GOP, You Are Warned

AEI ^ | 29 dec 04 | David Frum

[white trash redneck]

No issue, not one, threatens to do more damage to the Republican coalition than immigration. There's no issue where the beliefs and interests of the party rank-and-file diverge more radically from the beliefs and interests of the party's leaders. Immigration for Republicans in 2005 is what crime was for Democrats in 1965 or abortion in 1975: a vulnerable point at which a strong-minded opponent could drive a wedge that would shatter the GOP.

President Bush won reelection because he won 10 million more votes in 2004 than he did in 2000. Who were these people? According to Ruy Teixeira--a shrewd Democratic analyst of voting trends--Bush scored his largest proportional gains among white voters who didn't complete college, especially women. These voters rallied to the president for two principal reasons: because they respected him as a man who lived by their treasured values of work, family, honesty, and faith; and because they trusted him to keep the country safe.

Yet Bush is already signaling that he intends to revive the amnesty/guestworker immigration plan he introduced a year ago--and hastily dropped after it ignited a firestorm of opposition. This plan dangerously divides the Republican party and affronts crucial segments of the Republican vote.

The plan is not usually described as an "amnesty" because it does not immediately legalize illegal workers in this country. Instead, it offers illegals a three-year temporary work permit. But this temporary permit would be indefinitely renewable and would allow illegals a route to permanent residency, so it is reasonably predictable that almost all of those illegals who obtain the permit will end up settling permanently in the United States. The plan also recreates the guestworker program of the 1950s--allowing employers who cannot find labor at the wages they wish to pay to advertise for workers outside the country. Those workers would likewise begin with a theoretically temporary status; but they too would probably end up settling permanently.

This is a remarkably relaxed approach to a serious border-security and labor-market problem. Employers who use illegal labor have systematically distorted the American labor market by reducing wages and evading taxes in violation of the rules that others follow. The president's plans ratify this gaming of the system and encourage more of it. It invites entry by an ever-expanding number of low-skilled workers, threatening the livelihoods of low-skilled Americans--the very same ones who turned out for the president in November.

National Review has historically favored greater restrictions on legal as well as illegal immigration. But you don't have to travel all the way down the NR highway to be troubled by the prospect of huge increases in immigration, with the greatest increases likely to occur among the least skilled.

The president's permissive approach has emboldened senators and mayors (such as New York's Michael Bloomberg) to oppose almost all enforcement actions against illegals. In September 2003, for example, Bloomberg signed an executive order forbidding New York police to share information on immigration offenses with the Immigration Service, except when the illegal broke some other law or was suspected of terrorist activity. And only last month, a House-Senate conference stripped from the intelligence-overhaul bill almost all the border-security measures recommended by the 9/11 commission.

The president's coalition is already fracturing from the tension between his approach to immigration and that favored by voters across the country. Sixty-seven House Republicans--almost one-third of the caucus--voted against the final version of the intelligence overhaul. And I can testify firsthand to the unpopularity of the amnesty/guestworker idea: I was on the conservative talk-radio circuit promoting a book when the president's plan was first proposed last January. Everywhere I went, the phones lit up with calls from outraged listeners who wanted to talk about little else. Every host I asked agreed: They had not seen such a sudden, spontaneous, and unanimous explosion of wrath from their callers in years.

Five years ago, Candidate George W. Bush founded his approach to immigration issues on a powerful and important insight: The illegal-immigration problem cannot be solved by the United States alone. Two-thirds of the estimated 9 million illegals in the U.S. are from Mexico. Mexico is also the largest source of legal immigration to the United States. What caused this vast migration? Between 1940 and 1970, the population of Mexico more than doubled, from 20 million to 54 million. In those years, there was almost no migration to the United States from Mexico at all. Since 1970, however, some 65 million more Mexicans have been born--and about 20 million of them have migrated northward, with most of that migration occurring after 1980.

Obviously, the 30 years from 1940 to 1970 are different in many ways from the 30 years after 1970s. But here's one factor that surely contributed to the Mexican exodus: In the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, the Mexican economy grew at an average rate of almost 7 percent a year. Thanks to the oil boom, the Mexican economy continued to grow rapidly through the troubled 1970s. But since 1980, Mexico has averaged barely 2 percent growth. The average Mexican was actually poorer in 1998 than he had been in 1981. You'd move too if that happened to you.

