Why You Should Support Bush's Immigration Proposal

Critics of President Bush's immigration reform proposal have been so quick to label it an amnesty plan in sheep's clothing that they have missed the subtle brilliance of his approach to a very complex problem. Let's look at some of the complex issues of illegal immigration and evaluate the President's proposal in relation to them.

Contrary to what many pundits seem concerned with, the main problem with illegal immigration in the United States is not its influence on the job market but its relationship to organized crime. In an article for the City-Journal's Winter 2004 edition entitled "The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave," Heather Mac Donald provides an in-depth and disturbing look at this relationship:

"95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide in L.A., which total 1,200 to 1,500, target illegal aliens and up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens."

"A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico."

"The leadership of the Columbia Lil' Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.'s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former assistant U.S. attorney Luis Li. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation."

As if that weren't bad enough, in an article carried by the Salt Lake Tribune on December 18th, David Kelly gives us a chilling view of a new development in Arizona crime:

"Moving with the cunning and cruelty of modern-day pirates, gangs of kidnappers are swooping down on Arizona highways, attacking smugglers transporting undocumented immigrants and stealing their human cargo. The kidnappers stash the immigrants in hundreds of drop houses scattered around the city, using violence and threats to extort money from their relatives."

"Now smugglers are fighting back, shooting it out with kidnappers on sidewalks and freeways in broad daylight. A gunbattle last month between kidnappers and smugglers on Interstate 10 at the height of rush hour left four dead. Four others were killed this month in the desert near Phoenix; authorities blamed the deaths on violence between the two groups."

"Kidnappers let smugglers take all the risks of getting immigrants into the country, then rob them once they get here. When they can't intercept smugglers on the road, they snatch migrants from houses where they are known to be hiding. The new wave of violence has made this the deadliest year in Phoenix history with 247 homicides, edging out the previous high of 245 in 2001. Police say 60 percent of the city's crime is related to smuggling and kidnapping."

As these articles demonstrate, a significant portion of crime in our big cities is perpetuated by illegal immigrants. But, as you can also see from David Kelly's article, the victims of these crimes are often also illegal immigrants. This creates a disastrous situation because victims of these and other crimes will not report them for fear of being deported. Vast numbers of illegal immigrants suffer severe abuse, extortion, and virtual slavery at the hands of organized crime and cannot report it for fear of deportation. So the crimes go unreported and the criminals unstopped.

To counteract this problem, many local city governments have adopted "sanctuary policies." These city policies prohibit employees of local government, including law enforcement officers, from inquiring after the immigration status of anyone. Often, even if a police officer knows that a particular individual has entered the country illegally (a misdemeanor) or has previously been deported and has returned illegally (a felony) he or she is forbidden by city statute from arresting that person. Police officers are even forbidden from reporting known illegal immigrants to the federal authorities.

While these policies are supposedly adopted to protect the illegal immigrants who are victims of crime and encourage them to report crimes without the fear of deportation, they have the secondary effect of protecting criminals who are illegal immigrants as well. Even if the police know of an individual with connections to organized crime and a past criminal record, and they know that he is in the country illegally, they are forbidden from using his illegal status to arrest him and deport him. In fact, a police officer can face disciplinary action for arresting someone based upon their immigration status or for reporting them to the INS. Many crimes that might have been prevented by deporting known illegal immigrants are left undeterred because the police cannot use their illegal status to deport them until they have already been booked for a different felony.

Such policies blatantly undermine federal immigration law. Heather Mac Donald explains in her City-Journal article:

"Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani sued all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend the city's sanctuary policy against a 1996 federal law decreeing that cities could not prohibit their employees from cooperating with the INS. Oh yeah? said Giuliani; just watch me. The INS, he claimed, with what turned out to be grotesque irony, only aims to "terrorize people." Though he lost in court, he remained defiant to the end. On September 5, 2001, his handpicked charter-revision committee ruled that New York could still require that its employees keep immigration information confidential to preserve trust between immigrants and government. Six days later, several visa-overstayers participated in the most devastating attack on the city and the country in history."

