[Pence Amnesty] A Compromised Plan

National Review ^ | 3 August 2006 | Editors

[Spiff]

August 03, 2006, 9:03 a.m.

A Compromised Plan

By The Editors

Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, both Republicans, are making a last-ditch effort to bridge their party’s divide on immigration and pass a bill this year. We agree that the country, and the Republican party, would benefit if a sensible immigration plan were passed soon. The Pence-Hutchison plan isn’t one.

The pro-amnesty Republicans have responded more favorably to the plan than the enforcement-first Republicans, and both sides are reading the plan correctly. Its central component is to allow illegal immigrants to continue their jobs legally. All they would have to do is briefly leave the country and then return. As Pence himself puts it: “[A]n illegal alien currently employed in America will be willing to take a quick trip across the border to come back outside of the shadows and in a job where he does not fear a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” This provision may stimulate the restaurant business in Tijuana, as illegals cross over for a quick lunch before their return, but it is hardly a serious immigration-enforcement idea.

When our illegal immigrant comes back, he will become a “guest worker.” As a guest worker, he will be able to keep renewing his “temporary” status and exploiting other features of the plan so as to remain here for 17 years. At that point, he can go through the process of getting a green card. Any children he has while here will be American citizens, which will make it more difficult to deport him should he overstay his welcome.

The plan’s supporters advertise its “trigger” mechanism: The guest-worker/amnesty would supposedly not go into effect until after enforcement was shown to have worked. But the triggers would be the achievement of bureaucratic objectives such as personnel targets. The amnesty would go into effect even if there were no evidence that the illegal population was shrinking.

We aren’t persuaded that the country needs a guest-worker program to begin with. Economic growth does not require a constant increase in the number of uneducated laborers.

The worthwhile portions of the plan are borrowed from the House Republicans’ enforcement bill. Almost everyone can agree that we should step up enforcement, at both the border and the workplace. So let’s enact that consensus and defer action on the issues that continue to divide us. That’s the compromise we favor.

[Spiff]

ping

[gubamyster]

ping

[DustyMoment]

Its central component is to allow illegal immigrants to continue their jobs legally. All they would have to do is briefly leave the country and then return. As Pence himself puts it: “[A]n illegal alien currently employed in America will be willing to take a quick trip across the border to come back outside of the shadows and in a job where he does not fear a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” This provision may stimulate the restaurant business in Tijuana, as illegals cross over for a quick lunch before their return, but it is hardly a serious immigration-enforcement idea.

This is disappointingly naive and absurd on BOTH Pence's and Hutchison's parts. I expected better from them.

Guess not.

[janetgreen]

This is no "compromise" as far as American citizens are concerned.

How about enforcing existing immigration and border laws, Washington?

Anyone voting for this turkey should be (and probably will be) ousted from his or her cushy, taxpayer-financed job for ignoring the demands of the American people in favor of foreign and corporate interests.

[longtermmemmory]

The pence plan is dependent on an ignorant public.

When pence conceieve of this absurdity he was thinking with a Guttenburg mentality rather than a DIGITAL mentality. IOW the Pence plan needs an overwhelming media contral as in 1986 to sell the amnesty program without any critical scrutiny.

But for the internet to ridicule and expose it for its true AMNESTY nature, they country club beltway would have had their way.

(all: want to have fun? tell McCain the immigration reform is 100% amnesty and watch him blow his stack....again.)

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

At one time I was very high on Mike Pence for POTUS.
I now just lump him in the group that put party over Country!

[conservativecorner]

From Polipundit. They don't even hide their scorn for the country or devious intentions anymore.

An Illegal In His Own Words

Alex Vega an illegal alien in the United States:

“In 20 years then we gonna run the country. Right now we running the cities. So little by little, we are running the show. Little by little——so the sleeping giant, it’s already awakened,”

-- Oak Leaf

[Reagan Man]

Thanks for the PING, Spiff.

Senator Jeff Sessions gave his analysis on the Pence-Hutchenson immigration reform proposal. Sessions didn't like it. Here's the Sessions response.

---

"The Pence-Hutchison immigration-reform proposal, like the other prominent plans, fails to address critical issues relating to meaningful immigration reform. It must not become law.

The legislation fails to provide a real solution for a number of important reasons. Namely, the proposal:

1) will allow for a virtually unlimited number of immigrants to come to the United States;

2) favors low-skilled workers;

3) provides more preferences to the eight NAFTA and CAFTA countries over the rest of the world;

and 4) gives no preference for English-language or employment skills that help make immigrants successful in our dynamic economy.