Recognizing the connection between Mexican prosperity and American border security, the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations all worked hard to promote Mexican growth. The Reagan and Clinton administrations bailed out Mexican banks in 1982 and 1995; the first Bush administration negotiated, and Clinton passed, NAFTA. George W. Bush came to office in 2001 envisioning another round of market opening with the newly elected government of his friend Vicente Fox, this time focusing on Mexico's protected, obsolete, economically wasteful, and environmentally backward energy industry.

Bush's hopes have been bitterly disappointed. The Fox government has actually done less to restore Mexican growth than the PRI governments of the 1990s. And so Bush has been pushed away from his grand vision and has instead accepted Fox's demand that the two countries concentrate on one issue: raising the status of Mexican illegals in the United States. But this won't work. Just as the U.S. cannot solve the problem by unilateral policing, so it also cannot solve it through unilateral concession. Bush had it right the first time.

Some of the president's approach to immigration remains right and wise. He is right to show a welcoming face to Hispanics legally resident in the United States. He is right to try to smooth the way to citizenship for legal permanent residents. He is right--more controversially--to give all who have contributed to Social Security, whatever their legal status, access to benefits from the Social Security account.

But he is wrong, terribly wrong, to subordinate border security to his desire for an amnesty deal--and still more wrong to make amnesty the centerpiece of his immigration strategy.

Right now, of course, the president does not have to worry much about political competition on the immigration issue. But Republicans shouldn't count on their opponents' ignoring such an opportunity election after election. "I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants," Hillary Clinton told a New York radio station in November. And later: "People have to stop employing illegal immigrants. I mean, come up to Westchester, go to Suffolk and Nassau counties, stand on the street corners in Brooklyn or the Bronx. You're going to see loads of people waiting to get picked up to go do yard work and construction work and domestic work." Okay, so maybe Hillary will never pick up many votes in Red State America. But there are Democratic politicians who could.

Republicans need a new and better approach--one that holds their constituency together and puts security first.

First, Republicans should develop and practice a new way of speaking about immigration, one that makes clear that enforcement of the immigration laws is not anti-immigrant or anti-Mexican: It is anti-bad employer. Illegal immigration is like any other illegal business practice: a way for unscrupulous people to exploit others to gain an advantage over their law-abiding competitors.

Second, Republicans can no longer deny the truth underscored by the 9/11 commission: Immigration policy is part of homeland-security policy. Non-enforcement of the immigration laws is non-protection of Americans against those who would do them harm.

Third, Republicans have to begin taking enforcement seriously. It's ridiculous and demoralizing to toss aside cabinet nominees like Linda Chavez over alleged immigration violations while winking at massive law-breaking by private industry--or to regard immigration violations as so trivial that they can be used as a face-saving excuse for the dismissal of a nominee damaged by other allegations.

Fourth, skills shortages in the high-technology and health-care industries are genuine problems that have to be addressed--but they should not be used as an excuse to void immigration enforcement. Republicans can say yes to using immigration law to attract global talent, while saying no to companies that systematically violate immigration law to gain an advantage over their more scrupulous rivals.

Fifth, Mexico should not be allowed to sever the migration issue from trade and investment issues. Mexican political stability is a vital national-security issue of the United States--and just for that reason, Americans should not allow Mexican governments to use migration as a way to shirk the work of economic and social reform.

Finally--and most important--Republicans need to recognize that they have a political vulnerability and must take action to protect themselves. An election victory as big as 2004 can look inevitable in retrospect. But it wasn't, not at all. The Democrats could have won--and could still win in 2006 and 2008--by taking better advantage of Republican mistakes and making fewer of their own. And no mistake offers them a greater opportunity than the one-sidedness of the Bush immigration policy. The GOP is a party dedicated to national security, conservative social values, and free-market economics. The president's policy on immigration risks making it look instead like an employers' lobby group. That's the weak point at which the edge of the wedge could enter--and some smart Democratic politician is sharpening it right now.

[Sam the Sham]

Actually, people who illegally cross the borders are criminals.

People who hire them with a nod and a wink are criminals, too.

[AndyJackson]

Do you acknowledge that illegal aliens violate laws?

