Rebutting the Arguments
The president’s suicidal immigration “reform” proposal makes two key assumptions:
1. “Guest workers” are needed to do “jobs that Americans won’t do.”
2. The illegal immigrants already here cannot be practically deported and America’s borders cannot be secured against illegal immigration.
Both these assumptions are false.
The we-need-guest-workers assumption is patently untrue. Before 10 million illegal immigrants came here in the nineties, our economy ran just fine without them. And opening up America’s market for low-skilled jobs to foreigners would hurt the most vulnerable Americans - the poor and the unskilled. There are five billion people living in countries poorer than Mexico and they will be lining up to be “guest workers.” (In fact, Hispanic “guest workers” will be swamped by a tide of Chinese and Indian “guest workers.” I doubt if that will win the president many Hispanic votes.) Such “guest worker” programs have been tried in Europe for decades and they’ve led to incredible racial and ethnic strife, creating a racial underclass of menial laborers who live in crime-ridden, culturally-alienated urban neighborhoods.
Similarly, the president’s assumption that we can do nothing about illegal immigrants already here is flawed. There’s a simple, easy, cheap, humane way to deport the lot of them and secure our borders against most illegal immigration.
However, let’s set all this aside for a moment and buy the president’s assumptions. Let’s assume that “guest workers” are needed and that illegal immigrants cannot be deported. What about the mechanics of the president’s plan? Reader Keith Curtis, who blogs at Reagan Country, sent in a defense of the plan emphasizing its strongest features. His arguments and my rebuttals are below.
“Bush has stepped up border enforcment. This prevents the problem from getting worse. 1000 new border agents, 40% increase funding. Perhaps in the new bill, this value will increase yet again.“
To secure a border of the length we share with Mexico, we’ll need 100,000 agents. We don’t even have a tenth of that number and the border will remain porous unless we make it very uncomfortable for illegal immigrants to remain in the US. 1,000 more border agents is a sop that means very little.
“It will have a one-time process to document everyone and give them a 3 year work permit. This allows us to understand the situation.“
When it comes to illegal immigration, there are no “one-time processes.” Every “one-time” amnesty will lead to yet more illegals coming here from around the world in hopes of yet another “one-time” amnesty. The 1986 amnesty proved my point by creating a staggering increase in illegal immigration.
“Employers must now do a better job with hiring people. The risks of hiring undocumented people will go up, and the ability for illegals to get jobs will go down.“
Employers already face penalties for hiring illegals. What’s missing here is a mechanism for validating documents. As I’ve noted below, illegal immigrants give employers fake SSNs. The employers look the other way, claiming plausibly that there was no way for them to know the SSN was fake, thus avoiding the employer penalties that were put in place in 1986. All that’s needed to hold employers accountable is a validation system that employers can use, like the one I proposed in my simple two-step solution.
“If someone loses a job, then they must leave. Now that everyone currently here is documented, it becomes easier to make this happen.“
If they won’t leave now, when they’re undocumented, why would they leave then, when they’re undocumented? They’d get a fake SSN and continue working.
“Their social security money will be available to them when they return to their own nation. Finally a financial incentive for them to return.“
Yeah, but only when they retire, by which time President Chelsea Clinton will have given them amnesty.
“Illegals are currently stuck in America. Currently if they leave, they cannot come back. By granting them the ability to leave and return if they have a job, there is a chance they will head back.“
No way. Not when they know there’s yet another amnesty coming.
All of Keith’s arguments are calculated to convince conservatives that the Bush immigration “reform” proposal will reduce illegal immigration. I have a far simpler solution that will accomplish the same thing; but it requires you to renounce the president’s first assumption - that we need low-skilled, poorly-educated immigrants to do the “jobs Americans won’t do.”
This really is a debate about just how much immigration America can take. I favor keeping immigration at reasonable levels (and I say that as a non-white recent legal immigrant.) At reasonable levels of immigration, immigrants are forced to assimilate into the American mainstream and adopt the American culture (yes, there is such a thing.) At very high levels of immigration - like the de facto illegal immigration we’re experiencing, or the legal immigration the president proposes - immigrants will not need to assimilate. They will cluster in immigrant enclaves, which will create a racial underclass of low-skilled, poor menial laborers who’re culturally alienated from the rest of the country. That is a volatile recipe for the sort of racial and ethnic strife you usually see in countries other than the United States.
– PoliPundit