After September 11th there was outrage over the failure of Federal agencies to prevent the tragedy. And yet the possible contribution of mayor Giuliani's New York City sanctuary policy to September 11th has not been discussed by the mainstream media. While it may be appropriate to inquire into the failures of the federal government in the September 11th attacks, shouldn't there be an equal amount of outrage and demand for investigation into the role of city sanctuary policies? And yet over two years later the majority of the population of the United States isn't even aware that such policies exist.

Despite federal law and September 11th, this outrageous situation is still very common. Sanctuary policies are in effect in at least eighteen cities, including New York, Chicago, San Diego, Los Angeles, Austin, Houston, Minneapolis, Baltimore, and Seattle and in two states, Alaska and Oregon.

Since 1998, the city of St. Paul Minnesota has had a police policy that prohibits officers from "independently undertaking to approach, interview, interrogate or arrest any suspected illegal alien" when the main issue is immigration status violation. And, amazingly, this very month, the St. Paul city council is considering adopting an additional measure known as the "INS/City Separation Ordinance."

Why have the sanctuary laws of our nation's largest cities been so ignored by the mainstream media? You would think that even if they were completely neglected in the aftermath of September 11th, they would at least be addressed in relation to President Bush's proposed changes to immigration. The relationship between illegal immigration, sanctuary policies, and organized crime should be a major issue. Yet the mainstream media is still largely silent on the matter. Instead, they spend hours of airtime, newsprint, and bandwidth discussing how Bush's proposal will affect jobs, and whether it will encourage more illegal immigration. I suspect the media's silence is largely due to political correctness. To discuss any relationship between illegal immigration and crime would be labeled "racist" by the media language police faster than you can say "Francisco Martinez."

There is another group that also deserves a portion of the blame pie. The readiness of U.S. businesses to break the law by employing undocumented workers for the sake of avoiding taxes and paying lower wages is deplorable. If U.S. businesses would uniformly refuse to hire illegal immigrants it would help discourage illegal immigration by taking away some of their motivation. The situation is exacerbated by current immigration policies. Because foreign workers can only work in the United States for a very limited duration, companies that hire foreigners and obey the law must hire new workers on a very frequent basis. That makes it more difficult for them to compete with companies that are willing to break the law and hire illegal immigrants and thereby avoid the extra expense of frequently hiring and training new employees, not to mention taxation, worker's compensation, insurance and minimum wages.

The greatest danger to our nation is, in part, the result of widespread lawbreaking by businesses and law nullification by city governments. Conservatives seem ready to condemn the illegal immigrants who come seeking work and often advocate the harshest punishments for them (i.e. shooting them at the border) while at the same time barely hand-slapping the lawbreaking businesses and ignoring city sanctuary policies designed to undermine federal immigration law. This hypocrisy contributes to the unfortunate impression that conservatives are racists.

Under these circumstances, it is simply impossible for the Federal Government to enforce immigration laws. Even if the cities and businesses were cooperating, there is no way the federal government could muster the manpower and the funds necessary to identify, capture, and deport the vast numbers of illegal immigrants and then keep them out.

The immigration system is clearly broken and casting the blame on the Federal government alone is a huge oversimplification and misdirection of energy. Critics of the failure of the U.S. to enforce its immigration laws should direct their ire toward local governments that are endangering our nation with their ill-conceived and illegal sanctuary law.

How does President Bush's proposal relate to this immigration headache?

Rather than develop a detailed, specific plan for immigration reform, Bush wisely proposed principles upon which reform must be based if it is to be successful:

1. "America must control its borders...America is acting on a basic belief: Our borders should be open to legal travel and honest trade; our borders should be shut and barred tight to criminals, to drug traders, drug traffickers and to criminals and to terrorists."

2. "New immigration laws should serve the economic needs of our country. If an American employer is offering a job that American citizens are not willing to take, we ought to welcome into our country a person who will fill that job."

3. "We should not give unfair rewards to illegal immigrants in the citizenship process or disadvantage those who came here lawfully or hope to do so."

4. "New laws should provide incentives for temporary foreign workers to return permanently to their home countries after their period of work in the United States has expired."

By focusing on principles rather than specific plans, Bush provides a much more realistic and flexible approach to reform. The principles remain constant while the specific implementation may change according to how well it adheres to those principles.

