Posted on 07/05/2006 11:57:36 AM PDT by Spiff
As the congressional session zooms to its close, the bargaining intensifies - including the bargaining to produce an immigration "compromise." Into this high-pressure, highly dynamic situation, Congressman Mike Pence has tossed a new proposal: let the private sector do it!
Pence's plan, to simplify more than a little, would offer working papers in the United States to any illegal who returned to his or her country of residency and asked for them. The job of processing these applications would be handled by private-sector firms who (it is presumed) would work faster and more effectively than the Immigration bureaucracy.
There's a lot about this plan that seems fanciful or at a minimum ill-thought, but nonetheless it has shown surprising appeal to many House conservatives. That appeal owes something to Mike Pence's growing reputation as the House's "Mr. Conservative" - so if it is OK with him, many feel, it must be OK period.
But the appeal owes much more to its attempt to reconcile two competing imperatives: to avoid doing anything that looks like an amnesty (on the one hand) and (on the other) the unwillingness to upset employers and alienate Latinos by actually removing illegals from US soil. Under the Pence plan, the illegals stay, but the forms of legality are observed - and by the way the day on which the illegals acquire citizenship and start voting for Democratic congressmen is postponed well past the retirement date of most of today's Republican congressmen.
And the appeal is very genuine. I have heard more than one congressmen and congressional staffer, supposedly committed to the no-amnesty point of view, praise the Pence plan as a way forward - or even endorse it outright. Congress usually moves very slowly, but sometimes it can move bizarrely quickly, and I would not be at all surprised to see this plan emerge suddenly in the House-Senate conference, whizz through both Houses on fast votes, and land on the president's desk to be signed in early September. Combined with some kind of compromise on the estate tax, the Pence deal would allow Republican congressmen to tell their constituents that they had achieved something since last November - while incidentally positioning Mike Pence as the savior of his party, a crucial ally of a beleaguered president, and a natural future Speaker of the House. (For which position, by the way, he would be a genuinely excellent choice.)
To which I can only say: Don't do it!
The plan is bad on its merits. Even if it could be made to work smoothly and without corruption and cheating, just consider this: Which illegals are most likely to take up its offer to return home, wait for a week, and collect their papers? Surely it would be those who had arrived most recently - that is, those with the strongest continuing connection to their home country (including relatives to stay with while they awaited their papers) and the fewest demands upon them to interfere with taking a week off or maybe two or maybe longer. (For who knows how long this process would really take? And what migrant would be fool enough to trust a promise of speedy action from any department of the US immigration bureaucracy, public or private?) In other words: The illegals most likely to accept Pence's offer are precisely those who would be most likely to leave the country altogether under an attrition strategy.
And who would be the illegals least likely to accept? Those with the most to lose - who could least afford to be trapped on the wrong side of the border if something went wrong: those who owned houses or a citizen spouse or had children enrolled in US schools: in other words, those with the strongest claim to some kind of regularization and legalization.
The likelihood is in other words that Pence's plan would a) not solve the problem of long-term illegality inside the US, would b) aggravate that part of the problem that is most easily fixed, while c) creating a permanent conveyor belt of quasi-legality to bring further inflows of Mexicans into the United States.
Let me propose a different way to think about this problem: The brute political reality is that enforcement is difficult to enact - while amnesty is easy. Congress and the president are eager to find an amnesty solution, extremely reluctant to adopt enforcement measures. Nothing short of a citizen uprising, an imminent election, and a very frightened Republican government in the House, Senate, and White House has brought us even this far (ie, not really very far at all) along the route to enforcement.
In other words: the moment to enact enforcement proposals is now, and it will not soon return. Conservatives should be pressing their representatives to do that ... and nothing else. Not this year. Pass new enforcement measures into law. Build the fence, create an effective ID system to verify legal status for employees, raise fines for violations of immigration laws, revive spot enforcement, send a well-publicized message to illegals and would-be illegals that the legal climate is changing - and then institute polling and measurement so that we can check whether the flow of illegals slows and whether the existing population of them shrinks.
In a year or two or four, if the flow has slowed and the stock has dropped, it might then be time to think about other measures for those who have not returned home. Depending on what has happened, we might then consider amnesty - or alternatively, perhaps another round of enforcement techniques, depending on the facts as they then stand.
Amnesty is like raising spending: Congress will always find time for that. Enforcement is like cutting spending: It is done once in a generation. Today's political season is that once.
Beyond the merits, however, are also considerations of politics. The lesson I take from the results of the voting in California's 50th district is that enforcement is the one issue that can mobilize sufficient Republican voters to beat back the Democrats in a strong anti-incumbent year. For all the bad news for Republicans out there, the blunt fact is that the Democrats are radically wrong on the second most important issue on voters' minds. If the House Republicans can be seen to be on the right side of the issue, that could offset the negative pressures of bad news from Iraq - particularly since the Democrats have no affirmative message on Iraq, only grumbling, complaining, and accusations of alleged wrongdoing by American forces.
Nor does an enforcement-only bill need to be signed into law to have its positive effect on House Republican fortunes. Voters do not always know what is happening in Washington. The technical details of law often baffle them. But they understand drama. What could be more dramatiac than an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation between pro-amnesty Democrats allied with an unpopular president in an effort to do something voters hate versus a bold and brave band of House Republicans conscientiously standing up for American wages and American sovereignty, in reluctant, sad, but dignified defiance of their own party ... It just might work. Anyway, there is no good alternative. And House, Senate, and President can kiss and make up later. So stand fast, Republicans: This is no time for statesmanship!
