The train wreck over immigration in DC

March 28, 2006

All the major players — congressional [tag]Republicans[/tag], congressional Dems, and the White House — are making great strides in advancing their own approach to major changes to federal [tag]immigration[/tag] law. And yet, the likelihood of a legislative train wreck seems pretty good.

A Senate committee voted Monday to create a path for some of the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to become citizens without first leaving the country, and to allow additional foreign workers to enter the United States temporarily under a program that also could lead to citizenship.

With its votes, the Judiciary Committee sided with advocates of liberalized immigration laws and moved the Senate closer to a contentious fight among GOP lawmakers. A large and vocal faction of Republicans — in Congress and throughout the party — believes that illegal immigrants are lawbreakers who should not be rewarded with citizenship and that a temporary worker program would only draw more illegal workers to the country.

The House has already passed a harsh bill that emphasizes increased border control, tighter law enforcement, and a provision that makes it a felony to be an illegal [tag]immigrant[/tag]. Perhaps most controversial are provisions that would make it a crime for a religious ministry or charity to offer aid to an illegal immigrant. The White House and most congressional Dems oppose the House bill.

The Senate [tag]Judiciary Committee[/tag] approved a far more progressive bill yesterday, which included provisions that would offer “guest worker” status to immigrants and an eventual opportunity to apply for citizenship. Most conservatives and House Republicans oppose this approach. (Senate Republicans are split. The approach backed by the Senate Judiciary Committee passed despite opposition from most of the panel’s Republicans.)

Complicating matters, [tag]Bill Frist[/tag], who just so happens to be anxious to improve his standing with the conservative base in advance of 2008, may block the White House-backed legislation approved in committee yesterday, and substitute his own more-conservative immigration bill that is more in line with the House version, and does not includes a guest-worker program.

The Senate is headed into “a difficult and visceral debate,” said Sen. [tag]Sam Brownback[/tag] (R-Kan.). I think that’s an understatement. What happens next? Stay tuned.

I think it sad and pathetic that no one is Congress is working toward actually solving the problem. If Republicans don’t want illegals coming over the border they should stop them not by making it more risky to cross, but my removing their motivation to be here in the first place.

Businesses are short-changing workers by illegally employing illegal immigrants to do jobs uneducated American workers are unwilling to do for such low pay. If Republicans [or Democrats] were serious about decreasing illegal immigrants they would make in more expensive to businesses to hire illegal workers [of any country] than pay illegal wages to illegal workers.

If no one in America will hire them there is no reason for them to come to America and the flow of illegal immigrants will stop naturally.

Though no one wants to even penalize business for doing slightly illegal things.

  • I am greatly enjoying the spectacle of the GOP twisting themselves into knots on this one. All of a sudden conservatives get all squishy on their principles. The correct conservative position on immigration should be:

    1. Respect for the law – if you are here illegally, you should be deported. If you employ illegals, you should be prosecuted.

    2. Free market – If no legal workers want to pick your fruit for the wage you offer, you have to pay higher wages until you get enough legal employees. If you can’t afford the wages, charge more for your product or get out of that business.

  • The problem with the “Respect for the Law” thread is that if they’re serious about it then they need to start with the President and the NSA. The vaporing on the right about lawlessness miraculously dries up when it’s their boy breaking the laws. Jon Kyl quacking about the perils of “amnesty” for illegal immigrants is remarkably at odds with the GOP race to provide retroactive cover for the preznits lawbreaking.

  • Here’s a novel idea. How about completely legalizing immigration (to non-terrorists, of course.) We’ve already removed all barriers to the movement of capital across the Mexican border – why should the capitalists be the only ones with that advantage? And doesn’t it seem immoral that you can move money across the border but as a person you cannot move yourself? What happened to Emma Lazerus and

    “Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

    Regarding the issue of “the law”, I would refer anyone to the post made yesterday on Glenn Greenwald’s blog – the point of it being that we’ve made illegal what is otherwise a perfectly legal and legitimate activity, crossing borders in search of a better life.

  • I’m with dander – I am enjoying the show. Republicans are going to beat each other up over this and frankly they brought it on themselves. They have tried to triangulate this and now it is biting them on the rear end.

    As to the merits of the legislation, I definitely think the opportunity of citizenship needs to be part of the solution. I don’t want to end up like France and some other European contries who have allowed “them” in to do the scut work that they can’t/won’t do only to have them be so marginalized and radicalized that they become a danger.

  • Did I just dream that there was some kind of amnesty in the ’80s? I don’t really remember a lot about it.

  • Illegally entering this country has about the same moral value as running a red light. If no one dies from your running the light, and they don’t catch you going through the light, they don’t deny you a driver’s license five years later.

    This whole argument about ‘rewarding illegal activity’ is smokescreen. The know-nothings are hiding their fear and loathing behind a lot of absurd arguments. Illegals don’t take jobs from Americans. Illegals add more to the economy than they take out. Illegals pay taxes.

    Trying to declare 12,000,000 people felons is not going to make finding the terrorist moles easier either. We can even deport the violent criminals amoung this group effectively because we treat each and every one of them as ‘criminals’.

    And if they truely cared, they would:
    1). actually punish employers who hire illegal immigrants,
    2). establish a universal identification system that can’t be counterfited,
    3). raise taxes to pay for immigration control officers, jails and judges,
    4). and raise the minimum hourly wage.

    The problem is that each one of these upsets some portion of the Republicanite alliance.

    So what we will get is just more dead bodies in the desert.

  • All good points. When you increase the supply of labor, you decrease its value (wages). The only ones who really profit from this are the employers. If you punish those who employ illegals (identified through a kind of system suggested by Lance), the cost of labor will go up, as it did during the ’50s (when unions served that function). That is, you will re-create a Middle Class in America. Of course the cost of goods will go up, so salaries will go up, too. The only losers in this case are the top employers, but who needs employers that make 535% of what their average workers make? Bring back the Middle Class and its Democratic Party.

  • I had better have myself a serious navel staring session, I think I was just complimented by Ed Stephan 😉

    Not trying to be cruel Ed, but you really are off to my left on just about everything. Not that anyone like Claude (waum….scat) would ever be able to notice the difference.

  • I agree with Ed also. Illegal immigration has affected my life in negative ways numerous times. Muellar, you’re clueless.

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