Members of the chattering classes keep hoping the immigration issue will just go away. I was once interviewed on a radio show along with an activist on the other side who said Mexico’s falling birthrate would mean that pretty soon we’d be scratching our heads wondering what all the fuss over immigration policy was about. That was nearly 25 years ago. In 2006, Mexican president Vicente Fox said that in ten years we’d be begging for Mexican workers, but they wouldn’t come, because they’d all be employed at home. And just recently, the New York Times ran a front-page story on the coming end of the Mexican immigration flow, a meme eagerly picked up by Michael Barone, Linda Chavez, and other columnists.
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There’s a germ of truth here: The flow of illegals across the Mexican border has indeed slowed during the recession. But the tapering off of mass immigration that is said to be just over the horizon always will be. There are nearly 40 million immigrants in the United States — about one in eight residents — and, even during the worst part of the recession, more than 1 million people moved here annually from abroad.
Until the fabled end of immigration actually comes, Republican presidential candidates will need to address the issue. For all their proper focus on government spending and debt, control of our borders remains a central concern of Republican primary voters, and for a large share of independents and Reagan Democrats. What’s more, the usual platitudes are no longer convincing them; having mobilized to stop the Bush-McCain amnesty, and eyeing with suspicion the current administration’s hijinks, voters are more educated than ever. Merely posturing about ever-higher fences, without engaging the issue as a whole, is no longer sufficient for a candidate to be taken seriously by voters concerned about immigration.
Before the last cycle of presidential primaries, I laid out a ten-point immigration plan with achievable goals for a nominee to embrace. This time, I want to do something a little different: lay out three packages of policies — a basic plan, an upgraded plan, and a premium plan — regarding immigration enforcement and numbers, some that a president could implement by himself, others requiring legislation.
The basic package consists of items that any serious Republican aspirant should support. With regard to illegal immigration, there are two main goals: fencing and mandating the use by all employers of E-Verify. With regard to legal immigration, also two goals: ending the visa lottery and eliminating brother-sister chain migration.
Five years ago, Congress mandated the construction of some 700 miles of fencing, and the administration claims that this mandate has been fulfilled. In fact, most of the result is not the two layers of reinforced fencing required by the law; only about 1 percent of the border with Mexico has this. Of the nearly 700 other fenced miles, close to half has only Normandy barriers, which are designed to stop trucks from simply driving over the border but otherwise are so unimposing that your grandmother could hop over one. (Heck, even I can hop over them, and have.) The other half is actual fencing — pedestrian fencing, in Homeland Security lingo — but almost all single-layer, and varying in design from one contractor to the next. Double fencing with roads allowing agents to patrol in between, supplemented by remote sensors and cameras to alert agents to breaches, and forward operating bases right along the border to cut response times — that the deployment of all this is needed should almost go without saying.
But even this stripped-down basic package has to include more than just hardening the border. Limiting the demand for illegals by weakening the attraction of employment is at least as important as limiting the supply by fencing. The policy objective here is to ensure that all new hires are screened through E-Verify, something House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith is working to make mandatory. Smith’s bill also simplifies the use of E-Verify, ends penalties for innocent paperwork errors, and codifies the process through which employers are informed about existing employees whose names and Social Security numbers don’t match. There has been controversy among immigration hawks about the bill’s preemption of certain state and local activity in this area, but since the states with the most illegals (California, New York, Illinois, even Texas) are unlikely to pass E-Verify mandates on their own, a federal measure is the only way to get it done.
Some good ideas, however, we would still have far too much legal immigration. After we end birth-right citizenship and family reunification we need a 10 year moratorium on all legal immigration.
Next, put sanctions on Mexico until they prevent their citizens from crossing the border illegally.
While we're at it an end to NAFTA would not be a bad idea.
Agree with Goldilox -- 1/2 million per year is still way too much. Is 300 million + not enough people in this country already? Do we still have an interior to develop, populate, and secure?
One "solution" to avoid -- electing Rick "open borders" Perry.
What immigration do you support? Is sounds like only foreign spouses and a minimal amount of skilled workers. Correct?
Sorry, but I believe this limit is bad for America. Foreigners who work hard to get here, even if they don't have high tech skills, still bring a lot to America. Their determination and drive is worth far more than the ability to design an IT database, or code a robot.
At 310 million people, the U.S. is already an unsustainable society on environmental and resource grounds alone. Add in the civilizational incompatibility of most of today's immigrants to the U.S., and you have a trifecta of disaster.
Before I fled southern California, I distilled what immigration is doing to our country into these seven points:
1. The flood of immigrants drives wages and living conditions in our central cities toward those of the Third World.
2. The influx imposes both sprawl and gridlock on our metropolitan areas.
3. Immigrant families needing services overwhelm our schools, taxpayer-funded healthcare facilities, and other public agencies.
