I would love to find out I was right in my original assumption, that the anti-illegal hardliners actually do care about the unnecessary tribulations cast in the paths of legal immigrants. Not only would it make rational discussion possible, but I like to think well of people I respect. But danged if I can find any evidence so far.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 19, 2006, at the time of 6:12 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

June 14, 2006

Jungian Slip?

So I'm looking at a Reuters article, and the very first sentence reads:

U.S. customs officials arrested more than 2,000 illegal immigrants, gang members and other fugitives in a nationwide sweep, the head of the U.S. Immigration and Customer Enforcement agency said on Wednesday.

I thought, well there's yer problem! That's what we need: more federal customer enforcement. I'm from Homeland Security -- you better round up those consumers and turn 'em into legitimate customers, fellah!

(The correct name of the agency, a division of DHS, is of course Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Multiple layers of elite-media fact checking in action....)

Hey, I like the program; don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of a massive crackdown to round up those illegal aliens who are committing real crimes, apart from their mere existence (and apart from ancillary crimes necessary to their presence, such as obtaining fake documents). I just think it's probably more in the federal government's purview to enforce customs than customers.

I wonder how long before Reuters does one of its infamous "stealth" corrections?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 14, 2006, at the time of 2:42 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 1, 2006

Two Pence Worth

I just listened to Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN, 100%) on Hugh Hewitt, and he (Pence, I mean) made a lot of sense... until he got on the subject of immigration. Well, regularization, actually; what it pleases him to call *mn*sty (Hugh never makes total sense, but I generally have some idea what he's on about).

Pence presented his "four-point plan" for a compromise bill on immigration... which appears to be the House plan plus a grudging and dubious guest-worker plan. That add-on requires potential guest workers to voluntarily remove themselves from the United States, head to one of several privately-run "Ellis Island centers" (Pence's term), each situated in some foreign country, and apply for the program from there.

I suspect there would be one "Island" per continent.

Thus, Pence imagines that dirt-poor Guatemalan migrant workers will saddle up, head back across the border (the reaction of Mexican authorities to the entry of non-Mexican illegal immigrants will be very interesting), and journey thousands of miles to get to La Isla, wait in the line there, fill out 377 forms in triplicate (the USCIS will probably send the wrong batch, and all the forms will be in Serbo-Croatian)... all in order to go back to the United States and get that $4.50/hour job picking strawbs in Oxnard, California.

Hm.

Pence spoke eloquently about the urgency of buiding that fence, how vital it is to national security. Hugh said he agreed with Pence on the urgency of the fence... but how would Pence response if the only way to get 700 miles of fence were to find some way, somehow, to regularize some of those already here illegally?

And Pence was stymied. He would not accept any conceivable scenario where "the great majority of the House" would ever vote for "*mn*sty;" but on the other hand, Pence would not say he would vote against such a final bill, either. He couldn't say anything; he kept dancing around Hugh's question, picking on this word or that phrasing or simply answering with a non-sequitur.

I can only conclude that in fact, Mike Pence hates illegals already here more than he fears future waves pouring across an unprotected border; that he would rather have no fence at all, if the only way to get it were regularization of even some-but-not-all. But for some reason, he is afraid to come out and say so.

This is really sad. I can understand people opposing regularization; it is a defensible position, albeit one I disagree with. But you have to prioritize your demands... and no sane person can argue that allowing some of those already living here underground to surface and become legal is more dangerous than failing to build the fence.

Nevertheless, there are many in the House Republican caucus -- I hope not a majority -- who are actually willing to drop the fence, so long as that stops any kind of legalization. That is the face of fanaticism.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 1, 2006, at the time of 4:17 PM | Comments (27) | TrackBack

A "Green" War Hero

You might have heard of Walt Gaya before; Michael Yon wrote about him in detail last year. But I think it's important to remember that not all Americans who fight for us are citizens by birth.

Meet Sgt. Walt Gaya, proud owner of the Corina Bakery, 510 6th Avenue, Tacoma, Washington (stop in and buy some cake). Gaya is an Iraq war veteran (Deuce Four), a baker -- and newly naturalized citizen of Amerca.

But he almost wasn't any of those three.

Walt is originaly from Argentina. He met his future wife Jessica (born in Oregon) in a Queens bakery where they both worked. Love -- Portland -- marriage -- two kids (the eponymous Corina is their young daughter). Then, in the year 2000, Walt enlisted in the army.

Walt survived two horrific bomb blasts in Iraq: a suicide car bomb and a roadside IED. Both times, his Stryker saved him; but he was badly wounded twice: his back was severely burned by the car bomb and he lost some of his hearing; and the IED left shrapnel in his left eye and badly damaged his ears. Nevertheless, after the IED exploded, he emerged from his destroyed Stryker with the rest of the wounded crew, ready to fight against the ambush that often followed such IED attacks.

His keen eyes as a sniper had protected his comrades, and occasionally an embedded journalist like Michael Yon. He was also instrumental in finding and helping wounded children.

And yet, Walt had a problem. Michael Yon explains:

While Walt lay in the hospital the second time, with bomb fragments in his left eye, the first thing he said to his commander LTC Erik Kurilla was that he was worried about losing the chance to become a US citizen. Although his citizenship ceremony in Baghdad was only a few days away, Walt wouldn’t make it. After this latest IED nearly blew him asunder, he’d be on a fast plane home before then. Problem was home was not officially home, and his green card had expired while he was off to war. I joked with Walt that he was lucky INS didn’t raid his place in Iraq and drag him away. (INS would have had to win a firefight against his platoon and then the entire battalion before that would happen.)

Now, just because he was scheduled to be sworn in during a citizenship ceremony, don't assume that the INS (now the USCIS, the misleadingly labeled United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) would automatically reschedule Gaya for another ceremony when he got back to the U.S. That would be the obvious and logical thing, but USCIS is neither. It is arbitrary, capricious, and at times driven more by personal interests and vendettas than by any coherent or sane set of rules.

Back home, [Gaya] was still worried; being a twice-wounded war veteran might not carry cache with bureaucrats, and he knew it.

He was right; it didn't. USCIS did not give him a new date to be sworn in.

Remember, my own application sat at that same point -- waiting to be scheduled for swearing in -- for two years; it was only by the intervention of my congressman that I finally got an appointment for the ceremony.

But you would think that a wounded Iraqi vet, who only missed his ceremony because he was lying in a hospital bed with shrapnel in his eye, would get prompt attention from the wretched USCIS. If you think that, you've been fooled into believing they actually care -- either about immigrants or even about American security. For months, nobody at USCIS did anything or took the slightest interest in the fate of Sgt. Walt Gaya, not even when AP reporter Tony Castaneda wrote a story, and Gaya's case gained massive publicity in the U.S.

Fortunately for him (and for his adopted country), his commander, LTC Erik Kurilla, who had been shot again, was sent to a hospital near the one where Gaya was staying. Thanks to Kurilla's help, the papers finally went through. Walt is now a naturalized American citizen.

Sadly, many "green card troops" face similar problems. The legal immigration system in this country is an absolute disgrace. They admit some people who should never get in, and they expel other legal immigrants simply because they get laid off; immigration often won't allow someone on a work visa to get another job, even if one is offered.

They extend citizenship to some favored immigrants after a brief period of no difficulty; but others have to wait years just to get their swearing-in ceremonies, even after satisfying all requirements.

Soldiers who miss their ceremonies because of wounds suffered in the line of duty get swallowed up by the bureaucracy, lost and forgotten by the very people whose freedom the soldiers nearly died preserving -- a freedom not extended to the soldier until his commander brings the full weight of the Army on his side.

Immigrants are rarely told what they must do, what forms they need to fill out, what they need to bring with them -- and even when they are told, the requirements change without warning or notice; they are sent away for not binging some document they were never ordered to bring.

Nobody has any idea how long the process will take, or even what has become of the immigrant's file. They cannot tell the immigrant what stage he is at or what he still needs to do. They are rude and dismissive, they don't answer questions, and they shout at immigrants like prison guards bellowing orders at convicts.

Even getting an attorney doesn't help. You need an guardian angel, like a congressman -- or the commander of the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry -- to even gain the attention of the USCIS. And so far as anyone can tell, not one single word of either the House immigration bill or the Senate version fixes this fatally flawed agency.

Wouldn't it have been a shame if we had let a war hero, such as Walt Gaya, become illegal -- simply because he'd been too busy fighting for our freedom to rush home and file his immigration papers?

Hatched by Sachi on this day, June 1, 2006, at the time of 3:00 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

May 31, 2006

What Samuelson Didn't Tell You About What the Senate Didn't Tell You - UPDATED

How many immigrants over the next twenty years?

UPDATE: See below.

Captain Ed posted an intriguing mystery today about the projected increase in legal immigration under the just-passed Senate immigration bill, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (CIRA). This has been the forgotten story of immigration reform; and the mystery, of course, is how much of an increase there will actually be.

(This is a "numbers" thing, so I'm in hog heaven -- meaning no offense to our kosher viewers!)

Any comprehensive bill that passes through both the Senate and the House will certainly not entail the same increases in immigration as projected for the CIRA; the House will surely cut back on a lot. But it's likewise undeniable that there will be some increase in legal immigration even in the joint bill. Thus, CIRA represents the high end of the range of immigration increase.

The low end is what we would get if nothing else passes, just under current law. The actual projected number will be somwhere in between these two figures.

The Captain's Quarters post links both to the celebrated Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation -- who has recalculated his estimates, but is still wildly overheated in his fear of excess immigration -- and also to a columnist for the Washington Post, Robert Samuelson, giving us dueling Bobs.

The Rector link is to the same article we linked earlier (twice); Rector has simply added the following correction at the top:

(Update: On Tuesday, May 16, the Senate passed Sen. Jeff Bingaman's (D-NM) amendment to S. 2611 that significantly reduced the number of legal immigrants who could enter under the bill's "guest worker" program. As a result of this change, our estimate of the number of legal immigrants who would enter the country or would gain legal status under S. 2611 falls from 103 million to around 66 million over the next 20 years.)

Rector doesn't give us any explanation of how he arrived at his figure of 66 million new immigrants. But I think we can suss it out from the innards of his article.

Rector notes in the original part of the article that:

The figure of 103 million new legal immigrants is based on the assumption that immigration under the guest worker program would grow at 10 percent per year.... If immigration under the H-2C program did not increase at all for two decades but remained fixed at the initial level of 325,000 per year, total legal immigration under CIRA would be 72 million over twenty years....

(He links to some cool and colorful charts here, for the visually minded.)

But of course, not only did the Bingaman amendment stop the automatic increases in the H-2C guest worker program, it also lowered the number per year from 325,000 to 200,000. When I apply this reduction to the 72 million figure, using Rector's own figures for H-2C workers plus their spouses and children, I get an increase in immigration of 64 million (to which Rector added a couple of million to grow on, I reckon).

However, another amendment, also by Bingaman, which passed on May 27th, caps the total number of work-related green cards to 650,000 per year, including spouses and children; Rector had earlier estimated that number as 990,000 per year, which knocks another 4.6 million off the total.

Thus, using the Rector Ratios, using his analysis modified for the two Bingaman amendments, total immigration under CIRA would increase by 59.5 million, not 66 million (or his original estimate of 103 million).

So much for Rector. What about Samuelson?

Robert Samuelson -- whose main interest appears to be selecting for high-skilled instead of low-skilled immigrants -- veered off today to fret about total immigration levels in general. He is not as alarmist as Robert Rector, but he still estimates a much larger increase in legal immigration than does Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA, 96%), writing for the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), about which more anon.

Here is Samuelson in the current column:

The Senate passed legislation last week that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) hailed as "the most far-reaching immigration reform in our history." You might think that the first question anyone would ask is how much it would actually increase or decrease legal immigration. But no. After the Senate approved the bill by 62 to 36, you could not find the answer in the news columns of The Post, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Yet the estimates do exist and are fairly startling. By rough projections, the Senate bill would double the legal immigration that would occur during the next two decades from about 20 million (under present law) to about 40 million.

So Rector calculates 66 million; his own figures, when one includes the second Bingaman amendment, actually work out to 59.5 million; and Samuelson comes in with a modest 40 million. Under current law, without any immigration reforms, most believe there would be about 20 million new immigrants in the next 20 years.

We've started to set our boundaries: the increase in immigration over the next two decades, assuming comprehensive immigration reform passes, will be more than 20 million (that's just under current law) and less than 66 million. If we believe R. Samuelson instead of the somewhat hyperventilating R. Rector, it would be less than 40 million, giving us a range of 20 million.

But where did Samuelson get the 40 million figure he touts?

The doubling of legal immigration under the Senate bill that I cited at the outset comes from a previously unreported estimate made by White House economists.

Alas, that estimate remains unreported, because Samuelson does not give any citation for it. He also mentions the CBO estimate, but he doesn't report that even to the extent of quoting it. That one, however, I was able to find.

Sen. Charles Grassley is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and he took a look at the expected cost of the CIRA, as an official resource for members of Congress to use before voting on any final bill. As part of that estimate, he needed to project how many new immigrants would arrive due to the bill.

