I generally can’t stand O’Reilly and love Palin, but he did a good job of getting her to say what many here have feared: that as she has said there is no distance between her and McCain on immigration policy.
First she tried to avoid answering what she’d do with the illegal aliens here, even after the border was secured. She tried to filibuster by simply repeating how important it was to secure the border. O’Reilly forced her to move beyond that. Then she said repeatedly that the illegals wouldn’t get off ‘free’. Finally she said that she would deport those who failed to register, but that those who did register would be allowed to stay and work here as part of comprehensive immigration reform.
She tried to cushion the blow of her position by saying that Americans needed to get the first whack at jobs, but the reality is that with all those illegals in the market low-end wages are only dropped lower and lower. (And of course, there are all those societal and governmental costs of services provided to illegals working at such low wages. That is, the taxpayers in reality subsidize many, many illegals—and Palin isn’t going to change that.) Finally, she tried to hide behind Ronald Reagan with the position that he had the right idea with the amnesty back in the 80’s, only he didn’t succeed in verifying instead of trusting that the border would actually be closed.
Unfortunately there is not likely to be a mainstream candidate with a markedly better position on illegal immigration, though if there were I’d support him or her. Our best bet may be to try to get through to her on the importance of this issue and on her getting right on it. Still more unfortunately I don’t think there’s that much chance of getting her to change her positions on anything, since here it cuts against us.