Just like everyone else, I'm all excited about the idea of immigration reform. I certainly don't want a bunch of people wandering back and forth over our borders with no accountability and no restrictions. They could be anyone and they could be up to anything from picking tomatoes to poisoning our water supplies. I've even heard they're going to infect us all with brain worms!
It's a good thing that Congress and President Bush have a comprehensive plan for dealing with the flood of illegal immigrants crossing the borders and the millions who are here already. They're looking out for our best interests and after striking some deals and making a few compromises they're working together to make us all safe and protect the economy and keep the brain worms where they belong. They've got a great big immigration reform bill which is just the ticket.
The only problem is that the bill is absolute crap from start to finish. Instead of a comprehensive, thoroughly developed and sensible plan for dealing with all aspects of the immigration issue, what they're considering passing is a horrible mish-mash of crackpot ideas, half-measures and pandering which will do nothing effective to control immigration or adequately resolve the status of illegal immigrants already in this country and creates a bureaucratic nightmare and a real threat to every citizens civil rights. Every good idea in the bill has been negated by some sort of compromise or half-assed implementation, and there are more flashy yet poorly conceived and unworkable measures than you can shake a tamale at.
Immigration can be controlled by controlling the borders, monitoring the population and the businesses which use immigrants, or by allowing immigrants into the country in a rational an managed way. The problem with the new immigration law currently under consideration is that it combines elements of all three of these policies and doesn't implement any of them completely enough to actually be effective. In the process it also brings along far too many of the negatives associated with all three plans.
The core of the law is basically an internal enforcement system, with biometric IDs and harsh penalties and lots of paperwork for employers. The first problem is that the way internal security works is by tracking not just immigrants, but everyone so that you can tell who the immigrants are and who they aren't, not to mention what they're doing and who they're doing it with. That means high-tech IDs that can be remotely scanned and a national database run by the Department of Homeland Security to keep track of everyone. Not surprisingly, that means this element of the bill isn't terribly popular with those who believe in privacy rights. Even the most radical nativists don't like the idea of stopping immigration by turning the US into a police state and tracking everyone electronically in a giant database controlled by the Department of Homeland Security, and it seems basically unfair to punish citizens with loss of rights and privacy in order to get at the illegals.
Article comments
1 - daryl d
Love how the end of the second paragraph leads into the third. Great article.
2 - Dave Nalle
Brain worms might indeed be the only way to explain the behavior of Congress.
Dave
3 - Clavos
There is no question that the "immigration plan" legislation currently before Congress is an unmitigated disaster guaranteed to fail, and offering none of the interested parties a satisfactory outcome.
A solid guest worker program, with accountability, and taking into account the needs and goals of both our economy and those of the immigrants, is the most logical way to approach (and solve) the illegal immigration problem.
However, Dave, I do disagree with you on one point. I don't think we should offer anyone who has come here illegally the opportunity to become a citizen, regardless of how many conditions are attached. I think that if we do, we're sending a very bad signal to all the rest of the people in the world who want to come here. I think we should continue with our present system (the basics, at least; it could use some tweaking) of quotas for those who want to come with a track toward eventual citizenship, not just for work.
We should have two programs: one for guest workers (and all the present crop of illegals would only be eligible for it, not citizenship); and one for people wishing to become citizens.
Those illegals who are here and who are the parents of so-called "anchor babies" could be allowed to stay as guest workers until the kids attain majority. The future children of guest workers should not acquire automatic citizenship, and those born to green card immigrants would acquire it only when their parents actually become citizens.
4 - Dave Nalle
However, Dave, I do disagree with you on one point. I don't think we should offer anyone who has come here illegally the opportunity to become a citizen, regardless of how many conditions are attached. I think that if we do, we're sending a very bad signal to all the rest of the people in the world who want to come here. I think we should continue with our present system (the basics, at least; it could use some tweaking) of quotas for those who want to come with a track toward eventual citizenship, not just for work.