UPDATE: This part of my calculation was off, because I failed to notice that Grassley was only looking 10 years, not 20 years forward. It's off, thus, by about 7.8 million, which I will add here....

Grassley -- no friend of CIRA, which he voted against -- estimated for the CBO an increase of 7.8 million [actually, 15.6 million] new immigrants over and above the 20 million who would come here under current law. That would give an upper bound of [35.5 million], and a range of [15.5 million].

Thus, if we believe Charles Grassley, we're only talking about adding an additional [35.5 million] new legal immigrants under CIRA, against the background of 20 million we would add even without CIRA. That means an increase of about [78%] -- significant, but hardly the catastrophic level projected by Rector, and even below the figure estimated by Samuelson.

(Captain Ed is concerned not only about immigration but about the total increase in United States population; he writes:

That level of immigration [the Samuelson numbers -- the Mgt] would be the equivalent of adding eight Minnesotas to the nation within a generation without adding any more territory, and that doesn't even take into account the concomitant growth through births.

(However, the concomitant growth through births is zero, since we're hovering at exactly replacement rate right now, 2.09 births per mother; since that number is probably dropping -- though it's not likely to hit the historic low of 1.77 in 1980 -- we might end up actually losing native-born population... were it not for immigration, the US could eventually find itself in the same dilemma as Europe, with too few people to sustain their GDP -- although we're unlikely ever to be as bad off as they are now, with fertility rates in the 1.6s.)

So there you have it. The likely range, I believe, is the low-end one, since the Samuelson projection is invisible (you can't find out any information about it), and the Rector projection uses highly dubious assumptions, each of which tends to push the total up to ludicrous heights.

Thus, we should expect the actual increase of legal immigration due to reform to be somewhere south of [15.5 million] over two decades, assuming a comprehensive bill actually passes. That is the projection that appears to be both rational and defensible. Make of it what you will.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 31, 2006, at the time of 7:34 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

May 27, 2006

Matthew Dowd: Americans, Republicans, Conservatives Support Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Matthew Dowd, GOP poller extraordinaire, writes that the ultra-hardline conservatives who insist that the American people demand "enforcement only" and hate the "amnesty" of the Senate bill have it exactly backwards. In fact:

Dowd's memo says that an internal RNC poll conducted by Jan Van Louhuzen finds that "overwhelming support exists for a temporary worker program. 80% of all voters, 83% of Republicans, and 79% of self-identified conservatives support a temporary worker program as long as immigrants pay taxes and obey the law."

More, from the RNC internal poll: "When voters are given the choice of other immigration proposals, strengthening enforcement with a tamper-proof identity card (89% among all voters, 93% among GOP), various wordings of a temporary worker program (the highest at 85% among all voters, 86% among GOP), and sending National Guard troops to the border (63% among all voters, 84% among GOP) score the highest among both all voters and Republican voters."

Also: "Voters don't consider granting legal status to those already here amnesty."

Hm. So... you mean that maybe the hysterical Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL, 96%) might actually be misinformed when he says that he speaks for "the base?"

Captain Ed posted on this; that's where I saw it. But it doesn't seem to be getting much coverage from most of the conservative bloggers.

And that's too sad; isn't it better to confront the strongest arguments against one's position? Isn't truth more important than any one person's "position" on an issue?

I think a principled response from someone who opposes the Senate bill would be to say something like:

I don't buy this argument; the GOP rank and file understand the core of the immigration dilemma much better than the enforcement-only gang, perpetually gnashing their iron teeth like Baba Yaga, making a sound like a thousand pots and pans clattering down the chimney.

It turns out that polling by Dowd and also his analysis of major media polls aligns very well with the principled compromise that Big Lizards has advocated for months; it seems that we, not some other blogs, truly had our finger on the pulse not only of America, not only of the Republican Party, but even of self-described conservative Republicans. Not bad, even if we are toasting our own kazoo.

I think we should listen to the base... but not because they agree with me. In fact, it's the other way 'round: I changed my mind on several points of this discussion because people I respect -- members of the Republican base -- offered arguments that made a lot of sense to me.

One of the interesting points that Dowd found was that hardly anyone considers an earned path to citizenship to be "amnesty" for illegal immigrants:

Voters don’t consider granting legal status to those already here amnesty. Seventy percent (70%) of voters say illegal immigrants who have put down roots in the U.S. should be granted legal status after they go to the back of the line, pay a fine, pay back taxes, learn English, and have a clean criminal record; just 25% say that would be amnesty and we should instead impose criminal penalties on illegal immigrants in the U.S. Republican and conservative opinion is only slightly lower—68% of conservatives and 64% of Republicans support granting legal status over criminal penalties.

Voters want comprehensive reform, including a temporary worker program and legal status, not inaction. When voters are given the choice between a comprehensive reform plan of getting tough on border security and a temporary worker program or no reform at all (below), 71% choose comprehensive reform and 19% choose no reform. Support for comprehensive reform is even higher among GOP base voters—80% of conservatives and 72% of church-going Protestants want comprehensive reform over no reform.

It's certainly possible for a principled conservative to reject Hagel-Martinez (actually, whatever bill comes out of the joint conference), regardless of how popular it is, not only among Republicans but among conservative Republicans. But at the least, such opponents should recognize and admit that an enforcement-only stance, or a "status quo" stance, will likely damage Republicans in 2006... rather the buoying them up, as some have suggested.

Americans, Republicans, and conservative Republicans actually support comprehensive immigration reform, and they will not take it lightly if the enforcement-only crowd burns down the bill, rather than acquiesce in creating a path to citizenship for the illegals already here -- as supported by 80% of Americans and over 75% of Republicans.

Cud for thinking.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 27, 2006, at the time of 6:31 AM | Comments (68) | TrackBack

May 26, 2006

Welcome Power Line Readers....

Paul Mirengoff was kind enough to post about our immigration-bill exchange. In the post, he noted that I "don't defend it in [my] email."

That is true. One of the joys of having a blog is that I needn't repeat the same arguments over and over in every missive... I can point people to Big Lizards! I wish I had done this in my e-mail to Paul, but I'll do it here.

We have discussed this issue, and in particular the Hagel-Martinez Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, in many, many posts... supporting the basic idea but often bashing particular provisions: for example, importing a permanent class of foreign workers instead of just expanding the number of actual immigrants we let in legally.

And we have also noted important changes that should have been in the bill but don't appear to be (in either the Senate or House version), such as a reform of the legal immigration system to make it less capricious and arbitrary and more rational and fair.

Here is a list:

1. A Tale of Two Cities
2. Heck, Big Lizards Can Break This Silly Logjam
3. Breaking: Senate Compromises On Immigration Reform
4. Patterico's Brilliant Idea
5. The Continental Divide
6. A Modest Proposal
7. First Impressions: Bush's Speech On Immigration
8. A Specter Is Haunting the Blogosphere...
9. The "Cost" of Illegal Immigration - and Rhetorical Dissimulation
10. Excellent Amendment: Criminals Can't Become Citizens
11. Please Fence Me In, Part Deux
12. Will Robert Rector Recalculate?
13. Perm the Temps
14. Plenty of Room for Improvement - Updated
15. Senate Passes Bill... Will Conservatives Play Dog-In-the-Manger?
16. You Are Getting Sleepy, Sleeeeeeeepy....

As you can see, Big Lizards has certainly not been ducking this issue! Sixteen posts arguing our position probably stacks up reasonably well to Power Line, especially considering that they have three brilliant folks arguing their side, and I'm the only member of the Big Lizards team arguing ours (Sachi is more interested in Iraq and country music).

It's not that we have no arguments for our position; it's just that I didn't want to try to shoehorn them into an e-mail.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 26, 2006, at the time of 3:44 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 25, 2006

You Are Getting Sleepy, Sleeeeeeeepy....

I reckon we have to add a new category: argumentum per repetitio, or the Snark Syllogism, from the famous Lewis Carroll poem (which Carroll subtitled "an Agony in Eight Fits"):

Or, in some cases, five times in a single paragraph:

The problem is not just the bill's amnesty provision, though the amnesty provision is profoundly unjust and misguided. Thomas Sowell, for example, has explored the amnesty issue in what is now a series of three devastating columns: "Bordering on fraud (1)," "Bordering on fraud (2)" and "Bordering on fraud (3)." Moreover, as the Meese column demonstrates, the current amnesty proposal repeats the framework of the 1986 amnesty that helped bring us to our present pass.

Toss in a bracketing pair of amnesties on top and bottom, and that makes seven times. Whew!

Let's have a show of hands... can anybody here guess what one word Scott would use to describe legalization of illegal immigrants? Take your time....

As the doddering former Sen. Foghorn Leghorn -- sorry, I meant Fritz Hollings -- might have said, "they's too much, Ah say, they's too much amnestyin' goin' on roun' heah!"

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 25, 2006, at the time of 4:57 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Senate Passes Bill... Will Conservatives Play Dog-In-the-Manger?

Although the Senate has passed its version of the immigration bill, we really have no idea what the final product will look like. The House bill is so different that the resulting merger will be barely recognizable as the offspring of either.

Some, however, don't want the problem addressed at all. If they can't get everything they want, the prefer everybody gets nothing at all. Sen. Jess Sessions (R-AL), for example, would much prefer there be no border fence at all, if the price is that illegals already here ever get normalized:

“We’ve had some good debate in the Senate,” said Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, who is a fierce critic of the measure. “But it’s still not fixed, in my opinion, in a whole number of ways. What really needs to be done is for the bill to be pulled down.”

Here is something for the critics to ponder... if this bill is not enacted this Congress, it will be enacted in the next, which begins in January. But the 110th Congress will be more liberal than the 109th -- and especially so if the 109th fails to enact immigration reform.

Time is not on your side. Negotiate now in strength -- or be prepared to haggle tomorrow from weakness.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 25, 2006, at the time of 3:59 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

May 24, 2006

Plenty of Room for Improvement - Updated

In defending the basic outline of the Hagel-Martinez immigration bill, Big Lizards does not want to leave the impression that we think the bill is perfect. In fact, we eagerly await negotiations with the House of Representatives; there are elements in the House bill that we hope prevail.

For example, the House bill authorizes 700 miles of fence, rather than the slightly less than 400 miles in the Senate bill. The Senate bill, however, adds 500 miles of vehicle barriers: the best of both bills would be 700 miles of fence plus 500 miles of barriers.

Second, Real Clear Politics Blog reports that the repayment of back taxes allows illegals to get by with only repaying three years of back taxes... even if they have a longer history of tax evasion.

Tom Bevan quotes a column of sorts by Charles Grassley, which he posted on his website (I guess that makes it more like a blogpost!):

Taxes -- Under the bill, illegal aliens get an option to only have to pay three of their last five years in back taxes. Law-abiding American citizens do not have the option to pay some of their taxes. The bill would treat lawbreakers better than the American people. The bill also makes the IRS prove that illegal aliens have paid their back taxes. It will be impossible for the IRS to truly enforce this because they cannot audit every single person in this country.

I'm not sure about the last couple of sentences; they seem completely incoherent. But we certainly agree with the firebrand (who hates any sort of bill beyond mass deportations) that illegals who haven't been paying their taxes should be held to account for all of them, not just the last three years.

(Assuming this is true, of course; I haven't read the bill, and due to past behavior, I'm not necessarily willing to trust Grassley to stick to the truth in a debate.)

And of course, we'd rather see the "guest workers" be actual immigrants, people whose intent is to live the rest of their lives in the United States and become citizens... rather than a permanent underclass of foreign nationals imported as cheap labor, as Europe is doing. True, Mexicans are not much like Algerians or Moroccans or Philippine Moslems; but they're also not much like Americans.

There is great room for negotiation on this bill, many things that can be -- and should be -- changed. But there is no chance for dropping any of the big three:

• Secure the border with a real fence;
• Allow more people to enter the country, either as guest workers or immigrants, to continue doing jobs that need doing, but that Americans won't do (the "spillway");
• Do something to regularize the millions of illegals already here.

No bill that excludes any of these three has a prayer of passing through Congress... and not to act at all would be a catastrophe of both policy and politics.

So instead of railing against those elements that are deal-breakers, let's focus on trying to make the bill better: to increase whatever part you see as beneficial to make the bill, on the whole, a deal we can live with.

UPDATE, a few minutes later: Mary Katharine Ham, guest blogging on Hugh Hewitt, reports on a teleconference between Ed Meese and a group of conservative bloggers about the immigration bill, and about Meese's New York Times op-ed today opposing it, "An Amnesty by Any Other Name ...." The conference was run by Matt Spaulding of the Heritage Foundation.

Let's see if we've grasped the essentials here: a group that opposes what it's pleased to call "amnesty" for illegals invites a speaker who opposes what he calls "amnesty" to speak to a bunch of conservative bloggers -- who oppose what they call "amnesty." And by golly, after thrashing out those differences, they finally all concur that they must oppose what they call "amnesty" for illegals!

It seems that Big Lizards must once again resort to the all-purpose, industrial-sized Robert Anton Wilson, "the Persecution and Assassination of the Parapsychologists as Performed by the Inmates of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Under the Direction of the Amazing Randi," Right Where You Are Sitting Now, And/Or Press, 1982, p. 67.

