Posted on 07/04/2006 11:16:49 PM PDT by Spiff
Despite the consistent failure of all guest worker plans (e.g., France), Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) is peddling a new plan to import foreign workers who really are guests and really do go home. Pence has turned his back on the 88 percent of House Republicans who voted that we must achieve border security first, because we'll be cheated on border security if Congress passes a "comprehensive" bill.
The Pence plan tries to avoid the amnesty label by requiring illegal aliens now in the U.S. to make what he calls "a quick trip across the border" to Mexico or Canada to pick up a new W visa. A foreigner could get a W visa only if a U.S. employer certifies that a job awaits him.
Pence's plan calls for setting up privately financed offices outside the U.S., with the cutesy title Ellis Island Centers, to hand out the new W visas, which he claims would be more efficient than government bureaucracy. Business would, indeed, be more efficient than government in importing more foreign workers.
Having private employment agencies distribute the W visas would put the fox in charge of the chicken coop. Private industry has a built-in incentive to import as much cheap labor as possible.
Pence says that the Ellis Island Centers will be able to match workers with jobs, perform health screening, fingerprinting, and convey information to the FBI and Homeland Security for a background check in "a matter of one week, or less." We'll have to see that to believe it.
What about the millions of illegal aliens in the U.S. today who do not have an employer willing to go on record as guaranteeing a job for a foreigner? These would include the relatives of jobholders, the day laborers, and the millions of illegal aliens working in the U.S. underground cash economy (an estimated 40 percent of the total).
Pence's bill is silent on this and his staff predicts that the free market will provide the answers. Pence told Time Magazine his bill "will require the 12 million illegal aliens to leave."
What about the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who are not Mexicans? Illegal aliens will not have to return to their home country, but only appear at an Ellis Island Center anywhere outside the U.S. to pick up their papers. Will Mexico and Canada put out the welcome mat for a mass exodus of illegal aliens from the U.S.?
The Pence plan provides that the guest workers, after living here legally for six years under the protection of a W visa, can choose whether to apply for citizenship or to return home. If guest workers don't apply for citizenship, will Pence hire buses to deport them after they have raised a family and established roots?
Six years is ample time to have a U.S.-born anchor baby, or two or three, which starts family chain migration. Any attempt to deal with the racket of birthright citizenship would linger at least six years in the courts.
The Pence promise that employers would have to offer jobs to Americans first is a sick joke. American engineers and computer techies who lost their jobs to foreigners under the H-1B visa guest-worker racket know that a look-for-Americans-first rule is never enforced and easily evaded.
Pence revealed an amazing open-ended part of his plan in his Wall Street Journal article: "My immigration reform plan does not favor illegal immigrants. Anyone may apply for a guest-worker visa at the new Ellis Island Centers; indeed, the plan may actually work to the advantage of applicants who have never violated our immigration laws, since guest-worker visas will be issued only outside the U.S."
Anyone may apply? From anywhere in the world? And without any limits? Pence wrote, "There will initially be no cap on the number of visas that can be issued."
The Pew Hispanic Center surveyed 120 locations in Mexico and concluded that 49 million Mexicans want to live in the United States if they get the opportunity.
If Pence's "guest worker" plan actually worked, and the guests voluntarily go home after six years, it would mean instituting a system that is immoral and un-American. Inviting foreigners to come to America to do jobs that Americans think they are too good to do creates a subordinate underclass of unassimilated foreign workers, like the serf or peasant classes that exist in corrupt foreign countries such as Mexico.
That's not the kind of economy that made America a great nation. As Theodore Roosevelt warned: "Never under any condition should this nation look at an immigrant as primarily a labor unit."
Pence and others who promote "guest worker" plans have a favorite mantra: "Let the free market solve our economic problems." Americans should realize that a global, or even a Western Hemisphere free market, means forcing American workers to compete with people who work for 50 cents an hour.
Letting the free market decide our future also requires loss of sovereignty to some kind of multinational government, as the European Union found out. Is the real push behind guest-worker proposals the Bush goal to expand NAFTA into the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, which he signed at Waco last year and reaffirmed at Cancun this year?
Why do we need Pence's plan?
What's wrong with our existing laws?
For the same reason no president for 50 years have enforced the laws on the books. Most of them are unenforceable because of the court rulings of the same 50 years. Now go build that strawman some place else.
How will these be any more enforceable? What will prevent these from being struck down in court as soon as Bush signs them into law?
"After we have demonstrated seriousness by securing the border, we need to establish the work-visa program in Rep. Mike Pence's (R-Ind.) bill (Border Integrity and Immigration Reform Act) that I wrote about last week. (You can learn more about the Pence plan here.) Pence's bill only allows work visas to be issued outside of the United States. So the simple answer to your question is that if you want to work in the U.S. legally, the rules will require you to go home to apply for the work visa.
"But this gets to why being serious about enforcing the law on employers is so important. If we do not enforce the law, then we can expect that employers will continue to break it. However, if we make it prohibitively difficult and costly for employers to hire a non-citizen illegally, then we can expect employers to comply with the law. When this happens, everyone who is working here illegally will be unable to find work and have no choice but to return home to get a work visa if they wish to work in the United States. We can establish a legal and compassionate way for individuals, especially those with families, to return home to apply.
"This is why the dichotomy nurtured by the pro-amnesty camp between 'mass deportation' and 'amnesty' is a false choice. The real choice is between amnesty and enforcing the law. Amnesty is a disaster, because it cheapens the value of American law. It sends the message that American law can be willfully violated without consequence.
