Category Archives: immigration

Immigration, Again

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Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL) had some thoughts on this, which he passed on to the House Republicans as they left for their annual retreat.

As they consider the subject of immigration in their retreat, I expect the Republicans to focus on three things: border and interior security, legalization for some of the existing 11 million aliens, and ensuring that President Barack Obama enforces immigration law.  Within that, Republicans will consider ways to deal with the children of illegal aliens, visas for guest workers, and a legalization process that would require illegal aliens to pay fines and back taxes.

Contained in Sessions’ thoughts for the House Republicans were concerns about

…the negative impact of the House immigration proposal on US workers, taxpayers, and the rule of law.

[Sessions’] analysis said increasing the number of immigrants would hurt an already weak economy, lower wages, and increase unemployment.  He cited White House adviser Gene Sperling’s comment earlier this month that the economy has three people looking for every job opening.

…the House GOP leaders’ plan that’s taking shape would grant work permits almost immediately to those here illegally, giving them a chance to compete with unemployed Americans for any job.  He said it would lead to a surge in unskilled workers and would provide amnesty to a larger number of immigrants in the country illegally, giving them a chance to apply for citizenship through green cards.

I have some disagreement with the Republicans’ focus and with Sessions’ suggestions.

Absent from the focus is any action on easing immigration—making getting entry visas of any type easier and faster to get.  What the Republicans seem to be working on is an excellent start, and if that’s all that can get done this session, that much is worth getting done.  But they—and their Senate counterparts—must recognize that this is only a step on a long journey, and they must return next year (coincidentally, a new Congressional session) and take another step toward rationalizing our immigration system, and hopefully post 2016, finalizing that rationalization.

Unaddressed in both the House Republicans’ and Sessions’ positions is the role of immigrants in our elections.  The fear (carefully unspoken here) is that immigrants are monolithically Liberal in their attitudes and will be in their voting habits.  This is to misunderstand the willingness to take great risks, the initiative involved, the self-reliance inherent in the effort it takes for an alien to make the journey into the United States, whether that journey and entry are carried out legally or illegally (in most cases other than smuggling or terrorist entry, especially those entering illegally, perhaps).  Sessions, and Republicans and Conservatives generally, are overly pessimistic, and they lack confidence in the Conservative message as it regards immigration, immigrants, and our existing illegal aliens.

Sessions misunderstands the relationship between immigrants and jobs.  It’s immigrants who start, and succeed with, small businesses at a vast rate, and it’s small businesses that are the jobs creators in our economy.  Sessions’ jobs concerns are misplaced here.  The job applicant to job ratio claimed by Sperling would be greatly reduced by those immigrants and their new businesses.

Finally, the conflation of legalization or a path to citizenship with amnesty is simply a mendaciously offered red herring.  The plans on offer for legalizing existing illegal aliens all involve penalties of some sort, ranging from self-deportation (which could be satisfied by visiting the nearest consulate or embassy, these facilities being foreign soil) to paying a fine and back taxes (which carry their own penalties).  Amnesty simply isn’t present in any of the plans.

A Thought on Immigration and Amnesty

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The immigration debate in Washington boils down to a debate over how to handle the country’s 11 million or so illegal residents.  A Washington Post editorial over the weekend suggested a compromise: let them stay but don’t give them citizenship.

No.  Either we believe in redemption and rehabilitation, or we don’t.  We do believe in it, at least tacitly, for other criminal behavior—capital murder and sex offenses nearly the only things that are excepted.  And sex offenses get heinous acts.  Nearly all other offenses against us or our society have endpoints to the penalty exacted, and then the offender pretty much is allowed to go on his way with a clean slate.

A man enters our country illegally, though, and after that single and singular crime, he makes himself a productive member of his community.  On what basis do we insist that this crime is so heinous that he must pay for it for the rest of his life—the he must be denied any opportunity to earn citizenship in our country?  On what basis do we say his illegal entry—his sole crime (and it is a crime, no doubt)—is of a piece with capital murder or molesting a child?

Pay a price for having entered illegally?  Pay a price for having violated a traffic law?  Certainly.  And that means there’s no amnesty, either for the illegal entry or the traffic violation.  But there’s also more to this than just the utilitarianism of punishment for a crime and calling it square.  There’s the morality of it—redemption and rehabilitation.  We give that much to our felons, why not also to a man whose only crime is that he came illegally into our country to make a better life for himself and his family?  No.  Allowing a path along which to earn citizenship, a path that includes a price for illegal entry, isn’t amnesty.

