Category ►►► Immigration Immolations

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).

B