GOP, You Are Warned

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.

Currently unregistered, anonymous illegals aren't being paid union scale in urban areas, which is why they are being hired in the first place. Register them with the government, register their employers with the government, and suddenly the employer has to choose between hiring a legal American at union scale (for your construction situation) or an illegal at union scale.

Again, I think that your premise is wrong, at least in the construction industry. Suppose the situation were different - that the number of skilled Americans willing to work on construction jobs is inadequate to the demand. After all, this is not unprecedented in history which is why we brought in the Irish and the Chinese.

You forget - the middle class dream in America is to send your children to college to learn a profession, not to work steel on a construction site. It isn't just about wages. Hell, a guy working steel at 400 ft probably gets paid a lot more than I do. I am not going to sign up.

"Does a lie suddenly become "truth" to you if enough people repeat it to you?

Hey, just because you fall in that category......

I see the problems in front of my face. You refuse to. So you're calling 100 republican congressmen liars? Why would they "turn" on Bush? They ALL supported him, too bad he can't do the same.

Snip...

How did it happen that approximately 1 million immigrant workers are to be found in Greece? The death of Enver Hoxha in 1985 and the subsequent opening of the borders had a dramatic effect on the immigrant supply from Albania, the major nation involved. And the break-ups of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia also had an effect on driving Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and others southward. The demand was there, as well; as Greeks began to enjoy a more upscale lifestyle in the 1980’s and 90’s, menial labor and agriculture began to seem less enticing as job options. To keep operations cost-effective for farmers, restaurant owners and building contractors, it thus became necessary to hire illegal immigrants. In this way, the businessmen could get the work done cheaply, deftly avoiding having to pay taxes and health insurance for the workers.

Now, however, the long-term effects of this short-sighted policy are about to be felt. Illegal immigrants have established a foothold, and the Greeks seem almost willfully ignorant of the ramifications of this process.

In the end, if the Greeks are unhappy about the perceived negative effect economic migrant workers have on their quality of life, they will have only their own greed to blame for the problem. Sure, it seems to make economic sense to keep things cheap by not paying worker taxes. And having reached a certain economic strata, a culture can also attempt to justify no longer participating in certain kinds of labor. But in the end, everything has a price, much as the Greeks may want to avoid it.

And so, if Greece’s right-wing politicians really want to deport all Albanians, as they have declared, they will want to consider who is going to take their places pouring concrete, mopping floors, cleaning toilets and laying bricks. It’s doubtful that the much-vaunted Greek national pride goes so far as to engage in such activities.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1311372/posts

"The workers under temporary status must pay a one-time fee to register in the program, abide by the rules, and return home after their period of work expires. There would be an opportunity for renewal."

Not clear to me that workers will be required to return home, the phase "There would be an opportunity for renewal." Doesn't make it clear renewal requires returning home." Could be, then again maybe not. I wait for a real plan to be presented, seems all we have so far is talking points. But I definately get the feeling Bush cares more about the illegal Mexican then Americans.

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.

LOL......the mexican gov't can't even get all our illegals to *register*, I guess, they're still pushing those sham ID cards here.

LOL......and you *know* all illegal employers now want to register ??

Then they have to pay a fine.

Pay your *mordida* & the US gov't will allow you to *legally* line jump. (AGAIN)

and they have to self-deport themselves

and their *anchor babies* too ??? they don't obey our laws now, why would they *then* ???

So what do we legal American citizens get? We get 8 million currently anonymous illegals....

who come next January will be able to file *legally* for 8 million (plus) child tax credits & fat EIC checks, (compliments of the US taxpayers).

In other words, they oppose President Bush's plan because they know it will work. They know that illegals will register under that plan and that employers will then hire less and less of them due to the wage incentive disappearing. - Southack

"Hogwash. A retired INS agent disagrees with you, plus about 85% of the public. They are not going to give up free public services to start paying taxes!"

You've misundestood what I've told you. I'm talking about legal American employers. Once legal American employers have to pay the same wage to either illegals or to legal American citizens, the hiring of illegals will decline.

