Whatever Happened to Mike Pence? [Pence turns back on 88% of House Republicans)

Despite the consistent failure of all guest worker plans (e.g., France), Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) is peddling a new plan to import foreign workers who really are guests and really do go home. Pence has turned his back on the 88 percent of House Republicans who voted that we must achieve border security first, because we'll be cheated on border security if Congress passes a "comprehensive" bill.

The Pence plan tries to avoid the amnesty label by requiring illegal aliens now in the U.S. to make what he calls "a quick trip across the border" to Mexico or Canada to pick up a new W visa. A foreigner could get a W visa only if a U.S. employer certifies that a job awaits him.

Pence's plan calls for setting up privately financed offices outside the U.S., with the cutesy title Ellis Island Centers, to hand out the new W visas, which he claims would be more efficient than government bureaucracy. Business would, indeed, be more efficient than government in importing more foreign workers.

Having private employment agencies distribute the W visas would put the fox in charge of the chicken coop. Private industry has a built-in incentive to import as much cheap labor as possible.

Pence says that the Ellis Island Centers will be able to match workers with jobs, perform health screening, fingerprinting, and convey information to the FBI and Homeland Security for a background check in "a matter of one week, or less." We'll have to see that to believe it.

What about the millions of illegal aliens in the U.S. today who do not have an employer willing to go on record as guaranteeing a job for a foreigner? These would include the relatives of jobholders, the day laborers, and the millions of illegal aliens working in the U.S. underground cash economy (an estimated 40 percent of the total).

Pence's bill is silent on this and his staff predicts that the free market will provide the answers. Pence told Time Magazine his bill "will require the 12 million illegal aliens to leave."

What about the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who are not Mexicans? Illegal aliens will not have to return to their home country, but only appear at an Ellis Island Center anywhere outside the U.S. to pick up their papers. Will Mexico and Canada put out the welcome mat for a mass exodus of illegal aliens from the U.S.?

The Pence plan provides that the guest workers, after living here legally for six years under the protection of a W visa, can choose whether to apply for citizenship or to return home. If guest workers don't apply for citizenship, will Pence hire buses to deport them after they have raised a family and established roots?

Six years is ample time to have a U.S.-born anchor baby, or two or three, which starts family chain migration. Any attempt to deal with the racket of birthright citizenship would linger at least six years in the courts.

The Pence promise that employers would have to offer jobs to Americans first is a sick joke. American engineers and computer techies who lost their jobs to foreigners under the H-1B visa guest-worker racket know that a look-for-Americans-first rule is never enforced and easily evaded.

Pence revealed an amazing open-ended part of his plan in his Wall Street Journal article: "My immigration reform plan does not favor illegal immigrants. Anyone may apply for a guest-worker visa at the new Ellis Island Centers; indeed, the plan may actually work to the advantage of applicants who have never violated our immigration laws, since guest-worker visas will be issued only outside the U.S."

Anyone may apply? From anywhere in the world? And without any limits? Pence wrote, "There will initially be no cap on the number of visas that can be issued."

The Pew Hispanic Center surveyed 120 locations in Mexico and concluded that 49 million Mexicans want to live in the United States if they get the opportunity.

If Pence's "guest worker" plan actually worked, and the guests voluntarily go home after six years, it would mean instituting a system that is immoral and un-American. Inviting foreigners to come to America to do jobs that Americans think they are too good to do creates a subordinate underclass of unassimilated foreign workers, like the serf or peasant classes that exist in corrupt foreign countries such as Mexico.

That's not the kind of economy that made America a great nation. As Theodore Roosevelt warned: "Never under any condition should this nation look at an immigrant as primarily a labor unit."

Pence and others who promote "guest worker" plans have a favorite mantra: "Let the free market solve our economic problems." Americans should realize that a global, or even a Western Hemisphere free market, means forcing American workers to compete with people who work for 50 cents an hour.

Letting the free market decide our future also requires loss of sovereignty to some kind of multinational government, as the European Union found out. Is the real push behind guest-worker proposals the Bush goal to expand NAFTA into the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, which he signed at Waco last year and reaffirmed at Cancun this year?

I'll see you Schlafly and raise you a Newt Gingrich:

Immigration News Daily

Gingrich likes the Pence immigration plan

6 Jun 06

Newt Gingrich gives kudos to the Mike Pence immigration reform plan in his latest Human Events column: One positive addition to the border-security and immigration debate is Rep. Mike Pence's (R-Ind.) bill, the Border Integrity and Immigration Reform Act. This bill is as close to the right solution as I have seen. It sets up a four-step process starting with what is needed and universally agreed upon -- border security. Second, it does not provide amnesty for people in the United States illegally. It requires them to go home. Next, it sets up a work-visa program using electronic bio-metric security based on conservative market principles. After an American employer can, in good faith, show that no American worker will fill a job offer, a work-visa holder may be hired. The key feature is that, in order for people who are here illegally to get a work visa, they must go home, because work visas will only be issued outside of the United States. Fourth, once the program is set up, companies that continue to ignore the law will be sanctioned severely. I hope the House will take a serious look at Rep. Pence's thoughtful and pragmatic approach to solving this issue.

Newt Gingrich newsletter of June 12, 2006 in support of the Pence Plan

"After we have demonstrated seriousness by securing the border, we need to establish the work-visa program in Rep. Mike Pence's (R-Ind.) bill (Border Integrity and Immigration Reform Act) that I wrote about last week. (You can learn more about the Pence plan here.) Pence's bill only allows work visas to be issued outside of the United States. So the simple answer to your question is that if you want to work in the U.S. legally, the rules will require you to go home to apply for the work visa.