Wilson channels the voice of Lemuel Gulliver, supposed author of Jonathan Swift's classic Gulliver's Travels:

Though we did like the fact that Meese came out in favor of rationalization of the legal immigration system:

Meese agreed that the goal of any plan should be to make our legal immigration process quicker and more able to meet needs of immigrants and employers. He also stressed that immigrants don't come into the country bearing hats that indicate whether they're dangerous or not, so increased enforcement has to be part of the plan.

One out of two ain't bad. For a ballplayer, batting .500 would be spectacular!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 24, 2006, at the time of 1:51 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack

May 22, 2006

Perm the Temps

Last Thursday, May 18th, Mark Steyn completely changed my mind about a guest-worker program.

He was being interviewed by Hugh Hewitt (as is Hugh's wont every Thursday), and Steyn made this argument:

HH: Well, since we spoke on Monday night, I've been thinking about your condemnation of guest worker program. And I think that resonates with people, Mark Steyn, as they begin to think about a permanent underclass called in to work. And I think it's ringing a bell that reminds us of Europe.

MS: Well, you don't have to just talk about Europe, where I think it has been a disaster. I mean, you talk about relatively benign societies that don't make the news.

Fiji...a century ago, the British imported, essentially, a guest worker class to Fiji. Indian workers. And what happened was that eventually, the population rose, and I'm quoting off the top of my head here, but it's about like 46, 48 Indians to native Fijians. And as a result, that country has become tribal and profoundly unstable.

[I'm not sure what Steyn is trying to say here; according to the CIA World Factbook, the Fijian population is 51% Fijian, 44% Indian, and 5% Everybody Else. -- the Mgt.]

And if you look at any...even the most benign bi-cultural societies are profoundly unstable.

This is not an immigration issue. When you have up to maybe a fifth of the population of the United States as a special illegal class, mainly from one other society in the world, that is not an immigration issue. Immigration is a quite separate thing.

I would like first to make a big distinction: Steyn referred to a bi-cultural society... not merely a bilingual one. There are a number of stable bilingual societies; Switzerland, for example. But Switzerland is not bi-cultural: the German, French, and Italian cantons of Switzerland are certainly not blowing each other up... but that may be because they are all by and large the same culture: Western European.

If there were a section of Switzerland that was almost exclusively occupied by Bosnians or Kurds, it would be another story.

What Steyn argues is that Mexico's culture is sufficiently different from America's that it is deadly to have a permanent, floating population of people here who think of themselves not as Americans -- not even as proto-Americans -- but as Mexicans in exile.

Who are these foreign nationals? Many are already here illegally, while most are here legally on perpetually renewed work visas. These ex-pats, whom we will call "guest workers," assuredly came here originally just to work. They didn't think of themselves as an invading army of infiltrators.

The problem is what happens to them after they arrive: they are immediately set upon by activists from MEChA and La Raza. These serpents begin whispering fantasies of "Aztlán" into the ears of our (legal or illegal) guests, telling them that everything from deep inside Oregon to the Rio Grande, from Texarkana to the Pacific, is really theirs, it really "belongs to Mexico," and Mexico should "take it back."

(By the way, the word "reconquista," referring to taking back the American Southwest, is generally not used by Chicano activists that I've seen; I think it's a misunderstanding. Chicanos mostly talk about Aztlán; I've only heard reconquista from those opposing them.)

The truly goofy part of this is that Mexico never actually controlled California in any real sense. They claimed they did, following their independence in 1821; and the U.S. went along with the gag (since it didn't concern us at that time). In the mid-1820s, Mexico City started sending governors to the former Spanish colony... but Californios (both Spanish- and English-speaking) simply ignored them, just as they had by and large ignored the colonial governors immediately preceding them: they ran their ranchos, trapped beaver in the Sierras, and lived more or less placidly.

There were also Californios who declared themselves governors of California (also ignored); but the whole thing was up in the air and a big mess... until 1846, when John C. Frémont, with his rag-tag army of mountain men, scouts, and assorted riff-raff, more or less committed the United States to capturing California as part of (pretty much the end of) the Mexican-American War.

There never was any "Aztlán." The mythical idyllic kingdom was seized upon by Chicano activists in the 60s to demand that the United States turn the entire Southwest over to Mexico. In 1969, they formed el Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán -- MEChA -- the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán.

MEChA (and the National Council of La Raza "the race," founded concurrently with MEChA) act as agents provacateurs of Mexican and other Spanish-speaking immigrants (legal or otherwise). But at least an actual immigrant has somewhat of a defense: most immigrants left their home countries and journeyed to America in order to escape tyranny and poverty and find freedom and opportunity.

Telling someone who fled what he considered to be a dreadful life in Mexico that his new home should now be "returned" to Mexico -- the very place he just left! -- is likely to meet with a chilly reception... and indeed, most actual immigrants do not support groups such as MEChA and La Raza.

(Their American-born children, on the other hand, with no memory of the old country and why Mama and Papa left, are another question.)

But consider how different it is when the targets of the agit-prop are not immigrants, who made the choice to become Americans, but rather just imported workers who still think of themselves as Mexicans (or Bolivians or Venezuelans). I think Steyn is arguing -- and if he is, I have come to agree with him -- that such non-Americans may well look around California or New Mexico or Texas and say to themselves, wouldn't it be great if all this just belonged to us? If we didn't have to go work for the gringos to get a piece, but it was just ours by birthright?

From there, it's a short leap to saying, but it already is ours -- the gringos stole it from us!

We have indeed seen this sort of resentful cultural-warfare arise within a permanent underclass of imported workers who are never allowed to become citizens of the host country: most egregiously in France, Denmark, and other European countries. Riots, arson, murder, and even (potentially) acts of mass terrorism flow from just such a disconnect between people and the culture they reside inside.

Even their children are often denied full citizenship, and they tend to become even more radical than their parents.

It's a very good argument, and it has convinced me: I no longer support a "guest worker" program, as the Senate bill (and the president) advocates. But so, too is my own argument a good one: that no wall, no matter how strong, can withstand a million people trying to knock it down to get in.

In my other analogy, I still believe in the "spillway" that allows the dam to stand, rather than being overtopped and then destroyed by the rising flood of water it tries to hold back. So what is the solution?

The solution is to understand that distinction between immigrants and foreign workers: if we must have a spillway -- and we must -- then it should be in the form of an increase in the number of new immigrants we accept. And not just highly educated people (there aren't enough of them); but also those young men with families, men who may never have had much of a chance at an education or training, but who are willing to work... and who believe in the American dream of freedom and opportunity.

Let's allow more permanent immigrants to replace temporary workers. And to facilitate this, we should also waive the minimum-wage laws for new immigrants here on a work visa.

They're not forced to accept low wages; if they have skills and education, they can find better jobs. But let's allow them to accept a low-paying job, if that's all they're qualified for when they first arrive. When they manage to apply for and receive a green card, then they once again fall under the minimum-wage rules; but by then, they really should be doing something better than picking strawberries or cleaning hotel rooms.

(I oppose minimum-wage laws in general for everybody; but that would be utterly impossible to pass through Congress at this point.)

In fact, we should make such education and language skills a requirement for getting permanent residency, except for spouses of American citizens. Make immigrant applicants demonstrate not only knowledge of English, but also make them pass a high-school level examination of basic knowledge, not only in American history and civics but also math, science, and everything else a typical high-school student must master before getting a diploma in forty-nine of the fifty states.

Let the new immigrants take those jobs that "Americans won't perform" (which is actually true; Americans will not, not even at sharply increased wages). Let them take the jobs at the same rates that temporary guests now receive; it's better than no job at all. And make sure they know that if they learn English and get an education, they can certainly find much better jobs... and do a much better job of supporting their families and giving their niños better lives.

But there appears to be great confusion about this among the "movement conservatives." On the one hand, conservatives seem to accept Steyn's basic point: that it's horrifically dangerous to import hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals into America, people with no intention of ever becoming citizens.

But how do we square the Steyn Syllogism with the Kyl amendment, whose defeat was mourned by conservatives across the country? Here is the Washington Post:

The Senate killed an amendment that would have denied a chance for permanent status and eventual citizenship to illegal immigrants who have been in the country less than five years and to any future immigrants who enter the country under the guest-worker program.

Opponents said the amendment, offered by Sen. Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican, would have gutted the bipartisan bill that allows guest workers an opportunity to seek permanent residence.

This is insane. Sen. Kyl should have offered an amendment to only admit workers who were applying for "permanent status and eventual citizenship." Kyl has it exactly backwards... and this is one reason why many see conservative opposition to the immigration bill not as solely anti-illegal, but simply anti-immigrant as well.

After all, "future immigrants who enter the country under the guest-worker program" have not necessarily yet broken any American laws. Sure, some folks might have snuck in here earlier, then snuck out again without being caught; but others haven't... and Kyl's amendment does not discriminate between them. He lumps them all together and says none of them, even those who never violated our laws, can come in as guest workers and stay as Americans.

Nor have I seen Kyl or any other conservative propose increasing the number of those admitted as immigrants in lieu of a guest-worker program; typically, they want to eliminate the latter and slash the former to the bone.

The Steyn Syllogism is inarguable, but it implies a very stark choice: either we cripple our economy by starving those businesses that currently depend upon illegal aliens (de facto "guest workers") -- or else we must consciously woo more actual immigrants to American shores by allowing them to work those jobs, even below minimum wage, while they're trying to better themselves such that they can move on up... and make room for the next wave of actual immigrants.

Let's "perm" those temps.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 22, 2006, at the time of 4:08 PM | Comments (31) | TrackBack

May 18, 2006

How to Fake a Poll

Lots of buzz about the Rasmussen poll that many -- Hugh Hewitt, for one notable example -- are touting as showing that Americans just want a border-enforcement bill only, with no guest-worker program or normalization of illegals already here.

It's possible, I suppose, that such sentiment is indeed sweeping the country, undetected by any other polling company; but you sure can't conclude that from this garbage.

The problem is twofold:

1. Rasmussen does not tell us the methodology of the poll; we don't even know whether the poll was by telephone, e-mail, or an online, internet poll (like Zogby often uses). We don't know the margin of error, which would be different for each state (and in a state like California could be quite substantial).

   Methodology makes a huge difference; it can make or break a poll. Perhaps this information is available to "premium subscribers;" I don't know, because I'm not willing to spend $349 to find out. But most polling firms actually put the methodology on the poll itself for release to the general public.

2. Much more important, however, is that the questions Rasmussen asked are biased, and the question order is calculated to move opinion rather than measure it. I would go so far as to call this a "push poll."

   It's actually shameful that a respected company like Rasmussen would resort to such tricks; I wish they had just done a straight poll, since I would really be interested in the answers to properly framed questions.

For starters, let's look at the issue whose response is being seized upon for political purposes: the border security "stick" versus the guest-worker and normalization "carrot." Here is a fair series of questions to ask, were I writing a poll instead of Rasmussen:

This would be a very fair way to gauge what people really want. Note, for example, that I avoid both the biased terms "illegal alien" and "undocumented worker": the first skews the sample against them, while the second skews the sample towards them. I use the very neutral term "lived here without permission."

These questions would have told us a lot, especially for those who did not pick either B or C in question 1 but nevertheless picked A in question 2: people who didn't want a guest-worker program or path to citizenship but were willing to accept it as part of a deal (and the corresponding scenario on the other side).

Question 4 would test whether those supporting the "carrots" consider them absolutely necessary to gain their support, or whether, if nothing else could pass, they could still accept a border-enforcement only bill.

These would be fair questions that would actually tell us something about what the public wanted -- and also what they would be willing to settle for. But that's not what Rasmussen asked. Here is the actual question:

3. Some people say it makes no sense to debate new rules for immigration until we can control our borders and enforce the existing laws. Do you agree or disagree?

What the heck does that mean? New rules for immigration? I would have no idea whether that meant a guest-worker program or different criteria for who is admitted under the legal immigration policy. Heck, for that matter, doesn't 400 miles of fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers also constitute "new rules for immigration?"

Does "control our borders and enforce the existing laws" mean build a fence first, or just that we should, right now, today, enforce existing law better -- while we continue to debate building a fence and having a guest-worker program and path to citizenship?

This is an incredibly poorly written question. Some of the respondents will take it one way, others will take it another, still others will hear it a third or fourth way. We cannot tell anything about the opinion of Americans from this stupid question.

Worse, it's question three in a series of questions; immediately preceding it is a question which sets a decidedly negative tone against immigrants in general, and especially those here illegally:

2. Some people believe that the goal of immigration policy should be to keep out national security threats, criminals, and those who would come here to live off our welfare system. Beyond that, all immigrants would be welcome. Do you agree or disagree with that goal for immigration policy?

3. Some people say it makes no sense to debate new rules for immigration until we can control our borders and enforce the existing laws. Do you agree or disagree?

Question 2 first clearly plants the idea that immigrants are coming here to suck up welfare, join criminal gangs, and commit acts of terrorism against the United States. Only then does Rasmussen ask their crappy question 3. You think the first might possibly influence response on the second?

