Leadership

Rod Dreher's friend the immigration lawyer writes:

Real comprehensive immigration reform – seal the borders, amnesty those here – is never going to happen. The Democrats don't want to seal the borders, ever, because immigrants (eventually) vote Democrat (legally, if we're lucky). One third of the Republicans don't want to amnesty because they're immigrant (and Muslim!) hating know-nothings (I'm a conservative GOPer myself and I've learned this the hard way). Another third want to amnesty and also don't want to seal the borders because it is good for the economy. And the last third, who want a balanced approach, don't have the power to win on the issue, being one third of one half. Oh well.0

I think this is a reasonable analysis of the state of play, but I still don't see why it couldn't happen. What you need is a President who wants it to happen, and a Republican majority in Congress of the sort that we had, oh, about four months ago. First the President works with the two-thirds of the Republicans who support enforcement and peels off enough Democratic votes (the Dems are divided on the issue too, remember) to get a serious enforcement bill passed. Then, if and when the enforcement provisions seem to be working and the rate of illegal immigration has slowed to a more manageable rate - to roughly the rate in the 1980s, maybe - that same President (now into his second term, presumably) could work with the two-thirds of Republicans who might support amnesty and the many Democrats who would definitely support it, and get one passed.

The key ingredient here, obviously, is a President who isn't George W. Bush. As Mark Krikorian has argued, rightly I think, our current chief executive "is opposed — morally and emotionally repelled — by the idea of enforcing the border with Mexico. It's just uncompassionate, in his view, and nothing's going to change that." If someone wants to come to the U.S. to work, and someone in America is willing to hire them, Bush seems to believe that it's unjust to stand in their way. Which is why we are where we are today, and why a serious enforcement push was never going to happen under this President.

Comments

I dispute the "four months ago" premise. Four months ago we had James Sensennbrenner as Judiciary chair. Boehner and Blunt have zero-tolerance records on immigration. You'd have to wrestle them to the ground to make it happen.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | May 23, 2007 2:09 PM

I am a liberal, and I oppose any path to citizenship for illegals, and I oppose any increases in legal immigration.

Big business is using both legal and illegal immigration to drive down American wages.

Please watch this video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4094926727128068265

I also support massive decreases in legal immigration. Immigration will destroy our environment, infrastructures, and turn theU.S. into endless suburban development.

The biggest backer of immigration is Wal-Mart, which last year gave more money to La Raza than to any other organization.

Legal and illegal immigration are but tools for big business to drive down American wages.

Posted by Liberal Patriot | May 23, 2007 3:45 PM

"If someone wants to come to the U.S. to work, and someone in America is willing to hire them, Bush seems to believe that it's unjust to stand in their way."

Well he's got a point, doesn't he?

Posted by PEG | May 23, 2007 3:55 PM

"our current chief executive "is opposed — morally and emotionally repelled — by the idea of enforcing the border with Mexico. It's just uncompassionate, in his view, and nothing's going to change that."

I'm deeply skeptical of this claim. This is a president who had no scruples about cutting Medicaid for citizens and immigrants alike and who has done about as little to aid economic and political development south of the border as a president could possibly do, so I highly doubt that the problem is that his heart is bleeding for all those immigrants.

More likely, the business wing of the GOP won't stand for a real sealing of the border any more than they will accept real and effective sanctions for employing illegal aliens. Bush does what they want, pretty much on everything at all times.

For the record, this liberal is only opposed to "sealing the borders" in the sense that I'm opposed to draining the oceans or growing wheat on the moon--it ain't gonna happen. Yglesias outlined a clever way to end illegal immigration by giving immigrants bounties for turning in their employers, but surely no one on either side of the aisle will stand for that.

Posted by Ben | May 23, 2007 4:08 PM

If someone wants to come to the U.S. to work, and someone in America is willing to hire them, Bush seems to believe that it's unjust to stand in their way.

Ross: you need to give Bush a bit more credit than that. There's a difference between the position that it's unjust to limit immigration, and the position that it's unjust to unreasonably limit immigration. I suspect Bush simply thinks that the approach favored by much of his party -- the virtual prohibition of economic migration from Latin America -- is unecessary, unworkable and unjust.

I don't think allowing unlimited immigration would pass cost benefit analysis, and I certainly don't think it's unjust or immoral for a nation to eschew policies that would quickly erode the quality of life of its citizens and harm the nation.

But I also don't think enacting the kinds of policies (draconian workplace enforcement, large-scale militarization of the border, etc.) needed to achieve zero illegal immigration (sans a market-based approach) would pass cost-benefit analysis, either.

I think Bush believes (and yes, this is my belief, too) that the country can make good use of the services, energies, talents of a reasonable number of economic migrants from Latin America, in a fashion similar to that of the America of circa 1900. And that it is furthermore unnecessary, and unjust (not to mention futile and self-defeating) to attempt to get control of illegal immigration via an enforcement only strategy when the country could easily handle the problem by "converting" a healthy portion of the illegal influx into a regulated flow of legal, permitted workers --into legal immigrants, in other words.