How do we get to that point? By registering illegal aliens with our government so that do-gooders and union goons can verify that everyone is being paid union scale or minimum wage, be they illegal aliens or legal American citizens.

Without registering illegals and their employers (e.g. the system as it stands today), employers can get away with paying illegals sub-minimum wage or sub-union scale.

Under President Bush's plan, those illegals register themselves and their employers with the government. Once registered, wages can be checked for union scale and minimum wage compliance.

Once wage compliance is being checked, the *incentive* for employers to hire illegals goes away.

The total seriousness of the Immigration Problem does not lend itself for any kind of socialist explanation of what it brings with it! It is "BROWN TROUBLE" with a U.S. Presidential Seal of Approval in a neatly wrapped package of Representative Refusal to act in the PEOPLES vested interests. Some things are so off the wall that only those mouth breathers out there,who need help to chew their bubble gum. All it will take is one moment of inattention and then its too late "bad bills " get passed and passed on to much worse situations. The people must be heard on this issue and the sooner the better!

Consider that the big issue over the Bush plan is that it legalizes illegal aliens by admitting them into a guest worker plan without requiring them to return home.

How reasonable is it to believe that the plan would require legal guest workers return home when it doesn't ask it of illegal aliens?

To be accepted into the President's guest worker plan an illegal alien has to have an illegal job, while a legit guest worker applicant has to find an legit employer. The job held by the illegal alien was never available to the law abiding applicant, therefore legalizing them on the basis of entering illegally and working illegally secures for them the advantages they gained by breaking those laws. Illegal aliens would have a head start in the President's guest worker plan because they jumped the line.

The advantage they gained from jumping that first line would carry on as they moved to the green card and citizenship lines.

If the laws themselves are racist and anti-Mexican, then enforcement is, on its face,..... Well, you know.

We live in a democracy where laws are created by public vote of elected representatives after public debate. If you do not like programs that the American people lawfully enacted that it is for you to persuade the American people to change them, not to lawlessly set out to bankrupt and destroy this country in the hope of refashioning it in your image. I can see that from your heroic, superior Ayn Rand superman perspective the "snow boarding, lavender" Americans of the Southwest are unfit to live because of their refusal to relinquish "socialistic" programs and public education. Obviously in your view such weaklings (which I suspect for you embraces 90% of Americans) should be ethnically cleansed from your America.

Leaving aside your feigned anti-racism, what strikes me about you and other pro-illegal types is that you want an America more like Latin America. You want an America in which life and labor are cheap and the rich live behind walls while the rabble scrounge for food in the garbage heaps.

"illegals in CA must be making BIG,tax free, bucks (plus freebies) or they wouldn't have been able to invade one of our most EXPENSIVE states to live in."

Register them, and register their employers, and then you'll know if they are being paid Minimum Wage or Union Scale or whatever.

Too many of you are against registering illegals with our government. Well let me tell you a little secret, if the gun banners ever get their way, the first thing that they'll do is register all of us gun owners...because they know that it's easier to BAN something or someone after they are registered than when they are anonymous.

President Bush's plan registers illegals and their employers.

You people oppose President Bush's plan. You oppose registering illegals and their employers. You want the status quo. You don't want anything to change. You don't really want the illegal immigration problem to be solved. It must just be a convenient hammer for you to bash away at Bush on by claiming that our borders are out of control...because you are opposing the very registration that would help bring back control of our borders.

The Republicans need to figure this issue out correctly for the long run. They are far from that status as of now.

I don't think we know that. Bush's behavior is indistinguishable from that of a guy who knows exactly how to play it correctly for the long term.

The correct play is to bait the Democrats into taking up this issue. Let the Democrats think they see an opening; let them make this issue theirs.

Pete Wilson in California bought into this. He thought he was going to make the Republicans the majority party for a generation by getting tough on those illegals. The California GOP has not recovered yet from that blunder.

No, let some Democrat play the role of Pete Wilson in the re-make. Drive the Mexican-Americans into the arms of the GOP, and the Dems won't win another national election for a hundred years.

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