Also, as a general rule, a question that begins "some people say" practically begs the respondent to agree. It conjures the image of some vast sea of people all saying the same thing... do you want to go with the flow, or be some kind of an oddball?

The penultimate question, despite following these two, throws the "conventional wisdom" interpretation of question 3 into a cocked hat:

4. There are currently 11 million illegal aliens living in the United States. Most have lived here for more than five years. Should the United States forcibly require all 11 million illegal aliens to leave this country?

In not a single state does a majority answer Yes to this question. Not one. Alabama had a plurality of 50% saying yes, 29% no; seven other states (Arkansas, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wyoming) had pluralities saying Yes, ranging from 49-31 in TN to 41-40 in AK -- which clearly is within any likely margin of error for a poll of 500 people.

Contrariwise, in the 25 states where a plurality said No, we should not "forcibly require all 11 million illegal aliens to leave this country," five states had a clear majority opposed, while another four have a plurality of 50%. All of the states that actually border Mexico that were polled came down against deportations (New Mexico was not polled for some reason).

The mean split among those states with a plurality saying Yes, deport is 44.6 to 36.3, for a spread of 8.4%. The mean split among those with a plurality saying No, don't deport, is 47.0 to 35.0, for a spread of 12.0%. The No-deport states are very significantly firmer in their position than the Yes-deport states. This does not particularly sound like a pool of respondents who are in the Rep. Tom Tancredo camp.

Is it really too much to ask to get an honest, legitimate poll on what people want in the bill, what they'll accept as part of a Grand Deal, and what they absolutely wouldn't take under any circumstances... rather than a biased push-poll whose purpose is to spook the herd and scuttle the deal?

It's too bad that so many in the blogosphere are quite capable of seeing the gaping flaws in some bad poll that is against their position... but will seize upon any poll that supports them, no matter how many warning signs there are that it simply isn't serious.

By the way, here are my own positions, so you can take into account my biases. I've put them behind the "slither on" vehicle barrier....

1. I support a fence, but I think it won't work without a "spillway" to siphon off those people trying to come here for legitimate reasons.

2. A guest-worker program could be that spillway; but so could an increase in the number of actual legal immigrants we accept -- those wishing to live here permanently.

   Given my druthers, I would rather the latter than the former, as I think Mark Steyn makes a very good point that "guest workers" are disturbingly similar to what so many European countries have done to very bad effect.

3. Tied for most urgent task, fully as important as "securing the border," is rationalizing the legal immigration policy so that would-be Americans have a clear "path to citizenship" (a phrase I have used for years): they would know exactly what they had to do to become permanent residents and then citizens, and about how long it would take.

   The path must be mandatory, not subject to the caprice or vindictiveness of Immigration workers. At any point, the immigrant must know what he has accomplished, what is still left to do, and how to go about completing the path to his swearing-in ceremony.

4. So long as enough guest workers or new immigrants (whichever we choose) are let into the country to satisfy the labor needs, I don't object to very harsh legal sanctions, including prison time, for employers who still hire illegals.

   If insufficient numbers are allowed in and employers simply cannot fill the jobs with legals, then I think it grossly unfair to turn the law into a business suicide pact.

5. I have no particular position on the legalization of those already here, save that it's a bad idea to allow a huge permanent underclass of resentful criminals to remain. If we cannot find a way to make them leave -- and it appears we cannot -- then it's probably marginally better to find a way to legalize them. But I'm much less concerned about this point than the others above.
6. Finally, I believe that if the GOP-controlled Congress and the Republican president do not make some significant changes to the immigration status quo, we'll be massacred on November 6th. Or at least it will be a whole heck of a lot harder.

Make of it what you will.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 18, 2006, at the time of 5:39 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

May 17, 2006

Will Robert Rector Recalculate?

Yesterday, in The "Cost" of Illegal Immigration - and Rhetorical Dissimulation, I tore into the "backgrounder" by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation which attempted to make the case (unsuccessfully, in my opinion) that we could not afford a guest-worker program. (He also attacked normalization of illegals already here, but that's a different subject.)

Rector calculated that the guest-worker program could end up costing tens of billions of dollars per year in increased welfare payments:

Because nearly all of the guest workers and their families would within a few years become eligible for government welfare and other services, the fiscal costs from the program could rival those stemming from the direct amnesty provisions of the bill.

As Rector had previously estimated -- way overestimated, again in my opinion -- the cost of normalization at $46 billion per year or more, he must have been estimating a similar cost for the guest-worker program. (In addition, like most "security-only" activists, he uses his own private definition of the word "amnesty;" but however churlish, that doesn't affect his calculation.)

Rector arrived at his estimate by taking the beginning annual cap on guest workers (325,000) and increasing it according to the formula in the original bill: in any year that the number of people trying to enter as guest workers exceeded the current cap, the next year's cap would automatically rise 20%.

Finally, CIRA would issue 325,000 new visas per year to "guest workers." The number of visas available could increase by 20 percent annually, reaching two million per year within ten years. By 2017, the guest worker program would have admitted some eight million new workers. Illegal aliens who have been in the country for less than two years would be eligible to become guest workers and would probably be the primary recipients of these supposedly temporary (H2C) visas. Recipients of these visas could bring spouses and children into the country immedi­ately, increasing the number of entrants over ten years well above eight million.

It is, of course manifestly absurd to assume that the availability of "guest workers" would rise limitlessly at the maximum allowable rate; does he expect the entire population of Mexico to pour into the United States, leaving 761,606 square miles of empty real estate south of the Rio Grande? At some point, probably far below "two million per year," we would reach labor saturation. The law of supply and demand has not been repealed.

But it makes little difference, because the action taken on the floor of the Senate yesterday moots Rector's argument, requiring a complete recalculation. Senators voted not only to lower the initial cap from 325,000 to 200,000, they voted to eliminate the automatic 20% rise when the cap was reached:

Today the Senate voted 69-28 to set aside an amendment by North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan to eliminate the guest-worker program from the measure. Dorgan said the program would cost Americans jobs and wages. "The guest-worker provision is about importing cheap labor,'' he said before the vote....

The Senate then backed, by a voice vote, [Jeff] Bingaman's [D-NM] amendment to reduce the number of yearly visas available to foreign workers by 40 percent and prohibit increases that may be sought by industry if the visa-cap is met in any year. [Jeff Bingaman gets a 100% rating from the ACLU -- and 12% from the American Conservative Union. -- the Mgt.]

Besides throwing Robert Rector's estimates into a cocked hat, this vote may actually cause a problem -- not in the politics; it makes it more likely to pass. Rather, it causes a problem in the policy: we may be building too small a "spillway."

The point of the guest-worker program is to take pressure off the fence and other border-security provisions. The idea is that the huge majority of people who cross illegally do so just to find work. These illegals do not cause all that much damage by their existence here (though they may cause damage sneaking in across private property); alas, real bad guys, especially terrorists, may hide among the vast number of illegals, making it virtually impossible to detect them.

So long as hundreds of thousand of people are being denied entry, they will "push" against the wall. As I've said many times, no wall, no matter how strong, can stand against a million people trying to knock it down.

The only way to stop the illegal entry is to build a gate in the wall, a "spillway in the dam": we need to separate out those illegals who just want to work and shunt them through a legal guest-worker program; that way, those humans still trying to enter illegally -- assuming the honest can enter legally -- must be presumed to be dishonest.

We can use far more draconian interdiction methods against presumed criminals and terrorists than we can against presumed decent, hardworking families that include women and children.

But all this depends upon one key point: that those coming here just to work are, in fact, able to get in and work. If not, then the spillway is too small, the water builds up behind the dam, and eventually, the dam bursts.

The whole point of the guest-worker program is not to give work to poor Mexicans; I really couldn't care less about them. (Go ahead, call me heartless. Believe me, I've been called much worse.) What does matter is that we need to relieve enough pressure on the fence or the fence will fail.

I worry that 200,000 a year with no increases, even if the cap is clearly shown to be too small, will not relieve enough pressure. After two years of backlog, there may be just as many trying to enter illegally as there are right now.

I hope this is revisited soon: it would be a terrible shame if an otherwise decent, comprehensive bill is crippled from the very beginning... by an ultra-liberal Democrat, of course.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 17, 2006, at the time of 5:14 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

Please Fence Me In, Part Deux

Hugh Hewitt will be very happy, and with good reason: the Senate just overwhelming approved the Sessions amendment to the immigration bill, requiring 370 miles of actual fence, plus 500 miles of vehicle barriers. The lopsided vote -- 83 to 16 -- sends a very, very strong signal that the Senate is finally aboard and serious.

I can't find a roll-call (it may not be up on Thomas yet), but even assuming all 55 Republicans voted for it, that would mean that at a minimum, 29 of 45 Democrats must have voted for the fence, too. That's 64%.

Then Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) proposed one of the "killer amendments," one that would remove all of the guest-worker and normalization sections from the bill. A huge argument erupted over the meaning of the word "amnesty," with one side insisting upon the actual meaning of the word in law and philology, and the other insisting, in true Humpty Dumpty fashion, upon a special definition that they just now made up.

I complain about this irritating tactic of "argument by redefinition" when the Democrats do it; should I do less when Republicans resort to the same, "progressive" dodge?

But it's a moot point: minutes ago, the Senate rejected the Vitter amendment 66-33... which means (for fairness sake) that, even assuming all 44 Democrats and one "Independent" who caucuses with the Democrats (Triple-J) voted against the Vitter amendment, at a minimum, 21 of 55 Republicans (38%) must also have voted against stripping out these "carrots."

This is going very well:

• Putting the fence and the barriers into the bill makes it far more likely that the House will be willing to accept the compromise;
• Leaving in the guest-worker provision will take enough pressure off the wall that it will actually work (that's the "spillway in the dam," in my earlier analogy);
• Leaving in the normalization means that the Democrats will see themselves getting something, so they will be less likely to scuttle the deal on procedural votes; and it will mollify enough liberal or moderate Republicans that majority is attainable.

It looks like this bill is now destined for passage; and aside from a handful of representatives -- most of them named King, for some unfathomable reason -- I haven't heard from any of the movers and shakers in the House that the Senate bill was dead, or that they would refuse to agree to the citizenship and guest-worker provisions. (In fact, Speaker Denny Hastert, R-IL, has already said he and some other leaders would accept that... and that was before the president's widely popular speech.)

But will the policy itself work? Nobody can answer that until it happens. Those who voted for Simpson-Mazzoli in 1986 (and President Ronald Reagan, who signed it) sincerely believed that it would work, and it seems to have been a crashing failure: we had about 3 million illegals then, and twenty years later, we have 11 million.

(But did it really fail? There isn't any way to tell even that; perhaps without the Border-Patrol and employer-sanction provisions in Simpson-Mazzoli, we would have 22 million illegals by now. That's the trouble with alternate-history; how can we ever know?)

In any event, the border-security measures this time are far stronger than in 1986, and the citizenship path is much longer and involves a lot more pain and punishment for those illegals already here -- including admission of guilt, a big fine, back taxes, and so forth. And in the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (CIRA, or Hagel-Martinez), these pieces are all structured into the bill itself; they don't rely upon Democrats keeping their word.

In the 99th Congress, which enacted Simpson-Mazzoli, the Democrats controlled the House and the Republicans controlled the Senate 53-47; but in the 1986 election, the Democrats took the Senate, too... so in the 100th Congress, which would have been responsible for appropriating the money for the actual border-security measures (of which there were some, mostly penalties on employers and more Border Patrol agents and such), was entirely Democratic... and those measures never happened.

It may well be that the failures of Simpson-Mazzoli were more because the Democrats refused to implement the "sticks" than because the deal itself was flawed.

So that gives conservatives even more incentive to stay involved, to turn out in droves on November 6th, and to make absolutely certain that both houses of Congress remain firmly in Republican hands... thus to make equally certain that the "sticks" of Hagel-Martinez get enacted along with the "carrots."

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 17, 2006, at the time of 1:34 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

May 16, 2006

Excellent Amendment: Criminals Can't Become Citizens

The Senate is currently working through a series of amendments. Some are bad; some are really ugly, like Byron Dorgan's (D-N.D.) attempt to prevent "foreigners and recent illegal immigrants" (!) from signing up to be guest workers; one presumes Dorgan wants the guest-worker program limited to Americans only.

But some of the amendments are really, really good. For example, this one:

Compromise averted a third showdown, when the bill's critics and supporters agreed to deny illegal immigrants any chance at citizenship if they had been convicted of three misdemeanors or a felony.

The last time this came up, I think I remember it was the Senate that killed it; so it's a great leap forward (er, maybe I should use a different expression) that the Senate is now aboard in saying that we only want to extend citizenship to assimilated immigrants with American virtues, not thugs with American vices.

