"The current "No Amnesty" mantra is a waste of time. "
Baloney. It's never a waste of time standing up for the right thing, things like rule of law. Amnesty is a surrender to the problem, and as noted by Ed Meese, this current Senate bill is a replica of the failed 1986 bill.
Now, amnesty will surely make the problem of illegal immigration worse, as it did in the past.
Leave aside that massive legalization-to-citizenship, aka amnesty, of 10 million or more illegal immigrants, and the estimated (by Heritage) 60+ million legal immigrants to flow from this legalization and expanded immigration quotas.
There are huge negative consequences to the rule of law of affirming illegal behavior, the incitement to further illegal immigration from giving benefits to illegal aliens, the costs to taxpayers for additional burdens of low-wage citizenry, and unfairness to legal immigrants done by this act. Ed Meese and Senator Grassley rightly point out, this is the 1986 immigration bill all over again, with the same erroneous thinking and the same results likely.
It's akin to 'solving' an alcoholics problem by giving him a tab at the local bar.
The real solution is to do the following - 'enforcement first':
* Secure the border first
* Set up an employment verification system that works
* Streamline deportation and immigration law to reduce litigation in deportations
* Involve State and local law enforcement in immigration law enforcement
only AFTER we do the above can we start talking about reforming our legal immigration flows, eg, things like guest worker visa expansion - the economists are right to point out that reasonable levels of employment-base immigration is fine. What they fail to mention is that most of our immigration is family-sponsors and our current 'chain migration' lets in the 'wrong' people for their analysis.
Last point: You suggest assimilation, even to the wrongheaded extreme of eliminating non-English papers/stations, etc. Wont work, wrong, unconstitutional.
But if we want assimilation to work, there is one perfectly reasonable thing we can do - end bilingual education.
"And most important of all, testing for english proficiency should be required of every high school student." Gee, you'd think we already have that.
Political capital eventually runs out, like your pocketbook. The "No Amnesty" crowd is wasting their political capital to write laws that can't work. Whether this is "right" or "just" or "lawful" is irrelevant. Their time and political capital could be put to *much* better use fighting the PC crowd in order to properly assimilate immigrants.
this current Senate bill is a replica of the failed 1986 bill.
You noticed?
We got this "Amnesty" bill by people screaming they wanted a silly fence at the border. This is a good example of "wasting political capital", by asking for one thing, and getting another.
The real solution is to do the following - 'enforcement first':
* Secure the border first
Wonderful. You've cut off one method these people use. How you gonna stop the other half, overstaying visas? How you gonna stop them from flying to Canada and walking across that border? These people *will* get here. If you plug one leak, they'll merely find another.
* Set up an employment verification system that works
Great idea. The problem is you're wasting your time on step number 1, which can't work. Your political capital will run out about the time they compromise on how many miles of fence to build. An employment verification system (which would require *all* of us to get national ID cards) would work all by itself. But the "No Amnesty" people will never get to this step.
* Streamline deportation and immigration law to reduce litigation in deportations
What do you accomplish? Make the people sneak across one more time? They're going to get here, one way or another as long as there are jobs. Just like drugs, it's impossible to stop them.
* Involve State and local law enforcement in immigration law enforcement
They don't want to. In Arizona only Joe Arpiao in Maricopa county is using our new state laws that enable cops to arrest coyotes and those who have paid to be smuggled (co-conspirators). The rest of the local jurisdictions refuse to enforce the law. What are you going to do now?
only AFTER we do the above can we start talking about reforming our legal immigration flows, eg, things like guest worker visa expansion
It is impossible to succeed via enforcement only, just as it is impossible to stop drugs by that method. As long as there are jobs, immigrants will take the easiest route to get them. Right now, the easiest route is to just sneak into the country. The only workable solution is to both make it easy to be legal, while making it hard to be illegal (IE, some kind of compromise). You can do that by any combination of carrot and stick. But by choosing to tackle only one side of the equation, you guarantee failure, just like in the 80's.