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.

[investigateworld]

I hope to illustrate by that post, the attitude of the billionaires that run Mexico: "screw you, I got mine". At a time when everyone is watching who's kicking what into the kitty, their absence is notable.
I have no problem with the people of Mexico, my heart goes out to the parents who know their young ones are risking their very life's in their journey to the promised land. As a parent I can't see risking my child to the tender mercies of the coyotes who operate the smuggling routes.
It was my intent to show the depravity of the elites in Mexico and the need for a revolution.
I have found that the poor of Mexico are more willing to share their processions. The answers to the problems there, are not found by making the USA a refuge. I have posted a number of times that I too would head north, should I have been born on the wrong side of the border. And twice, I prepared the "termination packages" of cops who shook down the illegals.

[ninenot]

I have had the pleasure of meeting BlackElk and his family, for which I will be eternally grateful. (One might quibble that his wife and children are more charming, but...)

Having spent a very pleasant 25-40 hours of time with BE and/or his family members, some of which time was lubricated with good beer, I can assure you that BE is simply NOT anti-Semitic. Nor is he anti-black, anti-Italian, anti-feminine, anti-Irish, anti-Protestant, or any other common "anti-" you can think of.

However, BE is adamantly, fervently, and heatedly anti-babykillers, anti-RINO, and anti-the "isms" which are the perversions of the above-mentioned classes of people.

Now Sam, you and I have fought on the same side of a few battles here on FR. It's one thing to have an "America First" outlook--I think it's not only acceptable, it's our DUTY as citizens.

It is also our DUTY as citizens to accept LEGAL immigration, and as BE mentions, to work toward preference of immigrants who share in the Judeao-Christian tradition and culture.

As a matter of fact, it's also to our economic benefit that the country continues a positive population curve, without which SocSec, Medicare, and a number of other Gummint obligations will become worthless.

OTOH, I vigorously disapprove of ILLEGAL immigration, and find GWB's "amnesty" programs to be vapid disguises for bailing out Vincente Fox, who has been absolutely useless in his time-in-office in Mexico.

BE's an OK guy. You don't have to like him, but his arguments are reasoned.

And he is NOT anti-Semite.

[ninenot]

Ummmhnhhnnnhhhh..

Without having read the post in question, the "cleansing" of liberals may refer to Rush's oft-quoted line...'maggot-infested, dope-smoking, longhaired, un-shaven...' etc., etc.

In which case a couple tanks of sheep-dip may be a good beginning...

[Havoc]

Immigration and offshoring go hand in hand. The two make up the Iceberg this party is stearing America toward at full steam while the lookouts are screaming "Hard to port! Iceberg dead ahead!" The Dems are generally no better which makes this a real 'come to Jesus' moment in the nation's history. If they don't correct the situation, straighten up, and remove foreign and immigration policy from the realm of their business buddys' opinions (schedules for greed), America will deal with it in a less tidy fashion. Many people I talk to are relating this as the capitalist version of Stalin's enslavement of the people.. And both parties are guilty.

[Once-Ler]

Do not address me again. Do we need to get the powers on here again to tell you to ..........

I will add you to my homepage list of cowardly Old Right freepers unable to defend their opinion. I win.

[Once-Ler]

If it's next to free to hire only women, then men will be largely unemployed in no time, regardless of their skill or abilities.

And yet the massive influx of illegals through the 80s, 90s, and today has not caused unemployment but rather an incredibly robust economy. Cheap labor has made the economic pie higher.

[Once-Ler]

It was my intent to show the depravity of the elites in Mexico and the need for a revolution.

Thanx for the clarification.

[sittnick]

I have known Black Elk since the 1980's. Not only is he not anti-semitic, but I watched him make clear to some of his legal clients who leaned in that direction that they were wrong headed and thinking along very dangerous lines. If it took two hours or more to drive the point home, he would do it.

Like many freepers, Black Elk has his schtick (The Torquemada Gentlemen's Club). Don't mistake that for a lack of earnestness. More importantly, his views are shaped not primarily by what would help Black Elk personally, but by his Catholic Faith, role as head of his family and his personal experiences in the front lines of past election campaign cycles (e.g. CT Reagan chairman in 1976) and pro-life action.

[Once-Ler]

So, what happened in 1754 that shut off the flow of the "best and brightest"?

English colonies of VA and PA first became involved in the French/Indian war?

I'm better at multiple choice with 3 lifelines.