I'm sure the House will have no objection to this provision.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 16, 2006, at the time of 5:06 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

The "Cost" of Illegal Immigration - and Rhetorical Dissimulation

Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation -- an organization that has long derided any immigation plan other than pure enforcement as "amnesty" -- has put up a "backgrounder" study on the foundation's website. He purports to show that any immigration plan that offers "amnesty" (by which Rector means any path to citizenship whatsoever) will be a huge drag on the American economy. The key graf:

An immigration plan proposed by Senators Mel Martinez (R-FL) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE), the Com­prehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S. 2611) would provide amnesty to 9 to 10 million illegal immigrants and put them on a path to citizenship. Once these individuals become citizens, the net addi­tional cost to the federal government of benefits for these individuals will be around $16 billion per year. Further, once an illegal immigrant becomes a citizen, he has the right to bring his parents to live in the U.S. The parents, in turn, may become citizens. The long-term cost of government benefits to the parents of 10 million recipients of amnesty could be $30 billion per year or more. In the long run, S. 2611, if enacted, would be the largest expansion of the welfare state in 35 years.

Rector's intent is to make the economic case against any form of guest-worker program, any path to citizenship for anyone currently here illegally, and -- in my opinion -- against immigration in general. But how solid a case does he really make?

Let's take a look.

"Amnesty" or "plea bargain?"

Let's get one side issue out of the way before starting: Rector consistently uses "amnesty" almost as a synonym for citizenship; in fact, he uses the word "amnesty" forty-one times in this article, starting with the first word of the title.

"Amnesty" means a general pardon prior to trial or conviction. A pardon is "the excusing of an offense without exacting a penalty : remission of punishment."

• In law, when the president pardons someone, the offense is erased as if it had never occurred;.

  According to Black's Law Dictionary, "it releases punishment and blots out the existence of guilt, so that in the eyes of the law, the offender is as innocent as if he had never committed the offense."

• When the IRS has a "tax amnesty," you are allowed to repay back taxes with no penalty whatsoever, often even without interest;
• When states or cities declare "firearm amnesties," the same holds true: you can turn in anything, and you won't be arrested or prosecuted;
• When President Carter and Congress declared an amnesty in 1977 of Vietnam draft-dodgers, they were allowed to return to the United States with no charges of any kind.

An amnesty means the crime is "blotted out," as if it never occurred. But in fact, under Hagel-Martinez, the illegals are punished; the crime of illegal entry is not blotted out: they must admit guilt and pay a substantial fine.

The word for the executive reducing a sentence already imposed on someone already convicted is clemency, or perhaps commutation. But what we're really discussing is when a person voluntarily admits guilt in exchange for a reduced sentence. The term for that is a plea bargain.

But I reckon "plea bargain" isn't enraging enough to create a mass, emotional uprising... hence they've settled upon "amnesty." It may be completely wrongly used, but I suppose the ends must justify the means.

Cost in perspective

First, a bit of background of our own. The current U.S. budget is about $2.6 trillion; so an increase of $46 billion at some point in the future -- the first $10 billion about six or seven years from now, the $30 billion (assuming it happens, see below) about 10-15 years after that -- amounts to 1.7% of the budget... and could be paid for by just a slight reduction in any of a number of other areas.

Second, Rector clearly assumes (from the fact that he doesn't even mention it) that we will do absolutely nothing to get a handle on spending on entitlement programs over the next 16 to 22 years. This in itself is a rather breathtaking assumption: since the Heritage Foundation itself has recommended a number of things we could do -- the easiest and most obvious being shifting Medicare from a defined benefit to a defined contribution program -- one must conclude that Robert Rector believes that the Heritage Foundation will have no influence whatsoever on American economic policies... a stunning admission of impotence from a formerly influential body!

From A To-Do List Before Spending Hits Tipping Point, by Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner, December 20th, 2005:

Of course, to really control Medicare spending, lawmakers will have to fundamentally change the program. It's time to design a new system based on personal choice, market competition and light regulation. Such a system should be a "defined contribution" system, not the "defined benefit" system we have now.

That means the government would agree to contribute a certain amount to fund each beneficiary's coverage. This would create a market for private health plans that would compete for customers by offering attractive benefit packages. It also would let seniors keep their pre-retirement health care plan if they're happy with it or design new coverage options tailored to their needs.

Such a defined-contribution plan also would allow lawmakers to control costs. Defined-benefit programs don't work because they're like a blank check -- each new medical advance creates a new government requirement. A defined-contribution plan would allow seniors to enjoy those advances without sticking Uncle Sam with the big bills.

Several states have already begun experimenting with a defined contribution Medicare plan, rather than a defined benefit plan... notably Florida and South Carolina, two states with very large numbers of retirees. And according to yet another Heritage Foundation paper, these state reforms -- made possible by the federal waiver system for state experimentation pushed through Congress by President Bush -- are expected to dramatically reduce Medicare costs, starting almost immediately and into the future.

From the same article I quoted above:

There are plenty of places to make cuts right now. For example:

* The Congressional Budget Office has published a "Budget Options" book identifying $140 billion in potential cuts.

* The federal government spends $23 billion annually on silly special interest projects such as grants to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and efforts to combat teenage "goth" culture in Blue Springs, Mo.

* Washington spends $60 billion annually on corporate welfare, versus $43 billion on homeland security.

And that's just for starters.

Right. So if we could make just 20% of the cuts envisioned in each of these areas, that's $41.2 billion per year right there. The Medicare changes that the Heritage Foundation proposes, along with Health Savings Accounts, would save tens of billions of dollars in Medicare costs almost immediately, a savings that will continue to rise with every passing year.

Potential spending cuts dwarf any increased cost from a guest-worker program or normalizing illegals already here... a cost that even Rector admits would be at least partially mitigated by increased tax revenues from the newly-legalized former illegals.

So Rector's objection is a non-issue from the beginning. The real issue is general control of spending: if we do that, any increase in spending related to illegals made legal will be easily absorbed; if we do not gain control of spending, then immigration won't make any difference -- we're sunk anyway.

Convictions make convicts

But even more than that, the Heritage study demonstrates a rather colossal disdain for the ability of new legal immigrants to support their own families. For example, Rector notes that when adult immigrants (legal or otherwise) become citizens, they are allowed to bring both their parents to the United States as legal immigrants; some of those parents will themselves eventually become citizens.

He estimates, probably not unreasonably, that about 10% of those immigrants' parents will eventually come here and become citizens (though he assumes that every adult immigrant has two living parents who will want to come here, which is not reasonable at all; but let that lie). Thus, he guesses that legalizing 10 million immigrants will eventually produce 20 million parents coming here from the old country, of whom two million will eventually become citizens.

How many does he estimate will immediately go on welfare then? Oh, approximately two million:

If ten million current illegal immigrants were granted amnesty and citizenship under CIRA, as many as twenty million foreign born parents would be given the right to immigrate to the U.S. Once in the U.S., the immigrant parents would receive social services and government funded medical care, much of it paid for through the Medicaid disproportionate share program. [Note, not "might receive" but "would receive." -- the Mgt.]

These immigrant parents coming to the U.S. would also be eligible to apply for citizenship themselves. On attaining citizenship, most would become eligible for benefits from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Medicaid programs, at an average cost of over $18,000 per person per year. While it is true that the language require­ments of the citizenship test would serve as a bar­rier to immigrant parents becoming citizens, the tests are not very difficult and the financial rewards of citizenship would be very great. If only ten per­cent of the parents of those receiving amnesty under CIRA became citizens and enrolled in SSI and Medicaid, the extra costs to government would be over $30 billion per year.

What exactly is Rector saying? Medicare is available to every senior or disabled person, regardless of income; but he is talking here about Medicaid:

Medicaid is available only to certain low-income individuals and families who fit into an eligibility group that is recognized by federal and state law.

In other words, Medicaid -- unlike Medicare -- is a welfare program. So is SSI, by the way, another federal payment made only to low-income citizens and legally resident aliens, brought to us courtesy President Richard Nixon.

Perhaps I'm not being exactly fair to Mr. Rector. Maybe he's not saying that 10% of the parents will become citizens, and of those who do, 100% will immediately go on welfare. Maybe he means that 40% or 50% will become citizens, and of those, only 10% will go on welfare.

How many does he think will become citizens, with or without welfare? He doesn't say; nor does he give us any reason to believe that the intersection is 10% of all immigrating parents of immigrants... despite the fact that his entire calculation critically depends upon this estimate.

Perhaps I can be pardoned -- or granted clemency -- for believing that in fact, Rector by and large assumes that the only reason these parents of immigrants would ever become citizens themselves is to suck up welfare benefits; it fits the tone of the rest of his piece.

I think it very plausible that only 10% of elderly parents of adult immigrants might eventually become citizens themselves; but the idea that every last one of them can't wait to jump aboard the "welfare wagon" is insulting, offensive, and absurd..

For one point, you're an "adult" in this country at age 18; in many Third-World countries, people have children at a much younger age. Thus, a great many of those parents brought in by immigrants will be in their forties and fifties and used to hard work. Does Rector think they loafed their time away in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvadore, Armenia, and Ukraine? Why wouldn't a substantial portion of these parents find work themselves?

May immigrants come here and start their own businesses: stores, restaurants, meat markets, dance instruction, computer software... who knows? Family-owned small businesses have become the backbone of the American economy, and the fastest growing segment thereof. Such businesses often hire the whole family, and nobody is on welfare.

And does Rector assume from the outset that all attempts at assimilation will fail, that nobody among the immigrants is responsible and shares the American ethic of paying your own way and supporting your own family -- even your parents when they get old?

Does Rector thus casually assume that current immigrants are morally inferior to all the earlier generations of immigrants -- possibly even including his own parents or grandparents?

The cost of inflammatory rhetoric

This is the level to which this discussion has degenerated, where even respectable and respected institutions like the Heritage Foundation begin any discussion with a hidden, anti-immigrant bias, anger at all these foreigners coming into "our" America, and the assumption that they only come to suck up our welfare and live on Easy Street.

Good God, we deserve better from that side of the debate.

We desperately need continuing input from those for whom border security is paramount:

• We need pressure to build a real wall;
• We need more money and manpower offered for border security;
• We need much harsher penalties for employers hiring illegals once they have legal guest workers available instead;
• We need guarantees that we won't repeat the disaster of Simpson-Mazzoli in 1986 (signed by Ronald Reagan, by the way).

But when the security-side of the debate abandons the field, refusing even to engage in the effort of making a marginally good bill into a pretty good one, preferring a one-sided bill that cannot pass to a balanced bill that will... then our country -- and their own cause of border security -- is ill-served indeed.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 16, 2006, at the time of 4:22 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

May 15, 2006

A Specter Is Haunting the Blogosphere...

...the specter of absolutism.

The GOP now consists of a house divided; and as Lincoln taught, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

I admit, I am stunned and angry that my favorite writer on my favorite blog has made himself the blunt end of a battering ram that is lustily knocking down the entire temple of achievement we've built in this city on a hill for the last five years.

Here he is on the speech:

He Had His Chance...

...and he blew it. He should have given the speech I told him to. As soon as he started talking about guest worker programs and the impossibility of deporting 11 million illegals, it was all over. President Bush keeps trying to find the middle ground, on this and many other issues. But sometimes, there isn't a viable middle ground. This is one of those instances....

President Bush doesn't have many chances left to salvage his second term. After tonight, he might not have any.

No "viable middle ground." It's my way or the highway. And what is the speech that John "told him" to give? Anent immigration, it boils down to this:

So, discussion about long-term approaches to immigration will continue. But in the meantime, your priority will be securing the borders and enforcing the laws currently on the books. Which means that the crackdown on employers of illegals will be expanded. Announce some specific measures to begin securing the Mexican border, preferably including some kind of fence.

Bush did say this, of course; all of it! And there is nobody on the right, least of all Big Lizards, who does not support a dramatically increased border security... a fence, even a bigger fence than Sen. Sessions calls for; more Border Patrol; drones, sensors, even National Guard along the border. I am for this, Sachi is for it, President Bush is for it.

So what so enrages John?

The only plausible answer is that John wanted this to be the only program. He wanted Bush to announce that he was not going to pursue anything but enforcement now... and that everything else -- rationalizing the legal immigration system, guest-worker program, and normalization of those here illegally -- would have to be put off until some indefinite time in the future.

In other words, John Hinderaker is outraged and says that Bush's second term is no longer "salvageable" because Bush didn't accept the "compromise" he offered: we get everything we want today... and in a couple of years, we might talk about whether the rest of you get anything at all.

John, of course, knows that such a bill could never pass the Senate. So evidently, John prefers an enforcement-only bill that doesn't pass to a compromise bill that does.

He's right about one point: there are issues where there is no "viable middle ground." Slavery was one; we could not be a nation half slave and half free. The war on terrorism is another: either you're with us or you're with the terrorists.

There are black and white issues; but it is sheer folly to see every issue as so stark a choice, with one winner and everyone else a loser. Even day and night have a twilight between them. We must find a viable middle ground here, or we shall have no ground to stand on whatsoever... and we shall have done it to ourselves.

That sound you hear is the rumble of electoral doom, as half the GOP, like Samson, pulls the temple down upon all our heads -- their own, included.

Do they think of the other half as Philistines, because they would rather see a good compromise bill that passes and moves the ball forward... than stand fast on purity of essence, refuse to settle for anything short of "perfection," and therefore accomplishing nothing whatsoever?

