The Bush administration is desperate for a victory somewhere — anywhere — and White House operatives are hoping that they may eke one out on an unlikely issue: immigration reform.
You mean, actually walling off the southern border, deporting the ones in our jails, and getting enough personnel to track down the rest? Yea! That WOULD be a victory! But of course, it isn't what the Bushyrovies have in mind....
The heart of the administration's proposal is a new temporary workers program, something the country desperately needs if we are ever to stem the flow of illegal workers into the United States,
WRONG--what stems the flow of illegal workers into the USA is (1) walling off the southern border, where nearly all are coming from (2) boosting immigration personnel and detention facilities to deal with the rest.
and still provide necessary workers in a full-employment economy.
Ah, the real agenda. And frankly, she may be right, although the underpinnings of our "full employment" economy are very debatable. But let's be honest about what a temporary workers program really is, shall we?
But as currently outlined, the plan will do nothing more than create a class of workers who will never assimilate into the mainstream of our society, much less become Americans.
Gee, Linda, given that they are *temporary*, why is that such a surprise?
The plan would not allow workers to bring their families with them, no matter how long they continued to work on renewable two-year permits. But increasing the number of young, unattached males in our society is a recipe for problems.
Families bring stability — indeed, one of the reasons immigrants have low crime rates is that they are more likely to live in married, two-parent households with children than those who are native-born and of comparable socio-economic status. Instead of families who, after a time, would buy homes and start businesses and whose children would become the new Americans, we would have a permanent class of non-English-speaking workers with no ties to the communities in which they live and work.
(1) In other words, they AREN'T temporary! A new bracero program, where we just get the seasonal labor and don't have to accommodate a new long-term underclass, this isn't!
(2) While families do bring more stability, they also bring net takers of social services, and people who take far more out of the government than they pay in. While driving wages in entry level jobs down, which is a disincentive for welfare reforms and getting our own underclass working! And it again raises the question: given the social services net tax outflow, just how cheap is that labor, really?
And the proposal for dealing with the 12 million illegal aliens already living here isn't much better. On the positive side, Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, who have consistently opposed amnesty for the 12 million, now seem ready to embrace a path toward legalization for those who are here. The plan would be to create a new visa — dubbed the "Z," perhaps it will be the least desirable visa available — that would be renewable in three-year increments for a $3,500 fee, on top of an $8,000 initial fine. These provisions are so draconian they would essentially make indentured workers out of the 12 million.
Given that wages have been driven down in construction and service industries, aren't all those American born workers getting closer to becoming indentured already?
But the proposal is just a starting point, and there is plenty of room to bargain. The bill also includes a huge expansion in enforcement efforts, including a 50 percent increase in the border patrol — which is already nearly double the size it was when President Bush took office.
Wow, from minuscule to less minuscule--doesn't that make you feel swell?
The plan would also include a secure identity card everyone in the United States would have to use, citizen and non-citizen alike, to gain employment.
Great, police state the citizens just to track the non-citizens. It would be a lot less intrusive to wall off the southern border and expand the formerly INS / now ICE personnel and detention facilities.
In addition, the proposal would also expand the current border fence with Mexico to include 200 miles of vehicle barriers, 370 miles of fencing and 300 miles of electronic sensors.
Less than the 800 miles of real walling and fencing we were promised, and still short of securing the whole damn border. (While much of the border is impassable mountains, inhospitable desert, or both, nothing short of a full Great Wall Of America will really do the trick. "Virtual sensors" are a joke if there are not the personnel to apprehend the illegal aliens).
"Parts of the proposal are more realistic than others," the Manhattan Institute's Tamar Jacoby said. "But it shifts the battle away from what to do with 12 million already here — the GOP senators now seem to understand they are going to stay — to the issue of who will come in the future. The terms and conditions for new workers visas is where both sides will have to do some hard negotiating that will come to compromise."
The problem is, in the absence of a Border Wall and a beefed up Border Patrol / ICE, telling the illegals already here that they are going to stay only opens the floodgates for another "bums rush", overwhelming the economy, the society, and in this age of dangerous anti immigration and "multiculturalism", our very national fabric.
But Linda doesn't care as long as she gets her cheap nanny and gardener.
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