[FederalistVet]

"Am I the first to use this phrase? I must copywrite it then. The zero immigration crowd is a phrase I use to describe many of Buchanan's and Tancredo's supporters. Just like it sounds, they are bigots who who fear their slice of American socialism will be smaller because of foriegn invaders who don't deserve American socialism. They are the people who spit upon on my great grandparents. My great grandparents came to America from Poland without a sponsor or the ability to speak English. Their son lied about his age so he could fight in the Pacific during WW2. If the zero population crowd had their way my grandparent likely would have died in the showers of Auschwitz. The zero immigration crowd thinks LA and NYC are analogous to the rest of America. They think freedom is a finite resource. IOW they are stupid racist scum, and I reiterate they don't vote."

As a Buchanan supporter who has been protesting the inequitable treatment of the people south of our border you'll understand why I'm not impressed by the your statement. Try to remember Buchanan's uncles fought against the Nazis in world war two. My grandfather was a Marine in world war two. My late great uncle was a pow in a german pow camp. I'm a vet, my dad is a vet, my brothers are vets, etc. 70 percent of the United States Armed Forces during world war two were Catholics. At the time Catholics were about 24 percent of the population.

Most of the racist anti-immigrant people in this country are in the Democrat Party in the South, not the Republican Party in the South. The Democrat Party in the South used to be the only show in town. It is Hispanics and other Catholics in the South that started the Republican opposition in the South and we have been sending Hispanics and other Catholics to Congress. We are also the "swing" vote that sends Republicans like Bush to the oval office. Our candidates of preference for 2008 are Condi and Jeb. (our "dream team" either way you flip the ticket.)

We are not Socialists. Like most Catholics we favor a conservative or moderately conservative social policy and a moderately liberal economic policy. If you think Buchanan is in favor of American Socialism then you need to go read his writings. You will discover he is the exact opposite of the Socialist Adolf Hitler.

[exhaustedmomma]

Are you demanding change, or are you simply demanding that "existing laws be enforced?"

Uhhhhhh, that would be a change.

[Southack]

No, enforcing our existing laws would be the status quo; we simply don't have the resources to engage in such brute force methods for more than 8 million illegals. The scope is too large.

Which means that people like you, who insist on maintaining the status quo, are in effect stopping us from having better border security.

Hard headedness has painful consequences. At this point, you should have a headache. Your zest for the status quo is giving you the opposite result from what you want to accomplish.

[exhaustedmomma]

First, it worked in the 50's (under Ike), and held fast for nearly 30 years. Granted, the problem has been allowed to become a runaway train because of PC insanity.

Status quo... well... it is the pied piper effect. Which is why my head is not aching.

[investigateworld]

Do you really believe Congress is going to appropriate the funds for meaningful enforcement? And what about the next wave and the next? Even after 9-11 the Border Patrol has received less than a 20% increase. And I think the numbers will be closer to 15 million illegals present.

[Southack]

We're not back in the 1950's, hon. Nor can we go back, much as we might want to.

[exhaustedmomma]

We're not back in the 1950's, hon.

Well... sounds like a status quo statement if I ever heard one. (History, is knowledge FRiend.)

[Southack]

"Do you really believe Congress is going to appropriate the funds for meaningful enforcement?"

If you'd been following my posts, you wouldn't have asked such a ridiculous question.

Putting more money into *existing* border enforcement won't cut it. We have to be smarter than that. We have to do something other than mere brute force.

In fact, what we have to do is to convince illegals, who are currently anonymous, to register themselves and their employers.

There is a plan out there that accomplishes that goal.

Get the illegals (and their employers) registered. It takes far fewer resources to verify compliance once employers and illegals are registered than it does to track down anonymous fugitives.

Think. Be smart. Get them registered.

[Southack]

"Well... sounds like a status quo statement if I ever heard one."

Then you've never heard one.

We have to do something *smarter* than what was done back in the 1950's.

That "something" is registration. Get illegals registered, and while you're at it, get their employers registered with our government too. It is their anonymity that makes this problem such a resource hog.

Registration ends that anonymity.

[exhaustedmomma]

Then you've never heard one.

An assumption. If you are going to play the "status quo" card, do you homework.

Speaking of assumptions... you are assuming they will register (errrr... not run to the Canadian border... where they are being "classified" as refugees...not illegals). And you assume they will honor the 6 year "guest" program. They are not law abiding.

[Southack]

No, I'm assuming that more than 8 million illegals are currently anonymous (i.e. have no formal U.S. government file on their name and who employs them).

The cure for such anonymity is to convince them to voluntarily register themselves with our government. This can be done with a sufficient incentive (what's debatable is how large that incentive must be).