I'm not sure we disagree. I did say in the article that the easy terms for moving from illegal to citizen applicant in the current bill were unacceptable. I didn't go beyond that. As the bill is written, the easy amnesty undermines the guest worker program - which is already too limited to be effective. I agree that the guest worker program is the best weapon in fighting illegal immigration. But I do think that allowing a few more mexicans in as citizens won't do much harm. But it has to be MORE difficult to become a citizen than a guest worker, not easier.
Dave
5 - bliffle
Nothing we do on this side of the border will improve the situation.
6 - daryl d
I am open to giving legal status to some, but granting citizenship is a slap in the face to immigrants who come here legally.
7 - Kelmer
Anyone who wants to go to come to our country and become a citizen of our country should be able to do so, as long as they are/promise to be productive members of society. To me at least, this is the promise which is spoken by the words "Give us your poor, your tired, your huddles masses longing to be free..." It is what makes our country great.
A guest worker program that allows workers to become citizens after an appropriate period of time, assuming they have followed the rules, paid their taxes, kept out of prison, etc etc, seems like the most fair system (perhaps after the H2C visa runs out). After those 6 years you should have to become either a legal resident with a green card, since no one can really call 6 years "temporary", or become a full-fledged citizen.
8 - Jerry
"Instead of a comprehensive, thoroughly developed and sensible plan for dealing with all aspects of the immigration issue, what they're considering passing is a horrible mish-mash of crackpot ideas, half-measures and pandering which will do nothing effective to control immigration..."
Kind of like everything else Bush has touched?
9 - Jerry
"But if we're legalizing all these people and letting the overwhelming majority stay, and welcoming more guest workers in the future, why do we need all these draconian security measures? Why do we need detainment camps, biometric IDs, reams of paperwork for businesses, and billions for border security if we're letting them in legally anyway?"
Does make me wonder if the NAU conspiracy crowd is on to something.
10 - Dave Nalle
A guest worker program that allows workers to become citizens after an appropriate period of time, assuming they have followed the rules, paid their taxes, kept out of prison, etc etc, seems like the most fair system (perhaps after the H2C visa runs out). After those 6 years you should have to become either a legal resident with a green card, since no one can really call 6 years "temporary", or become a full-fledged citizen.
I generally agree with this, Kelmser, but studies have shown that the average length of stay for illegals who eventually return to Mexico is more like 8 years, so 6 is probably not enough for them to build up the nest egg they want in order to start a business and enter the middle class in Mexico. And a lot of these relatively long-term workers don't really want to become citizens of the US because the money they earn here can go a long way in Mexico.
And as Bliffle (I think) pointed out earlier, the real solution to this problem is ultimately to raise up the economy of Mexico and create more opportunities there. Letting immigrants save money and send it or take it home with them is one part of that.
Dave
11 - Dave Nalle
bliffle: Nothing we do on this side of the border will improve the situation.
Generally a good point, except that a guest worker program here would continue to feed money into Mexico and into the hands of the poor rather than the elites, helping to reduce inequality and create the middle class the country so desperately needs.
daryl d: I am open to giving legal status to some, but granting citizenship is a slap in the face to immigrants who come here legally.
To be fair, the bill does impose measures to make sure that all of those waiting to become citizens are put ahead of any illegals, and it also puts some other barriers in the way of current illegals which could drag their wait time out considerably.
If I were cynical I might guess that the reason for this is that demographically older immigrants are more likely to vote conservatively.
Dave
12 - Clavos
daryl d's observation is one of the reasons I'm not in favor of granting citizenship to any of the current illegals.
13 - moonraven
Immigration, water and energy issues are the primary challenges of this century.
Bigotry gets one nowhere very fast.
The reality is that folks are going to continue their migrative patterns from countries with no economic growth--no matter how many walls you build with THEIR labor.
Migrants don't all want to be citizens of the countries they are entering. But the do want to have their human rights preserved.
The choice between receiving a 12 or a 16 gauge shotgun shell is not really what I am talking about.