Carol Platt Liebau: Immigration Implications

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Immigration Implications

Mark Steyn has a classic must-read on illegal immigration, skewering the failure of the Ensign amendment and noting, " Technically, an 'amnesty' only involves pardoning a person for a crime rather than, as this moderate compromise legislation does, pardoning him for a crime and also giving him a cash bonus for committing it."

There are also two other issues that are related to the ongoing immigration debate that aren't receiving the attention they deserve.

First, as Mark Steyn notes, By some counts, up to 5 percent of the U.S. population is now "undocumented." Why? In part because American business is so over-regulated that there is a compelling economic logic to the employment of illegals. In essence, a chunk of the American economy has seceded from the Union.

Once the unions have succeeded in effectively annexing the new guest workers, it will be interesting to see how businesses are able to respond.

Second, the immigration process, administratively speaking, has to be reformed. A typical story is that of the mother of Edgar Prado (Barbaro's jockey). She was a citizen of Peru who died in January from cancer. She had applied for a visa to come to the US for medical treatment only -- her son, the "winningest jockey" over the last three years, had the means to take care of her and the likelihood of her overstaying her visa or breaking the law was practically nil.

The visa arrived months after she applied, the day before she died.

Whatever immigration bill passes, without addressing both the reasons businesses turn to illegals and the utter inefficiency bordering on incompetence of the immigration bureaucracy in this country, its efficacy will be undermined.

1 Comments:

Blogger Matt Brinkman said...

There is a relatively simple means of cutting down illegal immigration--enforce the laws against employers who hire illegals. If there would be no jobs, there would be a much lessened incentive for entering the country illegally. Why are we mollycoddling companies that are knowingly breaking the law?

Why is it that the only time Carol wants us to feel compassion for criminals is when they dress in grey flannel and fund Republican PACS? Strike the second question--I think we already know the answer to that one.

7:50 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Google