Mr. Sensenbrenner, Tear Down This Wall

Here we go again. The Wall Street Journal Ed Page wonders about the message and politics of the Congressional GOP's last gasp measure do something about this immigration problem about which they've whipped everybody up.

I hope they'll move it to the free site this weekend. It is a very thoughtful piece. It runs as the lead editorial today, The Great Wall of America, which opens with "It wasn't so long ago, during the Reagan era, that Republicans sought to tear down walls, not erect them."

Now that they've created this frenzy, they have to show how tough they are:

Here's one example of how tough they are. Steve King of Iowa suggested in front of the C-SPAN cameras that at the top of this new fence "we electrify this wire with the kind of current that would not kill somebody, but it would be a discouragement for them to be fooling around with it." Then he added: "We do this with livestock all the time." Equating people with cattle: There's an inclusive political message for you.

Nor is a "sealed border" desirable, even if it could be achieved. More than nine of 10 of the three million net new jobs created from 2000-05 have been filled by immigrants, according to Census Bureau data. With many regions of the country now suffering from a shortage of workers, not even Pat Buchanan could argue with a straight face that immigrants are stealing jobs from Americans. The fence itself will probably have to be built by immigrants.

I'm the lone voice 'round these parts, but this is bad politics, bad economics, and as this article reminds, bad imagery.

Republicans cite polls indicating that Americans want a secure border, but the political appeal of walls and fences is exaggerated. Just last week Don Goldwater, the man who held a press conference at the border urging, "Mr. Bush, build this wall now," was defeated in a GOP primary for Governor of Arizona -- in the very border state where these policies were thought to be most popular. The Arizona Republican who won a Congressional primary on immigration in the Tucson district is expected to lose in November.

The only real way to reduce the flow of illegal Mexican immigration is to provide a legal, orderly process to match open American jobs with workers who want to fill them. Mr. Bush is for that, and so is the Senate, but House Republicans have concluded that they're better off building fences. When Ronald Reagan spoke of America being a "shining city on a hill," he wasn't thinking of one surrounded by electrified barbed-wire fences.

Immigration Posted by jk at September 21, 2006 10:55 AM