How about telling the voters the truth about the expansion of NAFTA? Most folks are just puzzled about why we have these millions of illegals and a government that is so reluctant to do anything about it.
How convenient for most of these politicians. They don't have to do their jobs, they can embrace open borders, claim they've done otherwise, then when they are ready to leave they don't have to deal with the mess they've created.
Back to the phones people. Send the bricks. Inform our critters that we aren't stupid and amnesty is amnesty no matter who proposes it.
Into this high-pressure, highly dynamic situation, Congressman Mike Pence has tossed a new proposal: let the private sector do it!
Tell the Congressman the Constitution says it is his job. There is little the feds are under Constitutional responsibility to perform and in the vast majority of those limited requirements, they have failed - maybe he needs to fix what is broke not having others do his job.
No matter what the plan...this is the one part I have never understood. We're going to reward people who have been here the longest.
So those that have technically "broken the law" the longest reap the benefits...with what other illegal activity is that a factor.
I'll give Rove credit. He may be working hard for lucrative his after-'08 "honorariums." Timed this for the start of the House public hearings to deflate them.
Wage depression lobbies get credit too. They put this bill in Pence's hand knowing he would do almost anything to be president in 2008. Which is what he did. The plan is just as radical as Hagel-Martinez but has some key shifts - like Pence's "privatization" plan. It's a fraud, supports fraud, and encourages fraud. It promotes wage depression. I suppose the "trick" is the words "private enterprise" make many conservatives' eyes glass over and accept the proposal named so as automatically good.
There...that's better.
What makes the private sector work faster and more effectively than a bureaucracy is the profit motive. Put private sector employees in an environment where they always get paid no matter what kind of job they do, and they'll be just as lazy as gummint workers.
THEREFORE the key to understanding the Pence Plan is asking, "How will the private sector firms be paid?"
If they are paid by the visa issued, then there will be no incentive to identify individuals who are security risks, have criminal backgrounds, carry communicable diseases, etc..
""And the appeal is very genuine. I have heard more than one congressmen and congressional staffer, supposedly committed to the no-amnesty point of view, praise the Pence plan as a way forward - or even endorse it outright.""
Probably didn't read it but read the talking points for it.
Power can corrupt. The desire for it can corrupt.
While there is NO Bill submitted, it's guarenteed Pence won't have written the one he ultimately drops in their laps. It's doubtful he'll even have read what's in it, just as Senators didn't read the bills McCain/kennedy/hagel/Martinez did not write.
Apparently he's become enamored with being the "Great Uniter". Funny, another politician fell prey to that and it usually meanty embracing more Liberal policies...with no credit from the Liberals. They hate him more today then they did originally.
So what does he get out of this? Funding from corporations for a presidential run, perks from the W.H., and the American people ultimately end up screwed. Permanently.
He has very deliberately put political goals ahead of conservatism and his collegues in the House by seeking to undermine them as the Hearings begin. Maybe he truly is naive, Possible, but it doesn't change the consequence of what he's doing. And I will not support his presidential run.
Immigration is the one issue I must depart with Pence on. He is wrong, very wrong on this one. His amnesty light plan should be ridiculed for the farce that it is, then shot down with great fanfare.
And then I would regain more respect for him if he would issue a mea culpa for ever floating it in the first place.
"So those that have technically "broken the law" the longest reap the benefits...with what other illegal activity is that a factor?"
Election to Congress. Which is why the Congressweasels identify so well.
You have broken the law much longer and much more vigorously than most of your kind.
Therefore, as a way of saying thanks, we're going to reward you most generously.
Signed,
You soon-to-be fellow American Citizens.
And when that magic day comes, don't forget to vote Democrat.
Aquire citizenship....?
And if males aged 18 to 26 haven't registered for selective service as required for legal immigrants petitioning for citizenship...?
Or is this another free pass for those that chose to break the law in the first place.
The last one.
Pence thinks it's not amnesty if we turn our backs while they return to their country for a week and get registration passed out as freely as unwanted campaign literature. After the week is up they return, and "legaities" are observed.
Apparently the Congressman has been becoming fast buddies with not only the administration, but Specter and McCain. All in pursuit of that Presidential run I guess...too bad he'd sacrifice a solid reputation to bolster amnesty.
O.T. But I'm kind of amused by the president's chosen venue to speak of amnesty. Dunkin' Donuts. They recently announced they were joining an existent government data base that is volunteer. He runs checks on whether employees are illegal or not. Wouldn't it have been more appropriate for him to make a capaign stop at Tyson Foods?
Correction:
O.T. But I'm kind of amused by the President's chosen venue to speak of amnesty. Dunkin' Donuts. They recently announced they were joining an existent government data base that is voluntary. It runs checks on whether employees are illegal or not. They were responding to their customers. You know, in the way the government does not.
Wouldn't it have been more appropriate for Bush to make a campaign stop at Tyson Foods instead?
Looks like the keyword vandals have been at work. They can't debate you on the facts, so they just throw poo.
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