Two Wrongs make a ???

Notwithstanding the leftist groups who've organized tomorrow's "immigrant strike" day, the temperature has cooled on the immigration debate since the April recess. But it will heat up again soon. In November JK predicted "an immigration win for the GOP" that included a compromise between senate and house immigration reform bills. In general terms, the senate measure is the "guest worker" program and the house brings the "border security" element. I don't doubt JK's prediction, but I do fear the result of a compromise between these two bad plans.

The senate plan to spend lots of money and create a new "citizenship scavenger hunt" program has been knocked around here quite a bit already. But what about the house's "hard line" approach? JK is critical of it as isolationist. I'm not sure though that he knows just how right he is. Robert Tracinski, one of the guys I "truck with" calls it "Americans against the American dream."

So why are so many Republicans coming out against the American dream?

Look through the rationalization that these Republicans are only against illegal immigration. These same politicians have spent decades erecting barriers against legal immigration, and they are still doing so today. That is why they have refused to link their crackdown on illegal immigration with any provision to allow existing immigrants to legalize their status, or to allow new workers to come to the US under a "guest worker" program. They are not for legal immigration; they are against all immigration, period.

Also look through the rationalization that the anti-immigrationists are concerned that foreigners come here to mooch off of the American welfare state. Why, then, are restrictions on immigration aimed precisely at those who seek to work?

I agree with Tracinski that the house has got it wrong. I hope that much of it, like the provision to make illegal immigration a felony that Dennis Hastert promises is already DOA, will be excised from the compromise bill but that's a heapin' helpin' of wishful thinking. I still hold that Charles Krauthammer had the right approach and we'd all better hope that any compromise looks a lot like his "wall first, questions later" solution.

Immigration Posted by JohnGalt at April 30, 2006 11:19 AM