We are all sinners. It is a sad state of affairs, but in our over-regulated environment we (including you)all break laws all of the time.

[Fatalis]

Hillary or another creditable Democrat running on immigration, federal spending and jobs would wipe the floor with a GOP candidate forced to defend the Bush administrations record on these issues.

Something like a Clinton-Richardson ticket could talk tough on illegals while neutralizing anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant charges.

[dasein64]

IMO, voter fraud is parallel with immigration as a threat to GOP victory next time around. Both issues need to be addressed as soon as possible. For one thing, photo ID would screen out illegals. Removing incentives for illegal immigrants would be the first step to take and would relieve states of the burden of supporting another class of welfare recipients. A lot to be done but the activist courts will fight reform all the way and Pres Bush cannot just wave a wand and make it happen. He must, however, show support for the citizens of this country who are concerned and outraged at the current run away situation. They are Pres Bush's obligation, and he should not be looking at reform from the point of view of foreign countries.

[Sam the Sham]

Apparently you think it is racist and "anti-Mexican" to insist that laws be enforced. There is nothing the least bit conservative about that. Apparently you are willing to destroy the quality of life in our border states to facilitate access to cheap labor. There is nothing the least bit conservative about that.

Your hysterics are reminiscent of a 60's knee-jerk liberal insisting that people worried about crime in the streets were "racist". In your fulmination about California social spending you have your own version of "root causes".

[Dane]

Something like a Clinton-Richardson ticket could talk tough on illegals while neutralizing anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant charges.

And if you believe that crock, there is no hope for you, IMO.

Fortunately there are some on FR ready to break that crock of hillary, richardson, MSM, of you know what.

[Fatalis]

Read what I wrote again. You missed the point. The mistake she ALREADY HAS MADE is the fact that she has already aligned herself with Marxists.

What's the date of Hillary Clinton's last positive citation of Saul Alinsky?

If it's not post-1992, the issue will not surface as a factor in 2008 .

[BlackElk]

Yours is an excellent post as well. I expected Sam Francis whose day job is editing a newspaper for the "Conservative Citizens' Council" (nee White Citizens' Council). Buchanan really ought to have known better. Worse yet, Buchanan finds himself in ideological league with the lavender legend of limpwrist/pantywaist foreign policy: Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com.

You are still a conservative. So am I. I am not changing and I hope you don't either.

[Sam the Sham]

A ticket like that would solidify her in the Southwest. She only needs one Southwest state.

Bush got 11% of the black vote in Ohio because of gay marriage. Kerry lost because he did surprisingly poorly with black Ohio voters. Hillary will not have that problem.

[jpsb]

"If the Democrats forget about cultural liberalism and get back"

Yup that is the Democrats weak spots, but money beats culture almost every time. And remember Bill Clinton tried to form a "new democrat" party out of the old liberal party. He tried to move his party to right, Hillary is doing the same. If the democrats can rid themselves of more obscene culture warriors like Micheal Moore, Homosexuals and such and present itself as a "working mans" party and paint the GOP as the party of Wall Street not Main Street, then the GOP will be removed from power in a Tsunami of party realignment more powerful then the realignment to the Contract with America GOP in 94. The GOP needs t remember just who brought them the dance.

Unfortunately I do not see that happening under Bush. Bush is a good man, just like his father, but totally out of touch with the country.

[txdoda]

There's more to it than that.

Yes, I understand that, however, (1)until we secure the borders, (2) Remove some of the *incentives* to be here illegal, we will always have some illegal employers & illegals breaking in to work.

[Fatalis]

And if you believe that crock, there is no hope for you, IMO.

Fortunately there are some on FR ready to break that crock of hillary, richardson, MSM, of you know what.

I have a hard time understanding your misdirection. If you've inferred that I would vote for such a ticket, you're mistaken. I'm suggesting that such a ticket would be formidable. This is a similar observation to the warning that David Frum has issued with his article at the top of the thread.

Attempts #2 and #7, respectively:

Do you acknowledge that illegal aliens violate laws?

Is it good to reward lawbreakers at the expense of those who obey the laws?

[Southack]

"Yet Bush is already signaling that he intends to revive the amnesty/guestworker immigration plan..."