This plan swallows hook, line and sinker the idea that as long as there is a foreign worker wanting to come to America, and an American company that wants to hire the individual, the foreign worker should be admitted, allowed to work and put on a path to citizenship. This concept violates the principle followed by every other nation in the world, that immigration policy should be based on the needs of the nation, not the desires of those that want low-cost labor.

Under the Pence-Hutchison plan, foreign workers will initially be granted two-year work visas, automatically renewable for an additional 12 years. Then the foreign worker is given an "X-Change" visa, newly created by the legislation. After five years, the "X-Change" visa will allow the worker to transition to permanent resident status (a green card holder). Permanent residents are entitled to citizenship after five years. Because "temporary" workers will have the right to bring their families, the right to stay and work for 17 years and then the right to stay permanently, the vast majority will certainly do so.

A temporary worker program can play an important role in our immigration reform policy, but the Pence-Hutchison proposal, like the flawed Senate bill, does not create a real "temporary" worker program. To be truly "temporary," the workers' stay must be limited, for instance, to 10 months each year, and they cannot be allowed to bring dependents. This is common sense -- we cannot expect that workers invited to move their entire families to America and live here for years will want to go home. Who will uproot these long-settled families if they become temporarily unemployed? The answer is that no one will.

Foreign workers entering under this proposal will overwhelmingly be low-skilled. It is well documented that such workers will cost the U.S. Treasury far more than they will ever pay in taxes. A flood of low-skilled workers will further depress wages for American workers who compete with them for jobs. There is a basic economic truth that cannot be escaped -- an excess of labor drives down wages, a shortage of labor causes wages to rise. Few dispute that in recent years lower-wage earners have seen their wages decline. Professor George Borjas of Harvard, the leading expert in the field, reports that immigration has already reduced the incomes of low-skilled workers by as much as 8 percent, or $1,200 per year. For a family making around $25,000 a year, a decrease such as this can be the difference in making it or not.

By limiting the new program to only NAFTA and CAFTA countries, the bill would be a further and dramatic tilt to Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, over every other country in the world. At a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, a witness for the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, Nial O'Dowd, explained that "if the Irish antecedents of Andrew Jackson, John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan were trying to enter the United States today" they could not get in legally. He justified his comment by noting that "of the 1 million green card visas given out last year, about 2,000 went to the Irish." Irish settlers helped form this nation yet, amazingly, they received only two-tenths of one percent of our green cards last year.

Finally, in establishing a good immigration policy for the United States through comprehensive reform, it is critical to decide the number of immigrants we can accept and the skills we want them to possess. Clearly, these decisions should be based on the national interest, not special interests. Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, developed nations all, have objective employment-based immigration policies, usually centered on a merit-based points system used to evaluate which potential immigrants will contribute the most to their society and take full advantage of citizenship opportunities. Why are we not considering reforms to our immigration system that take these important issues into account?

We have lacked in this discussion is a serious evaluation of the merit-based policies other developed nations have adopted. Neither have we had a real discussion of the number of immigrants that America should admit annually. Without such a discussion, good comprehensive reform cannot occur."

[Reagan Man]

The link to FR post.

Failures of the Pence-Hutchison Plan by Senator Sessions.

[dennisw]

Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, both Republicans, are making a last-ditch effort

Their plan also allows the "guest worker" to bring his family here to live with him. This translates to more social costs such as paying for schooling and medical and housing and pregnancy health aid

[Marine Inspector]

How come Pence's PR guy won't show up and tell us this is not an amnesty?

How come Pence can't put pen to paper and actually write a bill?

[TheLion]

Geez, these people sure are desperate to pass a bill, no matter how terribly written. Something is wrong with this picture.

[Marine Inspector]

Pence hasn't even written a bill.

This is just Pence testing the waters and he's finding out how wrong he is.

I doubt he'll ever put pen to paper.

[Spiff]

Man, I hate that. I posted this thread hours ago and I just noticed the typo in the Title. Instead of "Comprised" plan it should say "COMPROMISED" plan. Fix? Thank you.

[garbageseeker]

On the radio(John and Ken radio program), Congressman Sensebrenner said that the bill is dead in the water.

[Lurker]

That's a fine question.

One poster here told me this 'plan' would be law by November. We'll maybe in some banaa republic a 'plan' can become law by decree, but not here.

This clown Pence hasn't even bothered to actually write a Bill, much less attract a co-sponsor. He's too busy announcing new 'plans' by the week.

L