The other sound you hear is the joyous ululation of the Democrats, as they watch the Republican Party tear itself apart over this issue like sharks in a feeding frenzy... because one side of the debate is unwilling to give even one angry inch:

• Bush supported the fence!
• Bush supported a crackdown on employers of illegals!
• Bush supported enforcing the existing laws!
• Bush supported ending "catch and release" of illegals!

And that wasn't enough, because he didn't come out swinging against guest workers and for mass deportation:

As soon as he started talking about guest worker programs and the impossibility of deporting 11 million illegals, it was all over.

So that's it; if the anti-immigrant side of the GOP -- fair or not, that is the impression they leave -- persists in this folly, the idea that we can round up and deport eleven million people, and that we can just seal off the border and keep all the foreigners out, then bid adieu to the House, the Senate, and the White House, and gird yourself for twenty years of absolute hell on Earth. Because if we blow this, then that's how long the Republicans will have to wander in the wilderness until we're back in power.

Twenty years of socialist misery. Twenty years of staggering tax increases. Twenty years of racial preference poured down our throats with a gasoline funnel. Twenty years of imperialist judges nullifying elections and ruling by decree.

Twenty years of increasingly savage terrorist attacks; America will be Israel under Barak.

But at least, thank God, we will have stuck to our guns and refused to compromise in any way, shape, form, manner, style, jot, or tittle.

For the love of God, people... compromise means you must give a little. There is a middle ground. And if I'm wrong, if there is not, then we are all lost -- because John's side does not have the support of the American people and will never win.

Here are our choices:

1. We settle on a reasonable compromise bill that includes both border enforcement and also immigration reform, a guest-worker program, and some eventual normalization; and we try to make it the best bill we can, given those constraints; or...
2. We rend the party, the Democrats win, and then you'll find out what "amnesty" and "open borders" really mean. And minor things like the entire war on jihadi terrorism will trampled underfoot by the Democratic thugs who seize control of our country.

And all for the want of the simple art of giving a little to get a lot.

Think. Think. Think two times, three times... and don't throw away this magnificent opportunity -- just because you only get three-quarters of a loaf instead of the whole bloody thing on a golden plate.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 15, 2006, at the time of 9:17 PM | Comments (45) | TrackBack

First Impressions: Bush's Speech On Immigration

I'm splitting my initial response to Bush's speech tonight into three sections: Content, Delivery, and the Reaction I expect it will receive.

Content

Overall, I liked the speech quite a bit. I wish President Bush had been more explicit about the fence; but he did mention it not once but twice, so there is no question he supports some amount of actual, real, physical fencing along the border.

The president unambiguously distinguished the fence from a mere "security barrier," which he prefers for the rural areas where few people are crossing now; the implication is that the barrier would be less aggressive than the fence, more like a classic vehicle-barrier -- chicanes, concrete blocks, checkpoints, maybe even automated spike-strips that can deploy in front of a vehicle trying to run the checkpoint (we use these in some places in Iraq).

So real, actual, and tough walls ("fencing") in high-traffic areas where there is a lot of illegal immigration, and a barrier in rural areas where there is some but not much illegal crossings, with those areas where there are few to no crossings covered only by a "virtual fence" (as others have called it; Bush didn't use that term) of motion detectors, infrared cameras, and Predator drones overhead (but presumably sans the Hellfire missiles.)

Also on the enforcement side, the prez noted that he had increased the Border Patrol from 9,000 when he was first inaugurated to 12,000 today; and he called for increasing them to somewhere above 18,000 -- which would more than double the 2001 level. But he will call upon governors to allocate 6,000 National Guardsmen to assist the current Border Patrol (increasing the manpower to 18,000 as soon as the state NGs come aboard) for one year; thereafter, each increase in trained and deployed Border Patrol would be matched by a decrease in the Guard.

Huh, he missed the opportunity to say, "as the Border Patrol stands up, the National Guard will stand down." (See now if Big Lizards had been writing his speeches, he would have been hounded from office long ago.)

I like this, but I don't think it's going to be very effective. Under posse comitatus, if Bush nationalizes the Guard, then they probably cannot be used on the border -- even if, as he says, they won't conduct any law enforcement operations. But if he doesn't nationalize them, it will be up to the individual governors; and some -- e.g., Arnold Schwarzenegger of my home state of California -- have already signalled they're not on board with this proposal. Maybe the feds can armtwist the governors on this; but in California's case, there may actually be more "immigration activists" opposing anything that seals off the borders to illegals than there are ordinary people who want to see an end to illegal immigration.

So you read it here first: I predict that no matter how much the feds call for state National Guard units to deploy on the border, California, Arizona, and New Mexico will not play along... at least not to the extent that Bush envisions.

Still, some is better than none; I'm sure he'll get cooperation from Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. I have no idea what Gov. Blanco of Louisiana will do: she's a liberal, but LA blacks are not exactly pro-illegal-immigration; and of course, she wants lots of federal aid -- so maybe Congress could include a federal-funding stick for non-complying states to go along with any carrots that are offered in the way of federal help to local law enforcement that works with federal cops on illegal immigration.

He discussed the guest-worker program and "normalization" of those illegals already here; and I was very pleased that he made quite a point of connecting these to border security. He hasn't read Big Lizards enough, or else he would have used my phrase: there is no wall so strong that a million people pushing won't knock it down.

But he did say that there are so many people desperate to come here that a wall and enforcement, no matter how strong, cannot keep them out. That it's imperative to reduce the number of folks trying to get in here illegally... and the only way to do that is to give them a legal way of doing so. (He also failed to use my analogy of a dam, with and without a spillway. His people really do need to get in touch with my people!)

I was disappointed that he didn't talk about rationalizing the legal immigration system, but he certainly didn't oppose it. I keep hoping that any comprehensive reform will include changing the current system -- arbitrary, byzantine, nationality-based, corrupt, and so bureaucratic it makes the Department of Motor Vehicles seem positively user-friendly -- to one that is rational, explicable, fair to everyone, clear about what prospective immigrants must do, and with an enforced time-table for response by the USCIS (the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, what used to be called the INS).

But all in all, the content of this speech is a very, very good start to a compromise bill that nobody will love -- but that everybody can live with. And that's what a compromise is, b'gad.

Delivery

At the beginning, Bush seemed oddly hesitant, as if he had not had enough practice time; but within a few minutes, he got into the swing of it, and the speech went smoother from there.

As usual, he came across (to me) as sincere, heartfelt, and intelligent. As usual, I'm sure he came across to die-hard liberals as a lying Fascist weasel with the IQ of an eggplant, and to die-hard Tancredoites as Vicente Fox's sock puppet... for whatever that may be worth.

Not his best delivered speech; those are invariably his stump speeches, of course, since he has the opportunity to refine them over weeks of giving them all over the country. But not his worst speech, either; his worst are always those where he is doing something purely for political reasons, and not because he really believes what he's saying... such as the "steel tariffs" speech.

He believes what he said today; he just didn't have a lot of time to practice it, as it was likely being revised up until moments before he delivered it.

Reaction

The most important question is how the Republican base will react. I think they'll be pleased, by and large: a month ago, this speech would have been a lot "softer," with less explicit discussion of border control and a more lenient guest-worker and "normalization" section.

Bush is now much more oriented towards border enforcement than he was, and he recognizes that the base matters: George W. Bush has "grown" on this issue.

I believe Bush's approval rating among conservatives will rise; but it's not going to be sudden. They want to wait and see how he interacts with the House and Senate. For example, will Bush support the amendment offered by Sen. Sessions to add an actual fence into the Senate bill?

Jeff Sessions -- excuse me, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (can you tell he's from the South?) -- wants to amend the Senate bill to add 370 miles of actual fence, plus 500+ miles of vehicle barriers. Majority Leader Frist (R-TN) is very strongly behind it, and I suspect Bush will embrace this, too. But until he does, I think conservatives are going to be skeptical.

I'm afraid some so-called "conservatives" barely listened to the speech; since the only thing many of them would ever accept is pure enforcement, mass deportations, and internment camps -- no guest workers, no normalization, and nothing else -- there was no reason even to bother with what the president said: I suspect many had their responses already written before Bush even spoke, and they simply waited until the speech ended before clicking the Publish button (for the sake of appearances).

Hugh Hewitt, in a nutty update that caters to this mob, wrote this about fifteen minutes after Bush finished talking:

Memo to Tony Snow: The blogosphere/talk radio callers/e-mailers are turning against this speech in a decisive fashion. They simply do not believe the Administration is really committed to border enforcement, and the spokespeople sent out to back up the president's message aren't doing that job. Period.

Decisive? After a quarter of an hour?

If this really is true, then "the blogosphere/talk radio callers/e-mailers" are all a bunch of horses' asses. However, I really doubt that those Huge is hearing from now, in the first couple, three hours after the speech, will be truly representative of that vast body of intellectual opinion (for which I have a lot more respect).

Much more likely, at the moment, Hugh is hearing from the Perpetually Aggrieved wing of the Republican Party (which has its much larger counterpart among the Democras), who could barely contain themselves until the speech was actually delivered to e-mail Hugh that they hated it. I'm sure Frank Gaffney is beside himself with indignation; but I prefer Power Line's blog-of-the-week the Strata-Sphere, where A.J. Strata proves himself a man of intelligence, wisdom, courage, and sincerity. (By which I mean he agrees with me, of course.)

Today conservatives and Americans across this nation, especially those who voted for George W Bush, should be thankful for what we have accomplished and for having George Bush as President. My tolerance for the whiners who don’t get all they want, or who say the pace of getting America to become more responsive to conservative ideas is too slow, is totally used up. Tonight, when George Bush speaks his is going to discuss how we can take SOME steps towards getting a handle on immigration and the security threats it represents.... [All emphasis added]

I have no words of thanks to those who are so frustrated they have turned on Bush when he needs our support, and threaten to sit out elections. Why would I have any thanks for that kind of action? I am thankful we avoided a President Gore and President Kerry. Gore would have lost his mind after 9-11 (look at how he handled the 2000 election). And Kerry would have been so confused about what to do he would have signed legislation beforing vetoing it.

All right, this is just my first, few, brief thoughts on the subject of Bush's speech on immigration. I'm certain I'll have something much more substantial -- and much longer -- to say later, when I've had a chance to digest. (Metaphorically and also literally; we're just about to eat dinner here at Lizard Central.)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 15, 2006, at the time of 7:20 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

April 7, 2006

A Modest Proposal

A number of people (such as Charles Krauthammer) have proposed that we build the wall first, and then, only after it's shown to be working, legalize the illegals already here.

All right; let's set aside, for the time being, any talk of legalization of those already here. What about the other, forgotten issue of reforming legal immigration?

My argument all along has been that there is no wall so strong that a million people pushing on it won't knock it down. I say that if honest men can enter through the front door in God's own daylight, then only thugs, goons, and terrorists will try to enter in the Devil's night through the window. These are arguments about legal immigration and legal guest workers -- they have nothing to do with regularizing those already here.

Not even Tom Tancredo can say that rationalizing our legal immigration policy is "amnesty." (Amnesty for what?)

So here is my modest proposal. I wonder if Krauthammer, or anybody else who says he is only against illegal immigration, will join me in this?

1. We start building the wall immediately. Not "start the process," but start sinking steel poles and laying concrete. We just grab the map the House used for its 700-mile proposal and start construction. (We can start on May Day, just to freak out the Left.) With me so far?

2. At the same time, we rationalize the legal immigration process. I don't mean make it easier or drop any requirements; heck, I might want to add requirements for legal immigration. By "rationalize," I mean a set of rules that lead automatically to a Green Card and eventual citizenship, no matter how many years it takes (within reason -- 80 years is right out). All I want to see is: "if I follow these steps, I will get permanent residency; if I then follow these other steps, I will become an American citizen."

   Not "then maybe I'll get a Green Card," or "I might be allowed to be a citizen." A flat, automatic system: jump through the following hoops, whatever they are, and you've got it automatically, without the immigrant having to petition the USCIS and hope they decide in his favor (the USCIS can stop a particular case if something serious comes up).

3. At the same time, put into place a guest worker program... for which the alien can only apply from his country of origin, not from within the United States. This is to prevent people currently here illegally from piggybacking onto it (unless of course they sneak back across the border and apply from Mexico; but how could we even know that?)
4. We drop the hammer on companies still employing illegals, notwithstanding the guest worker program; we detect violations by whatever means we choose to put into place.

Notice something? No legalization of current illegals at all! Didn't even bring it up. This is entirely and completely about securing the border, rationalizing our current legal immigration, and setting up a system to bleed off those folks who just want to come here and work and are willing to do so legally. The latter two points are designed to take pressure off the wall so it will work... the "spillway in the dam," as I have characterized it.

After this has worked for a while (assuming it does), only then do we talk about legalizing the illegals.