David Frum gets it all wrong from the get go. It isn't an amnesty plan. Amnesty was what President Reagan gave to over 1 million illegal aliens in the 1980's (and you see how much that "hurt" his popularity).

President Bush's plan is a plea bargain. Confusing a plea bargain with an amnesty is a sign of an uneducated mind (or a mind that prefers propaganda to honest debate).

Illegals, under Bush's plan, have to register with the federal government, they have to register their family, and they have to register their employer. Then they have to pay a fine. Moreover, they aren't eligible for citizenship under Bush's plan (they would have to apply under existing legal programs for that, hardly something to fault Bush for)...and they have to self-deport themselves after three years if they want to renew their blue card work permit.

So what do we legal American citizens get? We get 8 million currently anonymous illegals to suddenly come in from the cold to REGISTER with our federal government. Instead of having to task massive law enforcement resources to track down anonymous criminals, suddenly our government knows where 8 million illegals live and work, specifically.

What else do we get? By registering their employers, we suddenly get a way to enforce our minimum wage laws...and we remove a wage incentive for hiring an illegal over an American willing to work for Minimum Wage (e.g. a teenager).

That's a far cry from President Reagan's amnesty.

President Bush's plan is good. It's being deliberately mischaracterized, however.

Well, here's a good rule of thumb: if your opponent has to lie or mischaracterize in order to make a point, then 9 times out of 10 your opponent is on the losing and immoral side of an issue.

In this case, why do opponents of President Bush's plan have to mischaracterize it as being an "amnesty?" Can they not make their logical arguments against that plan based strictly upon the merits (or lack thereof) to that plan? Why must they call what is clearly a plea bargain an "amnesty?" Such dishonesty weakens their arguments against this plan.

[Fatalis]

Yes, I understand that, however, (1)until we secure the borders, (2) Remove some of the *incentives* to be here illegal, we will always have some illegal employers & illegals breaking in to work.

Even if we get #1 and #2, we'll still have some illegals, but fewer. Laws rarely eliminate every aspect of a problem, but when well written and well enforced they can alleviate them greatly.

[txdoda]

Legal immigrants resent the way illegal Mexicans and Central Americans are catered to. How they get to jump to the head of the line.

They sure do, I've always thought they should file lawsuits.

(and have heard rumors they might if illegals receive yet another *line cut*)

[Dane]

A ticket like that would solidify her in the Southwest. She only needs one Southwest state

Oh yeah, hillary's non-changing stance on gun control or abortion, tax increases(yes richardson did not increase taxes but he is the VP candidate, not the Prez. candidate), will just be erased from voters minds.

There are many weaknesses to a hillary candidacy, yet you and your cadre on FR wish to focus only on her perceived MSM strengths.

That makes one say, hmmmm.

[Torie]

they have to self-deport themselves after three years if they want to renew their blue card work permit.

How does that work exactly? What are the details? You know, it would be a good idea if somebody found a link to the bullet point details of the Bush proposal, so that we can refer to it.

[Dane]

If you've inferred that I would vote for such a ticket, you're mistaken. I'm suggesting that such a ticket would be formidable. This is a similar observation to the warning that David Frum has issued with his article at the top of the thread.

See reply #236 of this thread.

[AndyJackson]

Actually, people who illegally cross the borders are criminals.

It is a minor point, but they are not ipso facto criminals. To be a criminal you have to violate the criminal code -i.e. rape, murder, armed robbery, that sort of thing. You are not a criminal if you get a speeding ticket, or, if you build a fence to close to the property line and without a city permit - no matter how unlawful these things otherwise are.

[jpsb]

"Illegals, under Bush's plan, have to register with the federal government, they have to register their family, and they have to register their employer. Then they have to pay a fine. Moreover, they aren't eligible for citizenship under Bush's plan (they would have to apply under existing legal programs for that, hardly something to fault Bush for)...and they have to self-deport themselves after three years if they want to renew their blue card work permit."

Actually that does not sound to bad, but I have not seen any details yet.

We will not solve this problem without giving Law Enforcement the tools it needs to convict employers, lacks of LE tools is what doomed Reagan 86 bill. We will need either forgery prove national ID card or a national database to enforce any crack down on employers. I am not a big fan of either, but I can't see any other solution.