Immigration Reform Hits A Snag

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

With the same obtuse inattention that has so often lifted them from the frying pan into the fire, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives ignored the wise counsel that appeared in this space and passed an immigration bill last week that is likely to do them, and the country, no good.


That mistake inspires a second look at the issue and its baroque complications.


There are two politically fashionable approaches to immigration reform. These are known, in the lingo of immigration mavens, as “enforcement-only” and “enforcement-plus.”


Both approaches share the premise that no policy maker can rationalize U.S. immigration policy unless he first reaffirms the country’s commitment to restoring the inviolability of its borders and enforcing the law as it is.


Where the approaches differ is in what comes next: Once the laws are more strictly enforced against those coming into the country illegally, how does the government deal with the 11 million illegal immigrants who are already here?


While both approaches are politically fashionable, only one is realistic – as supporters on both sides must know.


For his part, President George W. Bush is an “enforcement- plus” man.


On Nov. 28, Bush gave a major speech reviving the immigration reform he unveiled in January 2004. The speech was heavily weighted toward enforcement, but the policy itself goes beyond simply tightening border controls, buying new monitoring technologies and streamlining deportation procedures.


Bush proposes to greatly expand the channels through which immigrant workers can stay in the country legally by increasing the number of “green cards” that place immigrants on the path to citizenship and establishing a guestworker program that would ultimately have the same effect.


By contrast, the bill the House passed last week under the sponsorship of Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner is pure enforcement – because, Sensenbrenner says, Republicans have failed to reach a consensus on whether a guest-worker program (the “plus” in “enforcement-plus”) is feasible or desirable.


At the heart of Sensenbrenner’s bill is a mandatory employee-verification system that would require employers to check all new hires against a national data base and to report those without legal documentation.


Within five years, it will require all employers to run such checks on every one of their employees. Employers caught retaining or hiring workers who fail the checks will face mandatory criminal penalties, as will deported immigrants caught crossing the border again.


Meanwhile, the bill enlists local police in running “sweeps” of illegal immigrants to enforce federal immigration laws. And more than $2 billion will go to build new fences across sections of the U.S.-Mexican border.


Though anti-immigration hardliners were generally pleased with Sensenbrenner’s bill, it could have been even tougher. The House, for example, rejected an amendment that would have withdrawn automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S. if their parents are here illegally.


House Republicans who supported Sensenbrenner’s bill, or who hoped for an even tougher bill, persist in their belief that an “enforcement only” approach to illegal immigration will bring them vast political rewards – despite a broad range of experience that suggests otherwise.


First, Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore lost his bid against a liberal Democrat in the heavily Republican Commonwealth of Virginia after anchoring his campaign in a get-tough attitude toward illegal immigrants.


Kilgore’s unexpected defeat was followed two weeks ago by a special runoff election in California’s solidly Republican 48th District. The well-known anti-immigration activist Jim Gilchrist finished third in that race – behind a Democrat, whom he outspent 3-to-1 – with a surprisingly weak 25 percent of the vote.


Various Republican-leaning pundits and analysts – most recently, the former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan and the Princeton University political scientist Robert P. George – say such electoral results are misleading.


Immigration, in this newly conventional view, is a classic political issue along the lines of welfare reform in the 1980s: It pits out-of-touch elites, whether Republican or Democrat, against a bipartisan, populist opposition that will not be denied.


Sooner or later, the resentment against illegal immigration will spill over and burn the clueless incumbents who refused to see it coming.


But there’s no hard evidence for this view either. Gilchrist’s poor finish, and Kilgore’s too, conform to polls that show a large majority of GOP voters favor an “enforcement-plus” approach – even in districts, like the California 48th, with high populations of illegals. “Enforcement-only” is seen as merely punitive – and unrealistic.


It may be that the genuine populist consensus is more realistic than resentful. The logic of “enforcement-only” points ultimately to national identification cards, a wholesale roundup of 11 million illegals, vast detention facilities, a nightmare of endless litigation and mass deportations – outcomes that no responsible politician, even the most ravenously populist, would authorize.


Realists, on the other hand, will do what Bush has tried to do: satisfy resentment over illegal immigration by enforcing stricter control of the borders, while establishing a humane and plausible system for legalizing the illegals who are already here.


That’s enforcement-plus, and it has many more advocates in the U.S. Senate, which will take up immigration reform next year, than in the House. Senate Republicans acknowledge that enforcement-plus isn’t simply wise policy; it’s inevitable, too – no matter how many bills the House passes to deny it.


The New York Sun

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