An End to Illegal Immigration

Townhall.com ^ | November 27, 2011 | Mark Baisley

[Kaslin]

At the Republican presidential debate last week (you remember; the one moderated by that bearded guy named “Blitz”), Newt Gingrich stirred up some controversy in his discussion on immigration.

From my perspective as someone who spent a weekend as an illegal alien in 1980, this segment of the debate was of particular interest.  I don’t have the editorial space to go into it here, but if you buy the Shiraz (preferably pre-2007 and corked rather than screw cap), I will recount my perilous adventure into the African nation of Swaziland without the permission of the Kingdom.

Speaker Gingrich’s passing comment on the Red Card program caught my attention, “I think you’ve got to deal with this as a comprehensive approach that starts with control of the border as the Governor (Rick Perry) said.  I believe, ultimately, that ... once you’ve put every piece in place, which includes a guest worker program, you need something like a World War II selective service ward that frankly reviews the people who are here.  If you’ve come here recently, you have no ties to this country, you ought to go home, period.  If you’ve been here 25 years and you have three kids and two grandkids, you’ve been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don’t think we’re going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out.  The Krieble Foundation has a very good Red Card program that says you get to be legal, but you don’t get a pass to citizenship.  And so there is a way to ultimately end up with a country where there’s no more illegality and you haven’t automatically given amnesty to anyone.”

The Krieble Foundation is named for Professor Vernon K. Krieble "to further democratic capitalism and to preserve and promote a society of free, educated, healthy and creative individuals."  Professor Krieble’s daughter, Helen Krieble, is the President of the foundation.  I have had the pleasure of speaking with Ms. Krieble on several occasions and know her to be a thoughtful and benevolent defender of America’s founding principles.

At a speech to the Heritage Foundation in 2005, Helen Krieble related her personal story of dealing with the onerous bureaucracy of hiring temporary immigrants, “It is so hard to come in legally, it is almost unimaginable.  And certainly I have a lot of experience with it because I do use guest workers in my business.  And it is a nightmare.”  After standing in line at the consulate, outdoors in the sun for eight hours, Ms. Krieble was returned to the end of the line for having folded the application paperwork incorrectly.

Helen Krieble hires about ten guest workers each year to accomplish the messier tasks of her equestrian sports business.  And, she does so within the rules.  Of course, many American employers and millions of immigrants do not have the patience for the politically charged Ministry of Malarkey that substitutes for an immigration policy.

We all know the realities; stolen Social Security Numbers, unfair competition, cash payments that avoid taxation, abuse of social services and an imposition on our culture.  So as a compliant employer and president of a conservative think tank, Ms. Krieble brings a credible perspective that has garnered the appreciation of the “smartest presidential candidate.”

The Red Card Program first considers that guest workers are wholly different from immigrants, that they would have no preference for citizenship and their children born in the United States would not be citizens.  Guest workers would be required to hold a “Red Card” that specifically describe the location, employer and job for which the card is issued, along with the duration and personal information about the worker, including biometric data.

Some highlights from the Red Card Program are quoted here:

• The meat of this proposal is that private employment agencies (staffing companies) would be licensed and authorized to set up “Non-Citizen Worker” offices in Mexico and other countries. They would be licensed by the federal Office of Visa Services and empowered to issue “Red Cards” to applicants in their local offices. Prior to issuing the cards, the agencies would be required to run an instant background check on the applicant. These checks, much like those used for firearms sales in the U.S., would be accomplished by contact with the U.S. government and the government of the native country. Cards should not be issued to workers from countries that cannot or will not cooperate in this important respect. The goal is to ensure the cards are not issued to applicants with criminal records or those who have violated the terms of previously issued permits or visas.

• Employers would simply post jobs with the private employment agencies specifying location, duration, wages and other required information – just as they often do within the U.S. today. There are dozens of employment firms, staffing companies, human resource companies and others who specialize in this field, and make their living putting employers and employees together. This would not change the current requirement that employers demonstrate attempts to hire local citizens before seeking non-citizen workers. Since employment firms charge fees for their services, the incentives will always favor local American workers – why pay a fee if you can find the workers you need locally?

• Employers would be able to check the identity and legal status of applicants with a simple swipe of the “smart card,” just as they swipe credit cards for payment. The same card could also be swiped and checked by border agents, law enforcement personnel, and others with a need to identify the holder. It would remain illegal to hire any worker not in the country legally.

• Part of the goal of this proposal is to eliminate the undocumented cash system used by so many employers and workers today. That means employers will have to pay taxes, and follow all the laws that would otherwise relate to hiring local employees. That includes social security, workers compensation, minimum wage, and all other labor laws that apply to American workers. For many employers this would mean a slightly more complicated system, and perhaps slightly higher wages. But most would have a strong incentive to comply: a steady and dependable supply of needed workers, coupled with certain and severe penalties for hiring illegal workers.