Shorter Jasper: it's not unjust to stand in the way of the 3,000,000th Latin American who wants to work here, but it is unjust to stand in the way of, say, the 289,000th who wants to work here. It's proving impossible, too.

Posted by Jasper | May 23, 2007 10:14 PM

Yglesias outlined a clever way to end illegal immigration by giving immigrants bounties for turning in their employers, but surely no one on either side of the aisle will stand for that.

This idea has been touted before. I doubt very much it's so clever. There already exist websites that will let you rat out employers of illegals and illegal immigrants themselves. Lots of people are willing to do it with no incentive whatsoever. The problem isn't that it's tough to acquire "leads" on who the unscrupulous employers are. The problem is that the number of establishments that use illegal labor is vast, because the corporate titans mostly eschew its use. If it were a matter of rounding up the Fortune 500, the problem would be easy to solve. But it's much more likely a matter of rounding up several hundred thousand subcontractors, landscapers, farmers, and restaurateurs. Then there's also the ornery problem of getting a jury of Americans to convict a business owner (or worse yet, a harried suburban couple who just needed a babysitter) who quite plausibly will claim he was duped by false documents.

I think more stringent workplace enforcement is surely part of solving the problem. But I don't think it's likely to yield very satisfactory results until/unless a relatively tamper-proof national ID system is in place, and even then it may not be a magic bullet because of inadequacies and imperfections in our court system.

Posted by Jasper | May 23, 2007 10:26 PM

The Bush Administration filed 3 complaints against employers of illegal immigrants in all of 2004.

I've been writing about Bush's views on immigration since 2000 and Ross is right: Bush is an open borders extremist. The immigration plan his administration unveiled in January 2004 and which he defended in a 2004 debate with Kerry had _no limits_ on the size of the guest worker program. That's ... no limits.

That there are five billion people on Earth who live in countries with lower per capita incomes than Mexico apparently never dawned on anybody Bush had appointed to look into the issue.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 23, 2007 11:47 PM

NEW STUDY SHOWS THAT IMMIGRATION IS THE CAUSE OF GROWING INCOME INEQUALITY

http://conservativetimes.org/?p=643

.

Posted by JOHN J | May 24, 2007 7:12 AM

A CONSERVATIVE THIRD PARTY IS FORMING?

http://capitolhillcoffeehouse.com/more.php?id=3239_0_1_0_M

.

Posted by JOHN J | May 24, 2007 7:13 AM

Jasper is right, the problem is not finding employers who hire illegals - that's easy. the problem is getting the USCIS to do anything.

fwiw there's a new claim percolating through the fed cts that uses RICO to sue employers for allegedly conspiring with recruiting agencies to evade immigration laws and hire illegals, thereby holding down wages and causing harm to legal employees. RICO is notoriously complex, so the avg pl atty may not pursue this, but RICO damages are bet the company high for smaller employers, so this bears watching. Nothing helps people see the light like the prospect of losing everything.

Posted by chris | May 24, 2007 9:09 AM

The problem isn't that it's tough to acquire "leads" on who the unscrupulous employers are. The problem is that the number of establishments that use illegal labor is vast, because the corporate titans mostly eschew its use.

The problem is as Ross said - the D.C. establishment, and the Bush administration in particular, have no desire to enforce the law. If there were regular, systematic enforcement of the law against hiring illegal immigrants, the extent of such abuses would drop. It's no different than reducing crime, e.g. in NYC: imposing one's will to enforce the law reduces the number of people willing to break the law to a manageable level.

And that it is furthermore unnecessary, and unjust (not to mention futile and self-defeating) to attempt to get control of illegal immigration via an enforcement only strategy when the country could easily handle the problem by "converting" a healthy portion of the illegal influx into a regulated flow of legal, permitted workers --into legal immigrants, in other words.

The only way to convert the illegal influx into a regulated flow is to gain control over immigration, both at the border and internally. Which means a) establishing a commitment to enforcing the existing laws, and b) reducing the amount of immigration to a level that we can handle bureaucratically. i.e., an enforcement first policy, with discussion about the best system of legal immigration after the system is under control. It's preposterous to argue that we can't gain control of our borders/immigration - of course we can. It's only a matter of will on the part of the political class.

Posted by Mike S. | May 24, 2007 9:35 AM

The immigration plan his administration unveiled in January 2004 and which he defended in a 2004 debate with Kerry had _no limits_ on the size of the guest worker program. That's ... no limits.

Steve: as you well know there exists a natural limit with such plans as the one Bush outlined, and that touted by Congressman Pence: that limit is the creation of jobs by the US economy. It's not as if whole villages in Guatemala would be allowed to up and move to Georgia. It's not clear to me that a pure market-based guest worker program would give us numbers even as high as those we're currently getting. I suspect the possibility exists that overall numbers (illegal + legal) under such a scheme could well prove lower than the 1.5 million or so immigrants arriving annually under the status quo.

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