How about this? Is this acceptable to hard-core immigration conservatives?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 7, 2006, at the time of 10:31 PM | Comments (53) | TrackBack

Goodbye D.C., Hello Baghdad

I cannot, will not join in this Snoopy dance of glee at the complete inability of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate to come to agreement on a very fair and reasonable immigration compromise. Every single substantive objection on either side can be fixed. The fixes are not difficult to find. There is only one objection that is insurmountable: liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans appear have allied to force the bill to collapse.

One of those two groups is rationally pursuing its own self interest; it will actually benefit at the ballot box if the effort collapses completely. Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) is not in that group. The reality is that if this bill ends up collapsing, it will cause Republicans to lose seats in the House and Senate in November... which hurts conservatives in Congress a heck of a lot more than it hurts Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) or Harry Reid (D-Las Vegas).

It's unfathomable to me that men and women who belong to the world's most exclusive club, what it pleases them to call "the greatest deliberative body in the world," are congenitally incapable of deliberating. Instead they posture, the proclaim, they throw hysterical tantrums. They act more like the Shia in the Iraqi National Assembly than like grown-up adults who actually care about America. Goodbye, D.C., and hello Baghdad.

The deal has collapsed (at least for the moment) because of conservative Republican attempts to amend the bill (two amendments in particular) and the Democrats' filibuster of those amendments. So let's start with the amendments themselves.

In theory, they're not bad; but the devil once again lurks (as usual) in the details:

One amendment would have required the Department of Homeland Security to certify that the border was secure before creating a guest worker program or granting legal status to illegal immigrants. Another would have had the legalization program bar illegal immigrants who had deportation orders or had been convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors. Democratic critics of the proposals said they were intended to ensure that the legalization process would never be implemented.

Gosh, who could argue with those? What possible reason could there be not to -- all right, let's actually think a second time about each:

Require certification of border security before implementing immigration reform

Fine. I have no objection to the theory, but -- how exactly does the amendment define "secure?" Does this mean the DHS has only to certify that the wall and fence have been properly built? Or does it mean he must guarantee that it's impossible for even a single illegal to cross the border? If the latter, that could not be legally certified in a hundred years.

Do conservatives offer this amendment in order to advance the issue, or to kill the entire bill? If they're being honest about it, they will be willing to negotiate exactly what constitutes "secure" enough for the DHS to certify. They will offer standards that can actually be satisfied within a reasonable timeframe, say two to three years. Honest Democrats are willing to negotiate those standards, to make sure they allow certification within two or three years -- not thirty or forty, or never.

But if either side simply wants to collapse the entire effort, it's easy enough: just insist upon the impossible -- either a level of security that can never be achieved, or refuse to require any such certification whatsoever, which is equally unreasonable.

Permanently bar from citizenship illegals who have been deported or been convicted of felonies or multiple misdemeanors

Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with this idea; but it can easily be turned into a poison pill. For example... do they include under the deportation clause immigrants deported for no reason other than having been caught? If so, it's absurd: this part of the bill is already directed solely at persons illegally in the country. Are they really saying we only want as citizens those illegals clever enough not to have been nabbed? What is it, a proxy IQ test?

Or by "deported," do they mean those deported for reasons much stronger than "you were caught here illegally?" If they mean the latter, then conservatives must spell out exactly what deportation reasons provoke the permanent ban.

And felonies are one thing; but three misdemeanors? Do they really mean that if an immigrant was a stupid teenager twenty years ago, and if he went on a one-night spree knocking over garbage cans and got convicted of three counts of malicious mischief, that he is forever barred from becoming a citizen? That is quite literally insane.

If conservatives have any interest at all in actually coming to some agreement, they must be willing to negotiate exactly what criminal convictions and reasons for deportation will permanently bar citizenship.

Democrats who want a bill will be willing to allow a vote on such a list of crimes. This requires all Democrats to go on record either saying they want to let murderers and rapists into the country... or else accepting that some people won't qualify for citizenship because of bad character. But moderate Democrats will agree to both amendments (or at least agree to vote on them), if they are reasonable and spelled out in detail.

Who's got hand?

The distinction is this: if the liberal Democrats negotiate in bad faith and manage to force a collapse, they win at the ballot box. If the conservative Republicans force collapse through sheer pigheadedness and refusal to compromise... then they lose in November.

But the conservatives are driving the bus right now; they've got the upper hand. If they negotiate in good faith, they have the power to force a successful resolution. The moderate Republicans are already on board, and 55 Republicans need only five Democrats to stop a filibuster.

In the last test on Wednesday night, an even tougher vote against cloture on the Democratic version of immigration reform got (surprise!) four moderate Democrats and one Democratic nutcase to vote with the Republicans:

Voting against cloture were all 55 Republicans (including co-sponsors McCain and Specter) and five Democrats, who stiffed their own party boss, Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Caesar's Palace): Robert Byrd (WV), Ben Nelson (NE), Bill Nelson (FL), Kent Conrad (ND), and Byron Dorgan (ND). Of this group, only Sen. Dorgan is not running for reelection this year... and he may have felt obliged to support his fellow NoDak, Kent Conrad, who is.

So here is the stark choice:

1. If conservative Republicans are willing to negotiate their amendments in good faith, they'll be joined by moderate Republicans and enough moderate Democrats to overcome any filibuster, allowing reasonable changes to strengthen enforcement in the immigration reform bill.
2. Contrariwise, if the conservatives insist upon unreasonable amendments, they won't get the Democrats; in which case, they will be unable to amend the bill at all, because they can't break Harry Reid's filibuster without Democratic votes.
3. Without amendment, the bill collapses... which benefits only the liberal Democrats -- not the conservatives, the moderate Republicans, or even the moderate Democrats.
4. Victory or defeat is entirely in the hands of conservatives: if they will negotiate in good faith, they (and the country) will win. If they insist upon "my way or the highway," everybody loses -- except Reid and Pelosi, of course.

People must understand that conservatives are a minority in Congress, as they are in the country. They cannot simply cram a pure-enforcement bill down everybody's throat. It's not in the cards; it won't happen.

If they try hard, however, they can gain enough support to make reasonable changes:

• Define what it means for the border to be "secure" and make it reasonable enough that it's just two or three years away -- not thirty or forty.
• Define exactly what crimes bar citizenship, so we don't end up with mass numbers of people being denied for trivial offenses that even many sitting members of Congress have committed.

With those amendments and perhaps a few others -- emphasis on reasonable -- they can get on with the negotiation and light this candle. They can actually achieve something.

Or they can clench their fists and refuse to back down even an inch. They can become the most Do-Nothing Congress since the 80th in 1948, as Hugh Hewitt likes to say. Like the Shia in Baghdad, they can bring democracy to a screeching halt.

Until November.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 7, 2006, at the time of 6:34 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

The Continental Divide

There are two basic camps on immigration; the camp you choose typically determines your positions and priorities.

• Illegal immigrants are essentially criminals.
• Illegal immigrants are essentially thwarted freedom-seekers.

There is an interesting geographic dispersal about these camps: the first is primarily found in states that have very few illegal immigrants, the second primarily in states that have a very large illegal population -- though of course there are campsites of each in each type of state.

To characterize the first camp:

And I'll also characterize the other camp -- to which I note I firmly belong:

So which camp are you? It's a good proxy measurement for whether you support or oppose the current Senate compromise legislation.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 7, 2006, at the time of 4:29 AM | Comments (28) | TrackBack

April 6, 2006

Patterico's Brilliant Idea

Over on Patterico's Pontifications, Patterico has a great idea for a codicil to be added to immigration reform pending in both the House and Senate:

We will never deport the millions of illegals currently residing in the country. But, as I have previously argued, we can use our scarce enforcement resources to target violent criminals. [All emphasis added by BL]

While many illegals are hardworking folk, some are robbers, kidnappers, rapists, violent gang members, and murderers. Police officers often know who these individuals are — yet they have their hands tied by local policy.

Targeting violent illegals makes good sense.

Patterico hasn't been posting much lately; I suspect he's in trial on some major prosecution. It's good to see him back today, and with an excellent suggestion for an amendment to the bill in Congress.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 6, 2006, at the time of 4:36 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Breaking: Senate Compromises On Immigration Reform

In a shocking example of comity, the Senate -- including most Democrats -- appears to have coalesced around the compromise bill of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist; the Democrats appear to have dropped their objections both to the "no felony convictions" rule for citizenship, and also to the lack of guaranteed re-entry for those illegals who have been here less than two years: they're still obliged to return to their countries of origin and apply for readmission, but under this bill, they can be denied for any of a number of reasons.

What may have turned the Senate around is the decisive, crushing rejection of the original McCain-Kennedy-Spector bill passed out of the J-Com. In the vote to end debate (cloture vote on a filibuster), the bill needed to get 60 votes. It garnered 39, less than two-thirds what it needed. In fact, in a bipartisan mauling of Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Arlen Specter (R-PA), and Edward Kennedy (D-Margaritaville), 60 senators voted against ending debate.

Voting against cloture were all 55 Republicans (including co-sponsors McCain and Specter) and five Democrats, who stiffed their own party boss, Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Caesar's Palace): Robert Byrd (WV), Ben Nelson (NE), Bill Nelson (FL), Kent Conrad (ND), and Byron Dorgan (ND). Of this group, only Sen. Dorgan is not running for reelection this year... and he may have felt obliged to support his fellow NoDak, Kent Conrad, who is.

Slipping a bit on the bloodstained Senate floor, Reid then rushed to express support, late last night, for the Frist bill; as Big Lizards predicted late last night (early this morning, for you sun people), "this is one of those rare occasions where both sides really do want a bill."

As we noted, the Frist bill is almost the same as the one rejected, except for introducing a three-part classification of illegals:

1. Those here five years or more need not return to their home countries; they can apply for guaranteed legal status in situ (after paying back taxes, paying a fine, and only if they can show they have continuously worked -- no welfare, I think this means -- and if they don't have any felony convictions already). This group comprises about 60% of the 11 million - 12 million illegals, according to Dr. Sen. Frist, or 6.6 to 7.2 millions.
2. Those here between two and five years do have to return to their countries of origin and apply for readmission; but they are guaranteed re-entry if they meet the requirements above. I have seen no figures on how big a percent this group is of the remainder.
3. Those here less than two years have to return (if they want legal status), but they are not guaranteed re-entry. If they don't, they're subject to deportation (if caught).

We're not particularly happy about that last category; the most likely response is that most of those in Camp Three won't return or legalize at all. But since the bill also heavily increases border security -- I'm sure there is a virtual fence, and I think the bill authorizes a physical fence across some of the southern border, but don't hold my feet to the grindstone on that one -- and also coils like an anaconda around businesses that hire illegals, it will be significantly more difficult for illegals to operate here with the sort of impunity they have enjoyed for decades.

This could actually work... because in addition to a fence (virtual or physical), and in addition to regularizing those already here, the bill also sets up a guest worker program for future in-and-outers and clarifies the path to citizenship for future immigrants; this means decent people who want to come here for honest reasons have a legal way to do so -- and therefore no reason to pay a coyote to sneak them past the border.

This takes a lot of the pressure off the system and allows us to vigorously enforce the border laws: when customers with legitimate business can enter through the front door in broad daylight, it's much more acceptable to drop the hammer on people slithering in through the window at night.

The House earlier passed a bill that was all cop and no compassion: straight, heavy-handed border protection, including declaring that those here illegally, however long, were guilty of a felony, and could therefore never become citizens. The House version didn't even offer a nod to those who desperately want to become Americans, or even just work here honestly for a while, but who cannot, for various reasons, navigate through the labyrinth of immigration law.

This House bill (or a substitute) will have to be reconciled with the Senate's bill in the joint committee... but House Speaker Denny Hastert (R-IL) has already signalled that it would be possible for the House to support a compromise bill, so long as it also contains tough enforcement measures -- which the current Senate version does.

So we at Big Lizards have very high hopes for this version of immigration reform: it's a solid bill, it has strong backing that is even (I can't believe I'm typing this word) bipartisan; and the president is eager to sign it.

This will go a long way towards allowing the Republicans to do well in the November elections. If nothing else, they can point to this major bill, the most significant immigration reform in two decades (and a lot better than Reagan's amnesty program, since this bill is not amnesty -- except for those right-wingers who redefine the word "amnesty" the way lefties redefine "civil war"). I presume they'll also confirm a few more conservative judges and will probably vote to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. That presents a flurry of action on issues important to Republicans and will bring them out to vote.

The senators finally stopped "foaming at the mouth" and got down to brokering a deal. Good job, fellows!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 6, 2006, at the time of 3:04 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Heck, Big Lizards Can Break This Silly Logjam

According to AP, there are now two competing Senate immigration-reform proposals, one pushed by Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Las Vegas), the other by Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Nashville). Hey, it's Lounge vs. Country!

They're both pretty similar at this point. Here's AP:

In general, both bills would increase border security, regulate the flow of future immigrants and offer legal status to many of the men, women and children who came to the United States unlawfully or overstayed their visas.

The rival plans differ on the details, though, and so far, at least, attempts at a bipartisan compromise have failed.

Each side is filibustering the other's bill; that means each bill has to get 60 votes to move on, you'll pardon the phrase. Since there are only 55 Republicans and only 45 Democrats (counting Jumpin' Jim Jeffords as a Democrat, since that's who he caucuses with), without some crossover voting, neither side can budge an inch. It's an impasse!