The man who comes here and makes his way, who becomes a contributing member of our society—that’s the kind of man we want to immigrate.  That’s the kind of initiative, of drive, of work ethic, of desire to make a better life that brings creativity to our economy and to our nation.

Massive Overhauls

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Obamacare (and its microcosm, Cover Oregon) are textbook examples—case studies, even—of the utter failure of any attempt to execute a massive change of anything in one fell swoop.  The attempt is born of good intentions heavily informed with arrogance, with a good measure of impatience added: we don’t need to see how things are going, our plan is sound because our hearts are pure.

No.  Every change needs interim evaluation steps with which to determine whether the golden plan is, in fact, still on track and if not what changes are necessary—even to the point of changing course or canceling the program rather than mindlessly tweaking the present stage due to glitches.  The ubiquitousness of unintended consequences alone dictates that.

And the program doesn’t have to be done right now.  It just has to be done (always assuming we’re agreed on the program, an agreement notably absent with Obamacare, but that lack is for another time).

Now President Barack Obamacare wants to do another massive, all in one step, change of another enormous system: our collection of immigration laws.

President Obama and his top Democrats on Capitol Hill appear to have reset their sights on the Republican-controlled House passing comprehensive immigration reform, instead of a step-by-step process.

The president on Friday appeared to urge the House to back the comprehensive, bipartisan immigration bill the Senate passed this summer….

What was that bit about repeating a thing and expecting different results?

Broken Immigration

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This is how twisted things can get with a Byzantine legal system, here concerning our immigration laws, combined with an Obama administration that enforces or disregards the laws at political convenience.

Chris Crane, National ICE Council President, says

That’s what we do now, we babysit kids.

The very people patting themselves on the back as humanitarians are putting these children at more risk than they’ve ever been before.

What Crane is talking about is a ruling and public statement issued by Federal Judge Andrew Hanen in US v Nava-Martinez, a case concerning the defendant’s attempt to smuggle a 10-year-old child to her illegal alien parents.

Hanen says that immigration officials arrest human traffickers smuggling children and then

deliver the minors to the custody of the parent illegally living in the United States.

And

The DHS has simply chosen not to enforce the United States’ border security laws[.]

And

Time and again this court has been told by representatives of the government and the defense that [drug] cartels control the entire smuggling process. … the government is not only allowing [illegal immigrants in the US] to fund the illegal and evil activities of these cartels, but is also inspiring them to do so.

And

To put this in another context, the DHS policy is as logical as taking illegal drugs or weapons that it has seized from smugglers and delivering them to the criminals who initially solicited their illegal importation/exportation.  Legally, this situation is no different.

And morally, too.  Except that the guns aren’t at risk of being harmed en route, like the children are.

So: DHS breaks the law to unite children with their parents, while those parents are here illegally.  It’s a truly broken immigration system that allows illegal aliens to be here with impunity, that puts children at risk in smuggling operations ostensibly aimed at reuniting those children with their parents, all while funding drug dealers.  The system needs to be fixed.

Hanen’s ruling can be seen here.

The Wages of Trust

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…or its lack.  Readers of this blog—all half-dozen of you—are well aware that I favor immigration reform (and of a broad, generous variety, but that’s neither here nor there in this post).

There is a serious immigration reform move in the House and Senate, or was until recently.  Congressmen Sam Johnson and John Carter (both R, TX) have walked away from the House’s Gang of … which was working a House version of comprehensive immigration reform.  Their reasons are telling, and they present the difficulty of achieving serious reform at any time in the near, or middle, future:

After years of hard work and countless meetings, we have reached a tipping point and can no longer continue working on a broad approach to immigration.  We want to be clear.  The problem is politics.  Instead of doing what’s right for America, President Obama time and again has unilaterally disregarded the US Constitution, the letter of the law and bypassed the Congress—the body most representative of the people—in order to advance his political agenda.  We will not tolerate it.  Laws passed by Congress are not merely suggestions, regardless of the current atmosphere in Washington.  Laws are to be respected and followed by all—particularly by the Commander-in-Chief.
…
If past actions are the best indicators of future behavior; we know that any measure depending on the president’s enforcement will not be faithfully executed.  It would be gravely irresponsible to further empower this administration by granting them additional authority or discretion with a new immigration system.  The bottom line is—the American people do not trust the president to enforce laws, and we don’t either.

And there’s the rub.  This president cannot be trusted.  Worse, though, Obama’s mendacity has reached the point that he’s badly stained the reputation of the office.  It will be difficult to pass any comprehensive immigration reform that depends on a President’s execution of it—indeed, this will be true of any serious legislation, since any law enacted depends on a President doing his Constitutional duty to enforce that law.