4. Those requiring services don’t assimilate and, instead, expect to be served in their native languages.
5. American civic culture frays as each ethnic group establishes its own grievance lobby and pushes for preferences.
6. Illegal aliens bring us fearsome diseases such as tuberculosis (new, drug-resistant strains) and Chagas.
7. Shortages of water and other resources loom, especially in immigration-blitzed California.
Well then, just think how much harder they would work, if back in their home country where they are natural-born citizens and speak the language fluently.
Can it be that there is so much distress in "third-world" countries because their hardest-working workers leave? Can it be that there is war, famine, and social unrest because those hard workers are busy washing dishes or doing slave-like computer programming in the USA, rather than solving problems back in their home countries?
In short, can it be that "social justice" is actually social injustice? And can it be that "free labor" really promotes servitude?
Immigration policy is making life difficult for American taxpayers. In 2008 and 2009 2.4 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) settled in the United States even though 8.2 million jobs vanished over the same period. Figures for 2010 show the foreign-born working age population is growing five times faster than the comparable native-born population. Nearly three-quarters of the 1.2 million jobs created in 2010 went to foreign-born workers. [Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Employment Situation – December 2010, February 7, 2011. Table 7. Do we really need more foreign workers who will immediately seek better paying jobs in the construction, manufacturing, transportation, service and hospitality industries?
All very good ideas. Legal and sensible immigration policies would do a great deal to preserve our unique culture and the blessings it provides.
We need to remind our citizens (and the rest of the world) that the United States has the right to define what US citizenship is and who is entitled to it and who may earn a chance at it.
Ending 'birthright citizenship' for the children of people who entered the country illegally for the purpose of having an anchor baby is an essential step in that process.
I agree that mass chain-migration should come to an end. However, the many overweight and obese Americans are unfit and unwilling to do farm labor, commercial cleaning, landscaping etc. Ask a Georgia farmer if he prefers a sluggish American or a self-motivated Mexican....
Emma, ask the average American teenager if he has a chance for any lower wage job when he has to compete with adults who will take their pay in cash under the table without requiring FICA or income taxes withheld or matched or the cost of accounting added to inexperience. Ask young adults how hard it is to get a 'real' job without a job history of any kind because they couldn't get minimum wage, part time starter jobs.
Ask the employers how hard it is to compete with rival businesses who use illegal labor--ultimately, if there is no enforcement or lax enforcement, they HAVE to hire illegals to stay competitive with the cheats.
I've seen wholesale deterioration of workmanship and service in many fields over the years because illegal laborers were cheaper and more compliant than the more skilled & educated Americans they undercut, rather than because they were more industrious.
Part of the reason some Americans stay at home and eat is that they are not allowed to work.
Like most industrialized nations, we can always find a special visa for top notch professionals, highly skilled occupations. Highly educated people are not a financial peril to our economy. Illegal aliens are, because they are feeding from tight budgets of states. The job magnet must be eliminated, the instant citizenship for babies smuggled past unsuspecting immigration agents at the borders or passenger lines at airports. The numbers are staggering and everybody who enters America should be tracked as the authorities do in Mexico?
The TEA PARTY has become a huge pressure group of tens of millions of equally minded Americans from all ethnic and secular backgrounds, political parties, no matter what the unsympathetic activists conclude? The TEA PARTY members contribute to a focused viewpoint of limiting government, personal freedoms, personal responsibility, "fair" free international trade treaties and above all else consigning control to the States and the people. The TEA PARTY is about reforming all political parties and being in charge of the primary principles of our Constitution, once again retaining the foundation of which this sovereign nation has stood for 225 years.
There is a TEA PARTY membership just around the corner in every community, where you can join a local group.
In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that up to 3 percent of the 30,000 persons called for jury duty from voter registration rolls, U.S. district court found were non citizens. Although this number may not seem like many, just 3 percent of registered voters would have been more than adequate to provide the winning presidential vote margin in Florida in 2000. Florida is not unique. Thousands of non-citizens are registered to vote in different states and tens if not hundreds of thousands, may be a million in total may be at hand on the voter rolls countrywide. These numbers are significant? In municipal elections results are often determined by only a handful of votes, and even General elections have likely been compromised within the margin of the number of non-citizens--illegally registered to vote. Those who ignore the consequences of non-citizen registration, using fraudulent “Absentee Ballots” and voting either are deliberately blind to this severe problem or may essentially favor this form of illegal voting.
Election officials have a sworn duty not only to enforce those laws, but also to execute the registration and election procedures that do not allow those laws to be bypassed or ignored. As the 2012 presidential election is perhaps is of historical significance, we as citizens must safeguard our foundation right, to ensure no non-citizens change the avenue towards the presidency through fraudulent means.