• Workers would be required to stay on the job for which the Red Card was issued, and employers would be required to report any worker who left.

• Finally, workers already in the U.S. illegally would be required to leave the country, apply for and legally obtain the Red Card, after which they could return if they had employment. They would have a powerful incentive to do so if the other elements of this plan were implemented – because once legal, they would have the same rights as any worker: minimum wage, health insurance and other benefits, decent working conditions, and the protections of the legal system.

• As soon as there is a legal system for employers and employees, the borders of the United States must be controlled.

The Krieble Foundation contends that once there is a gate, the only folks illegally jumping the fence will be drug traffickers and terrorists.  Today, migrant workers, drug traffickers and terrorists all jump the fence together.

The Red Card Program is available online at:

http://www.krieble.org/Websites/krieble/Images/files/Red%20Card%20Solution%20White%20Paper.pdf

So here is how I see it: We conservatives need to engineer workable solutions to social challenges before liberals beat us to the punch with unsustainable and oppressive programs like Obamacare.  This Red Card program, if instituted wholly, would be an enormous improvement over the current fiasco.

[umgud]

My plan, or at least the work portion of it actually has a chance to succeed if we do well in Nov 2012. As to the 12 million number, remember that in ‘86 Reagan expected there to be 300,000 amnesties, but the actual number was 3,000,000.

[Cailleach]

I worked through high school and college... Darn phone got hungry and ate words.

[Tennessee Nana]

Even more laughable is the premise that the US government will actually track red cards.
_____________________________________________

LOL

Good luck with that

When I first arrived in the US we used to have to register our address once a year...

Before I was an Anerican citizen and still a green card holder (Alien Registration Card) I would receive a document in the mail every January that I was to take to the nearest Post Office before the end of the month swearing that my physical address was the same...

If my address had changed in the last year I was suppose to have already told the INS my nerw one...

Failure to do so and failure to register every year was grounds for deportation...

The last time I did that would have been Jan 1975 because late in that month I became an American citizen...

Sometime since 1975 the requirement for registered aliens to do that every year was dropped...

[Gaffer]

That would make much more sense, but proponents of these “card” bots isn’t to fix any problem but how to get cheap labor; if that requires legalizing illegals in some manner, then so be it.

The problem now is that these ‘employers’ are so used to profits made primarily from illegal labor, that they refuse to give it up. They do not care that each illegal costs us infinitely more than the piss poor wages they pay out.

[central_va]

< SARCASM > I like the red card program, make them wear it 24/7. Every year hunters, using non-lethal dart stun guns, could hunt them with a bad limit to cull the herd. Like on Wild Kingdom, remember that show? < /SARCASM >

[dirtboy]

This is a toughie. Not.

We can look back in history to see what worked:

How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico

Or we can look back in history to see what didn't - Simpson-Mazzoli.

Here is the money line from the article about Eisenhower:

Profits from illegal labor led to the kind of corruption that apparently worried Eisenhower... Influential politicians, including Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D) of Texas and Sen. Pat McCarran (D) of Nevada, favored open borders, and were dead set against strong border enforcement, Brownell said. But General Swing's close connections to the president shielded him – and the Border Patrol – from meddling by powerful political and corporate interests.

Eisenhower fought off the corrupt interests. Simpson-Mazzoli was subverted by them. Newt is kowtowing to them.

And that is all the difference in the world.

You won't get anything remotely resembling Eisenhower's integrity by voting in Newt. Newt has made that absolutely clear.

[greene66]

That’s exactly right. The political/media elites will be all for a “red card” plan, touting it as some supposedly grand compromise, but the moment it’s passed, they will quickly rail against it and deem it APARTHEID, and with the help of the courts, immediate citizenship for all. It’s an arrogant, subterfuge way to slip amnesty through in the face of a rather unwilling public.

The only good thing here is that Gingrich gave me the final bit of evidence that I don’t want him anywhere near the presidency. It was already becoming not only distressing, but downright nauseating, having to consider all the crap in his history, both public and private, that I’d have to overlook in order to ever vote for him. Now, thanks to this, he can just go over into the same corner with Romney, as a no-way-in-hell option for me.

[GBA]

Apparently, fixing illegal immigration is one of four choices: boot them all out, make them all legal, continue as we are now or do something that incorporates most or all of Gingrich's plan.

Regardless of having broken our immigration law (and you could make a case that we officially encourage them to do so), if that is the only law that's been broken and the person has become and since been an otherwise upstanding, law abiding, tax paying citizen and member of the community, there is no way our government is going to round that person up and ship them off to Mexico or wherever they came from.

