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.

Now I more fully understand why the Bush proposal really fueled the increase in the illegal flow. The reward for having secured an illegal job in the US when "the future" hits, and one can't get a guest worker card anymore, simply by being employed illegally, is simply HUGE.

"If you can make 50 cents in the heart of Mexico, for example, or make $5 here in America, $5.15, you're going to come here if you're worth your salt, if you want to put food on the table for your families."
President George W. Bush, 10/13/2004

That makes the illegals sound more praiseworthy than those who didn't break our laws.

You people oppose President Bush's plan.

That's because it another *amnesty* for the illegal employers, & *another* legal "line jump" for the illegals.

What about the ANCHOR BABIES ??? What about health insurance ??

What about 8 million (PLUS) now legally able to file for nice fat EIC checks every January ???

I read that the *average* EIC check runs $ 1700......& tops out at $4000 Plus.

Rubbish. Many an American has taken many a construction job.

Let me clarify (though I thought my contrasting populations were clear):

Between illegal aliens and foreign nationals who haven't broken our laws, "only illegals could take those illegal jobs."

Therefore the illegals who are illegally employed have an advantage in the President's guest worker program. Their acceptance is guaranteed from the start. That is not true of law abiding foreign nationals.

Your first paragraph is au currant on The New Republic Left. Why WON'T those ignorant redstate Jesus folks vote their REAL interests---their ECONOMIC interests????? We'll give you a nice healthcare plan! How about prescription drugs for your pet aardvark? How about recreational drugs for you? We are your liberal friends and WE CARE about you! It Takes a Village to Grow your Weed! Wait until Hillary offers up a federal sexcare program to guarantee well-paid and federally inspected "partners" for the otherwise unindulgeable!

Because we believe in God, understand that life on earth is quite temporary, do not think murder is justified by the pre-birth age of the victim, know that there can NEVER be such a thing as an actual "gay" "marriage", know that money is only money and are satisfied that it not be taxed too heavily, know that there are reasons why we have a military (to kill bad people and break their things), understand that whatever goes on in public skewels is not necessarily describable as "education", love our families far more than we will ever love ANY government and know that the 2nd Amendment exists to keep our gummint more honest and less threatening than it would otherwise be. We also know that a bad day of hunting, fishing or baseball or football watching beats a good day of hanging around some latte shop soaking up windtunnel poetry written and read by feminazi sobsisters.

Let's make sure that the Demonrats are limited to coastal and metrosexual latte guzzlers. We can do this by waging a little social issue and ethnic warfare. Ridding Americans of the NAFTA, GATT, WTO nuisances and other means of enriching Euroweenies and Chicoms may raise the cost of living for the latte crowd but it is well-worth doing. We do not have to machine gun the mamacitas at the border with Mexico on Live (so to speak) at Five.

The carrot will win what the stick will not.

So should we offer up a *carrot* to all tax evaders (criminals), or just the illegal ones & their employers ???

Funny gov't always seems to think the *stick* works better for citizen criminals (tax evaders, etc.)

Mandatory workplace registrations won't work.

Gov't didn't seem to have any trouble SHOVING mandatory mental health checks for our kids down OUR throats.

If you read my posts, you would see I said it was my recollection, and my primary interest was in just getting it right. I carry no particular brief for the 80% number, and would be delighted if it were wrong. Indeed, I did find in the last few minutes a Washington Times piece that put the estgimated number at a "mere" 25% increase from the first quarter of 2003 vis a vis the first quarter of 2004.

Whatever the number, the incentive to get into the US illegally, and get a job, any job, before the cutoff date, whatever that might be, at this point is clear and compelling as long as it appears that this aspect of the Bush plan has some prospect of passage.

Speaking of cut off dates, just how will the government determine when the illegal applying for guest worker status got his illegal job, particuarly off the books jobs? That strikes me as a rather difficult provision to administer. That strikes me as a source of litigation in fact. Lawyers that speak Spanish will be in high demand.

I had thought about the angle you mention. It keys into the Bush strategy in this election, in which he won the record level of support from Hispanic voters. There is also a "don't throw me in the brier patch" angle.

Maybe Bush has in mind a serious fall back position "because of Congressional resistance." The process of "accepting" the much lower level of accommodation for Mexican illegals will have the fringe benefit of separating Hillary! from her political base.

John / Billybob

If you read my posts, you would see I said it was my recollection, and my primary interest was in just getting it right.

Fair enough.

Obscenity statutes and the tax code strike me the same way, and yet I notice that they exist regardless. Since when has difficulty of administration impeded legislatures?

Lawyers that speak Spanish will be in high demand.

I knew those Berlitz people were behind this somehow ;)

"Then let the small guys get a piece of the action in the states with each state having ten private contractors who will securely hook into Wash DC and relay the results to employers"

There's no reason why this would have to be a single company. In fact, pushing this on a single company causes you to lose fault tolerance, and opens you up to fraud. If there are, say, 5 major companies who specialize in this, then the chances of faulty information or faulty corporate leadership causing disruption are minimized. Fault tolerance (both in terms of data fault and company availability/existence fault) would be crucial to acceptance of any such system. Obviously, if Corporation X has all the cards, and it later has massive financial problems, our options are limited to bailing out Corporation X with taxpayer dollars or watching the entire system collapse. With the fines in place, the free market will organize itself all on its own. The only thing we need from government is enforcement of the fines against those hiring illegals and regulations protecting the privacy of Americans.

"Fines have to be large enough to deter employing illegal aliens so you can't get a leg up on your competition"

I propose the fines be a percentage of the gross revenue for the company for the previous year. While this may seem unfair at first, the difference in size between companies can make a huge difference in the effectiveness of the fines. In other words, if we fine Joe's Tires $1 million, Joe's Tires is done. If we fine Walmart the same amount, it's likely they'll look for better ways to hide their illegal hirees, rather than be deterred. I think, perhaps, 5% of a company's gross revenue for the previous year should be sufficient to punish every company to the point that they'll think twice about hiring illegals. Joe's Tires takes a $10,000 hit for hiring an illegal, which damn near kills the business, and Walmart takes an enormous (I'm guessing tens of millions?) hit for hiring that same illegal. Joe's not going to be hiring any more illegals (lest he lose the business altogether), and Walmart's stockholders are going to start showing up at board meetings looking for blood.

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