So what exactly are these demonic "details" that evidently contain the Devil?

In general [AP seems to like that meaningless prepositional phrase], the measure backed by Democrats would grant most of the 11 million immigrants legalized status and the opportunity to apply for citizenship after meeting several conditions. They include payment of a fine and any back taxes, passing a background check and learning English.

By contrast, the Republican approach requires illegal immigrants who have been in the United States between two years and five years to return to their home country briefly, then re-enter as temporary workers. They could then begin a process of seeking citizenship.

Illegal immigrants here longer than five years would not be required to return home; those in the country less than two years would be required to leave without assurances of returning, and take their place in line with others seeking entry papers.

If we were brokering this debate, we'd have a workable compromise in about two minutes. We warned about this "poison pill." Remember what Big Lizards wrote in an earlier post?

And even here, the main bone of contention seems to be pretty simple: the McCain-Kennedy camp wants to be able to regularize them in situ, after they pay a fine and all back taxes; but the Cornyn camp wants them to do all that, but still be required to return to their country of origin and then be readmitted here legally.

I think the reason the McCainiacs (which includes me on this one, special issue) are so opposed to forcing the illegal immigrants -- and I do mean immigrants, not workers -- to return and then try to be readmitted is their sneaking suspicion (which I share) that what the Cornynites really want is to trick them into returning to their countries of origin... so they can say "ha ha, you're never getting back in... never!"

Clearly, that same fear will occur to illegal immigrants. Without some sort of legal assurances, they won't leave; they would rather stay here illegally than return "home" without any hope of being allowed back into what they consider their real home, the United States.

If your goal is to get illegal immigrants to exit and then be readmitted legally, you must guarantee they will, in fact, be readmitted, assuming nothing disqualifying arises during the reentry security checks. Without such assurance, the reentry provision is just a poison pill to kill the whole deal, and the demand for it is dishonest.

The fix appears pretty simple. Here is the compromise bill that could gather 35-40 of the Republicans and maybe half or more of the Democrats (that's a low of 57-58 in favor, if you're counting; close enough that they can probably break the filibuster -- since this is one of those rare occasions where both sides really do want a bill):

The Senate should go with the Frist bill, with one change: those illegals who have been here less than two years still have to exit and re-enter the country legally... but they're guaranteed readmission, unless the background check turns up something really bad, like a felony conviction.

One interesting side issue: earlier today, Sen. Reid threatened to filibuster against an amendment, offered by Johns Kyl (R-AZ) and Cornyn (R-TX), to permanently refuse citizenship to illegals who were convicted of a felony. Power Line covered this; here is the pertinent passage:

This is astonishing: Blog of the Week Right Wing News notes that Senate Democrats have successfully blocked an amendment to the immigration bill now under consideration that would have prevented aliens convicted of felonies from becoming citizens:

Democrats said the amendment would "gut" the immigration bill under consideration in the Senate and refused to allow a vote on it.

So now the Democrats are using the filibuster to protect the "right" of convicted felons who have emigrated to the U.S. illegally to become citizens. How can they possibly justify that, you ask? Beats me:

"I do not have to explain in any more detail than what I have as why I don't want to move forward," Mr. Reid said. "I don't agree with the amendment. I don't think it's going to benefit this legislation that is pending before the Senate and I'm going to do what I can to prevent a vote on it."

Later, Mr. Reid added, "We're not going to allow amendments like Kyl-Cornyn to take out what we believe is the goodness of this bill."

Big Lizards has sussed this one out, too: in the poisoned atmosphere of the Senate, Sens. Reid, Kyle, and Cornyn are simply not talking to each other... and Harry Reid believes that the "felony" rule, in conjunction with the House bill making it a felony to be in the country illegally at all, is meant to sneakily bar all illegal aliens from ever becoming citizens.

So how about restoring the felony rule for re-entering illegals... but write right into the clause that it only applies to felonies other than being in the country illegally or "smuggling aliens" -- which Right Wing News notes is actually one of the felonies in question. (Smuggling aliens could be interpreted to mean an illegal alien bringing his wife and kids into the United States along with himself.) Maybe we could bar professional "coyotes" but not aliens who "smuggled" in other aliens for non-monetary, non-felonious reasons.

That legal assurance should allay Democrats' fears that this is just a backdoor way to bar all illegals from re-entering once they've left in order to re-enter -- which would be a dirty trick indeed, and would make Republicans look just like the racists the Democrats always accuse us of being.

There. Problems solved. It's amazing how easy this all is... when you're not a thin-skinned, hysterical, hyperpartisan, foaming-at-the-mouth D.C. politician on the warpath, I mean.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 6, 2006, at the time of 5:48 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

April 4, 2006

A Tale of Two Cities

I won't say this is my last word on immigration reform, because something interesting might crop up. But I'll be loath to post anything more unless I think of a totally different angle.

An article by Herbert Meyer (via RealClearPolitics blog) notes a distinction I only recently internalized: the difference between immigrants and guests.

The distinction is simple to explain but profound in its implications:

• An immigrant wants to renounce his citizenship in his country of origin (usually birth but not always) and become an American;
• A guest wants only to visit for a time; this includes tourists, students, and workers (legal and illegal). A guest worker, of course, wants to come here and work, then go back home.

These two groups create two radically different "cities," which can exist in the same physical space: on the right hand, a city of foreigners who are really just Americans in training, who think and act as much like Americans as they can; and on the left hand, a city of foreigner who like being foreign, who don't like America or Americans, who may even seethe in resentment that the American Southwest was "stolen" from Mexico (to which it actually never belonged) -- a city of people marching in the streets waving Mexican flags and holding signs that say "this is MY continent!"

The immigration debate, then, is a tale of two cities; and which city you see determines which side you're on. But if we look a little closer, close enough to determine fine distinctions, we discover that it's really one city after all. Only then can we slip carefully through the barbed wire to create a plan to satisfy both camps in Congress.

Terrorists are rarely immigrants; there is too much scrutiny, too many background checks. They normally come as tourists or students, or they just sneak across the border. Guests are the biggest security risk; immigrants, even when here illegally, are the most valuable of the people seeking admission to the country.

The most important issue related to any of this is protecting the border. While I believe that no wall can work without first separating out those people -- immigrant and guest -- who come here for benign reasons from those who come here for malicious reasons... it is equally true that no such reformation of the rules can work unless you control the borders. Otherwise, everyone you don't want to admit will just sneak in anyway. Realistically, the two programs must be done simultaneously, like lifting ourselves by tugging on our own bootstraps.

Once the borders are better controlled, though, my first concern is towards regularizing and rationalizing our immigration system; doing the same for guests (including guest workers) can come later. So if we had to drop one or the other from the bill currently slithering its way through the Senate, I would prefer to lose the guest-worker program than immigration reform.

Ideally, I want all four programs: border security, immigration reform, a better managed guest-worker program -- and regularization of those immigrants already here illegally, but whom we would otherwise be happy to admit under the reformed immigration system. But the guest-worker program is least important of those four.

Which is good, because it appears one of the most contentious. I doubt that anyone, not even Tom-Tom Tancredo, would raise a serious objection to rationalizing the immigration system: making a clear path to citizenship encourages exactly the sort of committed immigrants we need. Nobody can be in favor of an arbitrary system where applicants have no clue what they're supposed to do to become citizens.

And the only people who could possibly oppose better border control are politicians who hope to be reelected on the illegal votes of non-citizens (the Sanchez Sisters spring to mind).

The big divide occurs over the last two problems: guest workerss and people already here illegally (guests or immigrants). These are two partially overlapping groups, but it's easiest to split them into three groups: guest workers here legally; illegal workers; and illegal immigrants:

1. How many legal guests should we allow? All who want to come; only those who we determine, to the best of our ability, are not threats; a predefined number of those we determine are not threats; or none at all?
2. What do we do with people who are already here illegally but have no interest in living here permanently?

I don't believe there is much to argue about these two categories. First, we come to agreement on how many legal guest workers to admit; any question of numbers can be compromised (that's what Congress does best).

After settling that point, it's easy to deal with the next: if enough guest workers can enter legally, then we can drop the hammer on employers who hire people still coming illegally. That should drastically reduce this group, because if the workers can't get jobs, they'll go home (where it's much cheaper to live).

The big, tough question is the third:

3. What do we do about the millions of people who are here illegally -- but only because our immigration system is so screwed up, they can't get in legally, even though there is nothing wrong with them: they're sane, decent, honest, hard-working people who only want a better life for themselves and their families. This number is far less than the 12 million we hear about, because many of those are Cat-2 (illegal workers), not Cat-3 (illegal immigrants).

We're talking here about people who would be happy to immigrate here legally, following all the rules and jumping through all the hoops -- except that we have such a wretched system, they can't figure out what to do. They keep being rebuffed, but nobody will tell them why or what they can do to fix the problem or make themselves more attractive applicants. In desperation, they sneak in or overstay a student or tourist visa.

And even here, the main bone of contention seems to be pretty simple: the McCain-Kennedy camp wants to be able to regularize them in situ, after they pay a fine and all back taxes; but the Cornyn camp wants them to do all that, but still be required to return to their country of origin and then be readmitted here legally.

I think the reason the McCainiacs (which includes me on this one, special issue) are so opposed to forcing the illegal immigrants -- and I do mean immigrants, not workers -- to return and then try to be readmitted is their sneaking suspicion (which I share) that what the Cornynites really want is to trick them into returning to their countries of origin... so they can say "ha ha, you're never getting back in... never!"

Clearly, that same fear will occur to illegal immigrants. Without some sort of legal assurances, they won't leave; they would rather stay here illegally than return "home" without any hope of being allowed back into what they consider their real home, the United States.

If your goal is to get illegal immigrants to exit and then be readmitted legally, you must guarantee they will, in fact, be readmitted, assuming nothing disqualifying arises during the reentry security checks. Without such assurance, the reentry provision is just a poison pill to kill the whole deal, and the demand for it is dishonest.

The traditional response, that guaranteeing readmission provides an incentive for future immigrants to come here illegally, is a non-sequitur; since we're rationalizing the process anyway, it's easier for a person of good character to come legally than sneak across and hope for another piece of legislation down the road. And if the person is not of good character, they wouldn't be readmitted anyway.

Assuming everybody is honest, here then is a broad outline of a bill that would actually pass:

1. We control the borders by a combination of a real wall, an electronic wall created by advanced technology, and beefed up border- and law-enforcement agencies.
2. We decide how many guest workers (who can pass the threat firewall) we will admit legally, then make it easier for them to move through the steps than it currently is. The number should be higher than it is right now, since the number of illegal who can get jobs here indicates we're not admitting enough legals.
3. We tighten the noose around employers who hire illegals anyway... those not satisfied with cheap legal guest workers and want to maximize profits by hiring even cheaper illegal workers. We require employers to verify the status using the systemI wrote about earlier (like verifying a credit-card payment but with embedded photo and biometric information).
4. We rationalize the path to citizenship for immigrants. It can be long and arduous, but so long as they can see that they're making progress, they'll continue along it. Remove all race-based and country-of-origin-based quotas; if you want to control the numbers, use a point system based upon individual attainments or family situations.
5. Finally, we make all illegal immigrants first exit the country and then apply for readmission legally (after paying appropriate fines and back-taxes)... but we guarantee that if nothing untoward pops up during the reentry security checks, they will be readmitted; otherwise, they have no incentive to leave.

And with that, I believe you can get sixty senators and a majority in the House.

Big Lizards: solving society's scaley conundrums in the blogosphere!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 4, 2006, at the time of 7:42 PM | Comments (31) | TrackBack

March 30, 2006

Two Walls That Pass In the Night

"Atrocious Analogies" is the new topic of the day, mostly sparked by Captain Ed's otherwise excellent post George Will: Ich Bin Ein Ost-Berliner? -- both the atrocious analogy he accuses George Will of making, and the atrocious analogy that Ed himself makes!

Cap'n's "analogy" has been raised by a number of people opposed to the Senate J-Com's immigration plan and supportive of a "wall" (or fence) along the American southern border to keep out illegals, and that makes it worth discussing.

Ed's post is actually good; I especially like this point, noting the need for much stronger border control:

No illegal will enter a program that costs him significant fines and back taxes when all he has to do is stay quiet and keep crossing the border in both directions as he sees fit. As for learning English, that would certainly be a novel approach; we don't even make our legal immigrants do that any more, as evidenced by ballots in a plethora of languages and government-sponsored translators at all level of public services. [Emphasis added]

As you know -- or should, if you've been reading -- I too support such a wall, and for the same reasons Ed does (and George Will does, too); so my objection to Captain Ed's analogy is not ideological. It's literary: I think the Captain Ed analogy squashes conversation nearly as badly as does Will's, and both should be tossed in the dustbin of rhetorical history.

All right, all right, I'll tell you what they are. You demanding readers take all the mystery out of blogposts!

George Will makes his conservative case for the moderate approach to immigration reform, giving enough room for hard-line enforcement while argui