The first principle and primary concern is about controlling the borders. Currently, city and state sanctuary policies completely thwart any attempt to apply this principle. The cities justify their sanctuary laws as a necessary measure to allow illegal immigrants who are victims of crimes to report them without fear of deportation. By allowing undocumented workers to receive a legal, temporary worker status, Bush's proposal takes away that necessity and leaves city sanctuary policies without justification. Under Bush's plan anybody who has an honest employment would have temporary worker status. All remaining illegal immigrants, lacking honest employment, could be assumed to be criminals and police officers could demand immigration documentation from anyone and arrest and deport anyone based solely on their immigration status.

In his proposal, President Bush explained:

"Our homeland will be more secure when we can better account for those who enter our country."

"Instead of the current situation, in which millions of people are unknown, unknown to the law, law enforcement will face fewer problems with undocumented workers, and will be better able to focus on the true threats to our nation from criminals and terrorists."

"And when temporary workers can travel legally and freely, there will be more efficient management of our borders and more effective enforcement against those who pose a true threat to our country."

By eliminating the excuse for sanctuary policies, Bush's principle-based plan would then allow local law enforcement to freely cooperate with federal authorities to control our national borders. The Bush proposal makes it possible for federal immigration authorities to focus their limited resources on those who pose the greatest threat to our domestic security: organized criminals. Contrary to the characterization it has received, Bush's proposal allows for more strict enforcement of immigration law and greater control over our national borders by facilitating the repeal of city sanctuary laws.

A related benefit of Bush's proposal is that without city sanctuary policies, law enforcement officers who apprehend illegal immigrants would be able to more easily identify businesses that break the law. Any organization or company that continued to employ undocumented immigrants rather than temporary workers would be suspected of involvement in organized crime or of supporting terrorism and could be investigated and dismantled.

The implementation of Bush's immigration proposal could eliminate a significant amount of crime in our large cities. It could be a significant blow to crime organizations, drug and weapons trafficking, and organizations that covertly support terror. It could help us control our borders to keep criminals and terrorists out.

Bush's proposal is not a scheme to appeal to Hispanic voters. It is a well informed, strategic move calculated to undermine the forces that are currently preventing our immigration laws from being enforced and endangering our nation. Bush's proposal is a brilliant move in a complex chess game. We should support him and encourage our representatives to support his proposal.

No one is 'turning against Bush' .. but I will say I have the feeling Bush has turned against us. I was a supporter of Bush as you 110% until his immigration proposal. You say that this proposal will 'allow the government to better pinpoint undersiderables'. Maybe you should read this from National Review: January 06, 2004, 8:50 a.m.
Amnesty Trapdoor

What is the president thinking on immigration?

In comedy, when you see a man walking straight towards an open trapdoor, his eyes fixed on the far horizon, you laugh. In politics, when you see the same thing, you wonder why.
Just now President Bush is striding three-quarters of the way to "open borders" immigration policy. According to the Washington Post, Mr. Bush will next week announce an immigration package with three new elements:

1. A new visa system for "temporary" workers who would be allowed into the U.S. if there were jobs unfilled by Americans waiting for them (i.e., a new guest-worker program.)

2. Some kind of "legal status" for the estimated eight million "undocumented workers" in the U.S., i.e., an amnesty for illegal aliens.

3. Stricter entry controls "to make the plan more palatable to conservatives."

Even on its own terms, Mr. Bush's plan is full of holes. Experience from Germany to California shows that "guest-worker" programs invariably increase illegal immigration since they create welcoming cultural enclaves of foreign nationals into which the "illegals" promptly vanish without trace. Amnesties also encourage illegal immigration by sending the message that if an "undocumented worker" makes it over the border, he will eventually be granted legal status. The 1986 amnesty prompted just such an upsurge in illegal immigration. And what exactly is the point of stricter border controls if you admit anyone willing to work-temporarily — for starvation wages? Surely not even Republican congressmen are likely to be deceived by such a "palatable" absurdity.

