November 25, 2006
Immigration Politics
The holidays. It was nice to take a break from arguing about immigration with my blog brothers and spend some time arguing about immigration with my real brothers.
To be fair, the food was better. And, actually, it was my brother-in-law, whom I will call "Alejandro" to protect his privacy. Alejandro and I kept quiet cool on Thanksgiving Day, but we ended up going to lunch together on the day after. Al is a reliable Republican vote these days, but, like my blog brothers, has been seduced by the enforcement only camp. "'Dro" as we sometimes call him, contributed to Randy Graf's campaign in Arizona.
I suggested, as I did here, that the enforcement-only wing deserves some of the blame for the GOP losses in 2006.It was a tough climate in a historically difficult six-year midterm. I'm not saying that the GOP would be popping the corks on great gains, but I have great company in the belief that convincing the electorate we had a national emergency and then doing nothing to solve it hurt the party's chances.
Alejandro asked me to read Mark Krikorian's column in the December 4, 2006 issue of National Review. If the Wall Street Journal Ed page has led the charge for comprehensive immigration reform, I think it is fair to say that NR has led the enforcement-only wing.
Krikorian wonders if "Amnesty" is so popular, why the Democrats didn’t come out for it as a campaign issue. He makes arguments that ThreeSources own JohnGalt made: that many Democratic victors were tough on immigration and that some tough GOP pols did win. Alejandro asked me to specifically address the Krikorian column as it seemed to him to contradict our friendly discussion at Chilis. I never turn down a request:
First of all, I don't think Krikorian contradicts me. The thesis of his article is that there is no electoral mandate for amnesty. I do not claim there is. I claim that the GOP looked feckless after creating a crisis and not solving it, and that compromise is popular. Sometimes compromise means watered down mush that makes nobody happy. In this instance, it is good policy and good politics.
I abhor his use of the word amnesty. I never once heard any of the most liberal proponents of comprehensive immigration come out for amnesty. I suspect that Krikorian considers anything less than shooting border crossers on sight amnesty. He calls his opponents by name: Tamar Jacoby, Fareed Zakaria, Fred Barnes and Linda Chavez. He snarkily calls them "the smart set" and their movement the pro-amnesty side. I don't expect that any of the people listed would call themselves pro-amnesty. Also, while I respect Zakaria immensely, he does not belong in that group. There are many principled conservatives who have lined up squarely on the comprehensive side (Paul Gigot, Larry Kudlow, Arthur Laffer, Milton Friedman). Without saying he did it on purpose, his shopping basket is not representative of his opposition.
Krikorian also cherry-picks some statistics. He points out that only seven percent of the members of Rep. Tancredo’s Immigration Reform Caucus lost, against 11% of the GOP caucus. I would suspect that members of the IRC might be more likely to be in safe seats. The Weekly Standard and WSJ Ed page pointed this out before the election, suggesting that those in more competitive districts not “follow the Yahoos off the cliff.” It’s hard to slice and dice reasons in a thunderous loss, but the loss of Rep J.D. Hayworth in AZ-05 (Hayworth won by 21% in a district that went 54-45 for President Bush in 2004) and Randy Graf’s loss in AZ-08 (53-46% Bush) offer the clearest data. If they can’t make it there, they can’t make it anywhere.
I guess I missed all the TV commercials and mass mailings from the enforcement "only" candidates that championed "shooting border crossers on sight." There's no longer any wonder why I thought the GOP lost over it's holding pattern strategy in Iraq, multiple congressmen indicted for fraud, and an eleventh hour MSM orgy over a pedophile congressman from Florida.
Posted by: johngalt at November 25, 2006 2:10 PMYeah. J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf lost because the members of their heavily GOP districts wanted Rep. Murtha to prevail on Iraq and were so concerned about Mark Foley's IMs.
Maybe we could iron out terminology. If you'll provide a good name for Tancredoite, IRC-type Republicans I will use it. What sticks out in my mind is that they want enforcement which is half of comprehensive reform but not any of the other elements. So I call them enforcement only.
In return, I'd like the likes of Krikorian to not call anything else "amnesty." In the article (it's not online, sorry) he claims his opponents use "comprehensive" as a euphemism for amnesty. He uses amnesty as a dysphemism for anything but....er....shoot on site.
Posted by: jk at November 25, 2006 2:42 PMName calling isn't helpful on either side of the debate. Technically, however, it is amnesty to forgive individuals for their criminal acts. There is mitigation when the law in question is as questionable as was prohibition.
In fairness I think you have to concede that the Tancredoite Republicans rejected only the non-enforcment solution that was actually proposed. One would expect them to propose an alternative they DID approve of, but that's not exactly how things work in the Senate. Leadership writes it the way they want it and, voila, it's a "compromise."
My holiday was spent with in-laws in San Diego, on the "front lines" of the illegal immigration crisis. They certainly didn't consider the situation to have been created by the GOP talking about it. Their hospitals were going out of business before it became a fashionable topic in D.C. But another of them said, "I'd be doing exactly the same thing if I were them [illegals]."
Expanded legal immigration alternatives are the moral answer. The extra entitlement burden on US citizens is the impediment that must first be removed.
Posted by: johngalt at November 26, 2006 1:40 AM | What do you think? [3]