Rep. Michele Bachman is on the long, arduous road towards the potential presidency. That road is full of political land mines, because the hard leftists, lobbyists and radical open border organizations will do everything within its power to derail the ladies bid for the White House. Even now its assured they are digging for any kind of dirt, so they have some venomous flak to throw at her before 2012. You can already see the rancid seeders of the Liberal press, looking for anything significant that will demoralize Bachmann’s growing following. What they have no influence over is the millions attracted by her policies, as contemptuously shown when she refused to vote on the debt ceiling. She has already exposed issues others refuse to bring into debates, as one of her prime calls is for change in the corruption that swirls around Washington.
In regards to illegal Immigration there will be no compromise, as the TEA PARTY leaders will rigorously enforce the laws as set down in the 1986 Immigration Control & Reform Act. Amendments perhaps, but there will be no overturning this law, which has tough laws to sanction business owners who hire foreign labor. E-Verify will be mandated for every business nationwide, with the “Secure Communities” program to distinguish criminal aliens that will eventually be caught through fingerprint processing. There will be no waivers for Sanctuary cities laws, as those states will lose their federal funds. As I have been afraid to admit, a national ID card would be a ruthless deterrent, to close every loophole of illegal immigration. No non-counterfeit ID card—No Drivers License, No insurance, No Free Health Care, No Education and for certain NO welfare or public services. In other words No Nothing! In addition it will make the Mexican Consulates “Matricula Consular,” ID card for illegal aliens—OBSOLETE.
This document is supposedly an official identity card issued by the Mexican government, which it wanted to be officially recognized within the United States. Of course I doubt that even Michel Bachmann could enact this law, but think of all the billions of dollars saved, Trillions in the future. The TEA PARTY is no radical group, in fact its ordinary people like myself. I am certainly not a radical, but as a member of the Arizona Tea party, that has been costing this desert state nearly $3 Billion dollars a year in public assistance programs. When any citizen-oriented politician such as Arizona's State Senator Russell Pierce, the dregs from the open border radicals appear from their holes and try to remove anybody who is trying to save their State from insolvency. Russell Pearce, a Republican, sponsored Arizona Senate Bill 1070 and now his supporters have formed their own petition group of Citizens Who Oppose the Pearce Recall.
No legal individual is turned away from the TEA PARTY membership of voters. The border barrier could remain uncompleted and 5000 troops would not have to be deployed. Currently FAIR reports annual projection up to this time is $113 billion dollars, which is paid out to cater to the illegal invaders, but it sure to go up under the Democratic and Republican policy decisions.
The Liberal wing of the democrats have a big say in what the Democratic party does, including their devious influence in blue states as California, Nevada, Washington State. FAIR has reported that 29 Billion is paid out to illegal aliens and the rest is forced on the States, Counties and cities to cover the $ 84 Billion. Financially California and Nevada are the hardest hit by the illegal incursions into the United States. An analysis shows that illegal aliens pay into federal and State covers roughly $13 Billion dollars a year and although as they are mostly low income, the majority of these dollars is returned in tax rebates. What defies logic they still manage to usher out of America around 46 Billion to foreign banks.
Who constitutes a "good" immigrant and who constitutes a "bad" immigrant? Certianly adopted foreign children can't be materially different than native births, so I can't see a basis for limiting that. Spousal sponsorhips are not too far behind (and, in my view, are an important competitive check on the excesses of feminism). But random visa awards and chain immigration is bad. Illegal immigration is the worst.
See a pattern? Individual Americans make better judges of immigration candidates than the government. So my proposal is to extend that principle and allow a random 1% of all tax filers who pay at least $1 in tax to nominate an immigrant. (A host of NGO-sponsored websites will pop up to offer suggestions. Minimum standards will apply: no history of illegal immigration, not a terrorist, etc.)
Need skilled immigrants but don't want the process to be captured by the business lobby? That's easy. Sell 100,000 visas a year to the highest bidder. The free market will bring the visas to the most needed and valuable skills.
The brother-sister immigration chain is a red herring argument.
Right now, if you are a US citizen and you file for your alien brother or sister, there is an 11-year wait for a visa. Unless you are from Mexico (15 years) or the Philippines (23 years). If you are a green-card holder, you cannot file for a brother or sister at all.
If you are not a legal immigrant, you don't get any US benefits: medical care, food stamps, welfare - that argument is also a red herring.
You cannot sponsor an immigrant unless you earn 125% of the poverty-line in income (that's $18,387 for a family of 2) precisely because immigrants should not become a public charge.
Even illegals are meant to pay taxes on their earnings and can apply for a tax ID# to do so. Many, many do dutifully pay their taxes, knowing that they will never see a penny of it back.
There is a great need - nay, demand - for immigration reform, but using irrelevant arguments only inflames anti-immigrant sentiment and stifles reasoned discussion. But that's usually the goal for this writer and for many others on his side of the argument, so one should not be surprised about it.