All in all the effect of such reforms will be to increase both legal and illegal immigration massively. This in turn will foster an underworld of American life in which the authorities — despite the palatable cosmetic of better border technology — are simply unable to keep track of who is in the U.S. and for what reason. It hardly needs pointing out that such an underworld would be an ideal environment of night and fog for the terrorists to move about in.

We have already gone too far in building such an underworld. It is an open secret that neither administration officials nor federal immigration judges enforce the law on deporting illegal aliens. Judges in particular often refuse to order arrest warrants for those illegal aliens who fail to turn up for their court hearings. And according to a senior official in the Homeland Security Department (quoted by Michelle Malkin in her indispensable column), the Bush administration is about to reintroduce the Travel Without a Visa program that has enabled illegal aliens from countries harboring al Qaeda terrorists to simply walk out of Los Angeles airport into the underworld. They probably weren't terrorists. But who knows?

Both our current immigration policy and the "reforms" proposed by the president are national-security disasters waiting to happen. So why is Mr. Bush walking so determinedly towards the trapdoor?

Can it be that more immigration will benefit the U.S. economy sufficiently to justify the national-security and other risks? The answer to that is plainly "no." Peter Brimelow's Alien Nation remains the best guide to the economic arguments. But research shows quite clearly that the net economic benefit to native-born Americans from immigration is miniscule — and dwarfed by the fiscal costs that immigration imposes in the form of higher spending needed for the extra schools, hospitals, roads, and other services that immigrants use.

Two specific groups do benefit substantially from immigration: namely the immigrants themselves and those who employ them at lower wages than Americans would accept. The corollary, however, is that some specific Americans lose out: namely, low-paid workers, often minority Americans, who must either lose their jobs or must accept lower wages to compete with the new arrivals.

If economic benefits are not the explanation of Mr. Bush's reforms, what about political benefits? It is certainly possible that the president, under the tutelage of his pocket Machiavelli, Karl Rove, may believe that there are votes in a policy of more immigration. Not from the voters in general to be sure — every poll shows that about two-thirds of the American people want less immigration rather than more. But Rove apparently sees immigration as a vote-winner with particular ethnic groups, such as Hispanics who supposedly want to see Mexican "illegals" legalized, or from Arab/Muslim voters who resent some immigration controls as anti-Muslim. Nor are these just recent concerns. As part of such outreach, President Bush was scheduled to meet with Muslim and Arab-American leaders to discuss an end to ethnic profiling at airports (or "flying while Arab") and "secret" trial evidence on the afternoon of — September 11, 2001.

However firmly held, however, such beliefs are a delusion as Steve Sailer of United Press International has documented in several analyses of exit polls for the 2002 elections. To begin with, self-identified Muslim voters account for 0.3 percent of the electorate — and 90 percent of them voted Democrat. Second, Hispanics, who account for only about 6 percent of the voters, consistently lag 20 points behind whites in voting Republican in both landslides and defeats. Third, Hispanics are only slightly less hostile to illegal immigration then the rest of America. Not surprisingly either since new immigrants, both legal and illegal, tend to compete with them at the lower end of the labor market. And, finally, almost all other voters — namely 90 percent — are bitterly opposed to illegal immigration — and 60 percent are hostile to the legal kind too. So much for outreach!

That leaves the left-wing critique: Bush is simply doing the bidding of corporate America by supplying them with an endless supply of cheap labor to hold down wages. A RICO lawsuit against Wal-mart in New Jersey — brought, ironically, not by displaced American workers but by the illegal immigrants Wal-mart employed at one remove through contractors — reveals a second underworld of sweatshops in which workers are bullied, cheated, and casually dismissed that is the inevitable result of uncontrolled mass immigration.

Maybe the president thinks he is ending such sweatshops that by legalizing illegals. Not so, alas. By increasing the supply of labor without limit and without legal risk, he is really making it easier to import sweatshops throughout America. For mass immigration and sweatshops go together like love and...well, like love and shacking up.

So, as President Bush strides confidently towards the trapdoor, I am reminded of Talleyrand's famous question: "I wonder why he did that?" His question was inspired by the death of the Russian ambassador.

— John O'Sullivan is editor of The National Interest and National Review editor-at-large. He can be contacted via www.benadorassociates.com.

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