Not only is that inhumane (flame away), there is not enough money available to pay for that sort of policy and certainly not the political will or support. It ain't gonna happen and if it did, would do more harm than good.

We did this to ourselves and now we need to be both smart and humane in fixing the damage. Like it or him or not, Gingrich has put together something that will do that and it starts with controlling the border. Make it so.

[dirtboy]

there is no way our government is going to round that person up and ship them off to Mexico or wherever they came from.

It was done during the Eisenhower Adminstration. And for every person deported, ten self-deported.

It was not done after Simpson-Mazzoli and Newt doesn't want to do it now?

Why?

Eisenhower looked to solve a problem.

Newt and his backers look to profit from it.

That, in a nutshell, is what this is all about. Integrity. Something Newt has absolutely no understanding of from all of his years in the corrupt Beltway culture.

[momtothree]

“... employers are so used to profits made primarily from illegal labor...”

That is a problem. May I add another one? Over the decades that illegals were allowed to simply walk over and stay here without any sort of prosecution whatsoever... something happened planned or unplanned. That is, many Americans know of someone illegal or have family members that are illegal. Last night, I witnessed one FReeper refer to another FReeper as a member of the KKK based only on his stand to deport all illegals. I really hate to say this.. but if push comes to shove (and we actually get some backbone concerning deportation), not only the warm/fuzzy libtards will reject it but the (so called) conservatives. I hope to heck I am wrong but I don’t think so. When I read that FReepers state (in recent posts) thinks like, “Well, my cousins are illegal” or “Julio has been a friend of our family for years”.... I think we are doomed. IMHO.

[BobL]

“Presence itself is the problem.”

EXACTLY. It’s the demographics that will destroy us as the United States, as we know it. We either take control of those demographics, or we become Third World. Clearly Newt is in the Third World camp, even if he doesn’t understand it.

[momtothree]

“... employers are so used to profits made primarily from illegal labor...”

That is a problem. May I add another one? Over the decades that illegals were allowed to simply walk over and stay here without any sort of prosecution whatsoever... something happened planned or unplanned. That is, many Americans know of someone illegal or have family members that are illegal. Last night, I witnessed one FReeper refer to another FReeper as a member of the KKK based only on his stand to deport all illegals. I really hate to say this.. but if push comes to shove (and we actually get some backbone concerning deportation), not only the warm/fuzzy libtards will reject it but the (so called) conservatives. I hope to heck I am wrong but I don’t think so. When I read that FReepers state (in recent posts) thinks like, “Well, my cousins are illegal” or “Julio has been a friend of our family for years”.... I think we are doomed. IMHO.

[momtothree]

“... employers are so used to profits made primarily from illegal labor...”

That is a problem. May I add another one? Over the decades that illegals were allowed to simply walk over and stay here without any sort of prosecution whatsoever... something happened planned or unplanned. That is, many Americans know of someone illegal or have family members that are illegal. Last night, I witnessed one FReeper refer to another FReeper as a member of the KKK based only on his stand to deport all illegals. I really hate to say this.. but if push comes to shove (and we actually get some backbone concerning deportation), not only the warm/fuzzy libtards will reject it but the (so called) conservatives. I hope to heck I am wrong but I don’t think so. When I read that FReepers state (in recent posts) thinks like, “Well, my cousins are illegal” or “Julio has been a friend of our family for years”.... I think we are doomed. IMHO.

[momtothree]

I didn’t mean to post a zillion times. I keep having issues with the computer stating something about the server etc... sorry about that!

[Gaffer]

Agree. There are many Americans who have some emotional investment in rationalizing the humanity aspect on allowing some illegals to escape the law. Family, acquaintances, etc.....it doesn't make it legal. These people also do not realize the true cost of illegals - as bad as, or worse, than the poorest (and laziest)of our citzenry.

Illegals have a network here. A conspiring network of employers, sympathizers, Democrat Politicians, and a government system of largesse distribution that has no rival on this earth. Illegals are largely uneducated, of questionable background (throw in a lot of criminality and the odd perversion, too), and wont to taking advantage of EVERY government giveaway available: filing false taxes, voting, AFDC, EITC, WICs, SCHIP, Section 8, and any other program that does not make them conclusively prove their citizenship.

Add to that their load on our emergency healthcare system, which they use as a GP, the schools which force our citizen children to accomodate a language they should not have to, and you have a country headed for an Hispanic disaster and doomed to a third world status.

They will not bring our country up to a higher standard. They will devolve it to the status of the countries from whence they came

[Psycho_Bunny]

Based on epic volumes to the contrary, it’s amazing that anyone would think the Federal Government could competently oversee or operate a scheme like this.

[no-to-illegals]

Based on epic volumes to the contrary, it’s amazing that anyone would think the Federal Government could competently oversee or operate a scheme like this.

Agreement with both sets of comments.