Don't hold your breath waiting on that, my friend. It will never happen.
Posted on 12/31/2004 5:43:33 AM PST by 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.
Don't hold your breath waiting on that, my friend. It will never happen.
EXISTING......exactly what Fox & friends wants.
What happened to posting these jobs FIRST for citizens & legals that might need them ??? (didn't GWB say that, also ??)
The Bush plan wouldn't register all of the illegal aliens currently here, and there are more than 8 million.
Once you legalize some millions of illegals again, your options will be to give them residence and citizenship, or hope they go home, which would be unlikely since you oppose enforcement and penalties.
The only way your model would get all of the illegals registered would be if after legalizing millions as guest workers, you just legalized the rest, gratis.
Is that the plan?
Actually it has. We are making progress on that score on this very thread. We are doing better. Civility is creeping back into the discourse.
I'll bet you had to send this same post to bayurod and sinkspur.
I've advocated a Bush/Tancredo compromise, which could get passed this year with little in the way of GOP bloodletting. I doubt the President would go for it, though. A study of his guest worker proposals since taking office shows shows an unfortunate consistency with what he put on the table last January 7. He's given no indication that he will be satisfied with anything less than a large scale legalization of three to five or more million illegal aliens.
What happened to posting these jobs FIRST for citizens & legals that might need them ??? (didn't GWB say that, also ??)
Right you are...
`(11) Aliens applying for nonimmigrant status under section 101(a)(15)(H) shall sign a legally enforceable affidavit attesting that they--
`(A) understand that they will not be permitted to change or adjust to any other immigrant or nonimmigrant classification or status while present in the United States;
So Tancredo would have to compromise too. Good.
Only for potential guest workers who are applying from their home countries. Illegal aliens weould be allowed to bypass that for jobs they have taken illegally.
The Bush plan does not open up jobs currently filled by illegals to the vetting process. All currently employed illegals become legal guest workers through applying, and continue on with their jobs for 3 years, with a right of renewal (details unspecfied), and then it "ends," (details again unspecified).
Hmmmm..... another penalty for those who would come legal.
. Illegal aliens weould be allowed to bypass that for jobs they have taken illegally.
and another reward for those who come illegally.
Didn't know that! Yes, delightful. Is it based on security & safety concerns?
There is nothing as permanent as a guest worker. Europe's experience show this. The Turks never went back home.
Europe may well be forced to adopt stern measures to deal with their problems. That would give us something to look favorablely on RE Europe. Not holding my breath though.
The problem is that Bush's entire public premise is that his proposal is compassionate without rewarding people for breaking the law. Yes it's a dog and pony act, but he's been selling tickets for years and many have paid the price of admission.
Your compromise would entail a lesser, but possibly more obvious reward to illegal aliens. Bush's best shot, from his perspective, will be to maintain the charade and try to strong arm this thing. He's got a big hurdle getting it past Sensenbrenner in Judiciary, not to mention Tancredo's 70+ votes and Hastert's reluctance to do and end around of his own caucus.
Bush might back down, but he's been girding himself for this fight for five years, so it will require a bitter fight and defeat for him to do so. I hope I'm wrong, because I think David Frum is right.
But not by much. I love the $4 head of lettuce crowd. Balderdash!
Yea, let's not offer up decent wages & benefits to any citizens or legals.......we'll just continue to reward the illegals. (also defeats many "jobs Americans won't do")
So what are your thoughts re: the 8 million plus that will now legally file for their child tax credits & fat EIC checks every January.??
Are you saying eight million illegals? Do you have a source for that?
Nothing is more obvious than the reward in the Bush plan. Everybody "knows" that guest workers who have illegal jobs now, and have been in the US for some time, and may have anchor babies, are never going to leave voluntarily, and that the "end" will be another compassionate law to legalize them. That "end" fig leaf is simply so ludicrous, that it is not going to get a majority of the GOP caucus to grab ahold of it. But a plan where the jobs filled by illegals are opened up to legal residents, before many of the jobs are reclaimed by former illegals who took a vacation to Mexico, and the process is then subject to all the Bush strictures, but there is a bonus point concept, I think would, and I think there is a reasonable chance Bush would sign off on it.
But then I am an optimist.
At least they will pay FICA and some income taxes. Look, why don't you try to read my posts on this thread, rather than just lashing out? I was merely answering your question.
NO I think it's very low......I think 'southack' quoted 8 million & I just went with it.
If you read the mexican papers, Fox claims 10 million illegal mexicans, will be "regularized" & working thus ultimately benefiting some 25 million mexicans in the USA (spouses & families ??)
I would think Fox has better numbers than us, as he IS counting them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.