"A work-visa program that is accompanied by total border control, uniform enforcement of existing laws (including draconian penalties on employers who continue to violate employment laws after a work-visa program is established), and the rejection of amnesty will have powerful incentives for individuals working here illegally to comply with the law and return home and apply. This will be especially true once a growing number of work-visa holders follow this path and employers find a growing pool of legal workers whom they can tap.
"The key in all of this is to create a set of incentives for the individual working here illegally to choose to comply with the law. If an individual working here illegally knows that improved border control will make it nearly impossible to cross the border again, that stepped-up law enforcement on the border and prompt removal will dramatically increase the chances of his being picked up and returned to his home country (with the penalty of being barred for a period of time of returning legally), that there is a legal way to work here, and that the work visa program that is established by the Pence bill is efficiently run so that there is a reasonably quick transition period in which to return home to apply and receive a work visa, then we can reasonably expect a swift migration to a dramatically improved and legal immigration system that will save lives and protect the rule of law."
Really? I missd that one. Have they gotten around to re-writing how Osbourne's gubanatorial loss was really a victory for amnesty and the council in penn being tossed by a minority was really an example of bigotry unchecked... to the majority of the population's horror? That they'll quickly correct it in the next election?
This thread is an embarrassment for FR's free trade, pro-open-borders crowd, who cannot post a response with substance.
The worst part, on their end, is that they don't recognize it.
Some of us would naturally lean their way with a reasoned discussion.
Thank you! The exact point I made that they couldn't seem to comprehend. In their eagerness to run down anyone that disagrees, they have lost valuable opportunities to convert people to their position. Isn't that the goal? To convince more people to agree with you then the other side? Not that I wish to help them, but I figure they won't take the advice anyway.
They really CAN'T do anything but smear their opponents. How many times have you asked them to do otherwise?
Too many to count. The insults don't phase me, but I admit the inability to understand simple English on their part is making my head spin a bit.
I read his proposal before Tancredo issued his response and rejected it. I know, that contradicts the mythology that Tancredo yells Jump and we ask how high.
You still are afraid to address the details of her article and Pence's proposal I see.
BTW, If Schlafly isn't worth a response, why are you in this thread?
Including draconian penalties on employers who continue to violate employment laws after a work-visa program is established
How much larger will Pence's fines be than the ones already on the books?
How will Pence's plan force the executive branch to fine employers?
What will Pence's plan do when the executive branch refuses to fine employers as the Bush administration has done?
Why? Because he posted an article that you don't like? So, you condemn him. That's pretty darn pathetic. I guess free speech is only good for you and John McCain, huh?
LOL!
Let's see. Tancredo's PAC and bay buchanan's people came to Utah and called Jacobs soft on illegals and declared the Pence Plan amnesty.
Jacobs called Tancredo an opportunist and said he could have written the Pence plan he agrees with it so much.
The original loser candidate that Tancredo and bay supported lost his arse early on so Tancredo and bay switch their support to Jacobs who supports the Pence Plan, which they insist is amnesty, and whom they called soft on illegals.
Dude...your head should be spinning.
Pence's plan addresses many of the holes in the existing laws that make the problem worse...but of course you already know this but wish to play a silly strawman game.
Thanks for posting this article. Phyllis tells it like it is, and even though there are those who would silence her and you, it's something that needs to get out there, so keep on telling the truth! America's sovereignty is at stake!
Emergency enforcement powers? Will Pence's laws mandate that they be used? Or, are they merely providing a tool to the executive branch to be used when it sees fit?
You keep describing things that can be done and I'm asking what will be done that isn't being done now.
Those are just a few of the things Pence is proposing. There will be years of court battles over almost every one of the enforcement provisions but we have a more conservative federal court system and the hope of at least one more USSC vacancy before 2008. It won't be easy but right now the entire immigration apparatus has to be re-built.
Years of court battles? Which means injunctions against enforcement, doesn't it? With no guarantees, right?
So, if I understand, we'll scrap the existing laws (which you claim are completely unenforceable and need to be rebuilt from the ground-up) and put into their place another set of laws which will be unenforceable while they wind their way through federal court.
Meanwhile, the guest worker program will start processing people into the country.
No, it's not a strawman game, Chief.
I've asked very simple questions of you.
I've asked you to point out the existing 'holes' in our existing laws. You reference them above, so obviously you believe they exist. I'm simply asking you to show me which you think will be fixed by Pence's plan.
I've asked why the Bush administration refuses to enforce the existing laws, like when Bush's man at ICE (Hutchinson) pulled the plug on the raids in San Diego area last year.
I've asked what Pence's plan will do that will cause the executive branch to enforce the new laws when they refuse to enforce the ones already on the books. (like when Hutchinson pulled the plug on the raids in the San Diego area last year)
IOW, what penalties will Pence's plan levy on the executive branch when the *next* President refuses to enforce these new laws?
Does anybody at least have a bill number or a link to whatever Pence is supposedly proposing? How does Pence's plan differ from what Bush tried to get passed?
Not circular arguments, Chief.
Just three, very pertinent questions about Pence's and every other proposal to reform our existing immigration laws.
You think that saying that because Newt Gingrich endorses an idea that is the correct idea is good logic?
How about addressing the issue on the merits, not on who endorses it.
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