"But this gets to why being serious about enforcing the law on employers is so important. If we do not enforce the law, then we can expect that employers will continue to break it. However, if we make it prohibitively difficult and costly for employers to hire a non-citizen illegally, then we can expect employers to comply with the law. When this happens, everyone who is working here illegally will be unable to find work and have no choice but to return home to get a work visa if they wish to work in the United States. We can establish a legal and compassionate way for individuals, especially those with families, to return home to apply.

"This is why the dichotomy nurtured by the pro-amnesty camp between 'mass deportation' and 'amnesty' is a false choice. The real choice is between amnesty and enforcing the law. Amnesty is a disaster, because it cheapens the value of American law. It sends the message that American law can be willfully violated without consequence.

"A work-visa program that is accompanied by total border control, uniform enforcement of existing laws (including draconian penalties on employers who continue to violate employment laws after a work-visa program is established), and the rejection of amnesty will have powerful incentives for individuals working here illegally to comply with the law and return home and apply. This will be especially true once a growing number of work-visa holders follow this path and employers find a growing pool of legal workers whom they can tap.

"The key in all of this is to create a set of incentives for the individual working here illegally to choose to comply with the law. If an individual working here illegally knows that improved border control will make it nearly impossible to cross the border again, that stepped-up law enforcement on the border and prompt removal will dramatically increase the chances of his being picked up and returned to his home country (with the penalty of being barred for a period of time of returning legally), that there is a legal way to work here, and that the work visa program that is established by the Pence bill is efficiently run so that there is a reasonably quick transition period in which to return home to apply and receive a work visa, then we can reasonably expect a swift migration to a dramatically improved and legal immigration system that will save lives and protect the rule of law."

But as Michael Barone points out, we do owe a debt of thanks to the losers in Utah last week:

Is it possible that the House and Senate will agree on an immigration bill? For most of June, the answer seemed to be no.

The House Republican leadership announced it would not appoint members of a conference committee to reconcile the border-security-only bill the House passed in December with the comprehensive (border-security-plus-guest-worker-plus-legalization) bill passed by the Senate in May. Instead, House Republicans would hold hearings around the country in August -- hearings expected to be forums for complaints about illegal immigration and demands that border control be strengthened before any legalization or guest-worker program is passed.

Meanwhile, the Senate seemed likely to stick with the approach taken by a bipartisan, mostly Democratic majority that rejected limiting the bill to border security. Deadlock seemed likely.

But three developments last week may be reviving the chance immigration will be passed. The first was the renomination of Utah Rep. Chris Cannon in the Republican primary on June 27. Cannon has supported guest-worker legislation and measures to allow children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition to state colleges and universities. His opponent, John Jacob, spent thousands of his own dollars to attack Cannon for supporting "amnesty" and actually led Cannon in the Republican convention, where incumbents are usually renominated routinely. Polls showed the race close. But Cannon won 56% to 44%, down just slightly from his 58% to 42% margin over an immigration opponent who spent much less money two years ago.

If Cannon had lost, House Republicans surely would have panicked and stonewalled any approach but border-security-only. But his victory -- and the fact that he ran ads with endorsements from George W. Bush, who supports a comprehensive bill -- indicates that his positions are not political death, even in a district that went 77% to 20% Republican in the 2004 presidential election.

The second development was an interview of Sen. Arlen Specter in The Washington Times on June 27. Specter is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and supported the Senate bill. He would be the lead Senate voice in any conference committee. Specter still insists that the Senate will only accept a comprehensive bill. But he did concede that he might accept a version that made guest-worker and legalization programs contingent on concrete achievements in border security.

"It may be down the line that we will come to some terms on a timetable, with border security first and employment verification first," he told the Times. Enforcement has "got to be in place firmly. But I don't think the Senate will pass a bill that's limited to that," adding that decisions on a timetable would "come in very hard-fisted negotiations at the end of the rainbow."

The third development was the meeting in the White House of Rep. Mike Pence with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney on June 28. Pence, chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, has advanced a guest-worker plan based on that of Colorado rancher Helen Krieble, which would allow workers to apply in their home countries to "Ellis Island centers" run by private firms, which would match them with jobs from employers in the United States. It's an attempt to get around the current cumbersome green card bureaucracy. Guest-worker slots would not lead to citizenship, but would legalize workers who comply. The Pence program could be phased in after a period in which border security is strengthened.

The Cannon victory, the Specter concession and the Pence plan point toward a possible compromise that could conceivably be adopted by a conference committee and win majorities in both houses. In the process, they direct the attention of those on all sides of this issue to the practical, concrete realities of American life. If advocates of border-security-and-employer-sanctions get their way, and there are high-tech steps to close the sieve on the border and create a forgery-proof identification card system, then what happens to the 7 million or so illegal immigrants who are currently working in the United States? Presumably they go away -- but in the process, we lose a labor force that our economy needs to maximize production. If advocates of a comprehensive bill get their way, and we don't have high-tech ID, then presumably we'll still have millions of illegals in our midst.

It is surely not beyond our technological capabilities to secure the border and to provide legal worker identification, at least if we subcontract these tasks to the private sector, which is so much better at these things than government. Neither the House nor the Senate bill seems likely to achieve those goals. So it's good to note that there's a chance, maybe only a small chance, that a conference committee can come up with a bill that does.

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Whatever Happened to Mike Pence?

by Phyllis Schlafly