Saturday, May 19, 2007

Wrong on Wall Street

The Wall Street Journal weighs in today on the immigration deal. And per usual, we get this kind of hyperbole:

Restrictionists are calling this "amnesty," but they were going to slap that label on anything this side of mass deportation. The public is understandably upset about the presence of so many illegal aliens in the U.S. But there is no evidence that voters want millions of foreign families—many of whom have been here for decades and have American children—uprooted and forcibly removed from the country. The restrictionist wing of the GOP simply wants no new immigration, and "amnesty" is merely a political slogan to kill any reform.

More here.

The “restrictionist wing” of the GOP? We’re “restrictionists” because we want border security first, which we’ve not had for four decades? We’re “restrictionists” because we want the 1986 comprehensive immigration reform law enforced, the same law championed by the Journal back then? We’re “restrictionists” because we’re concerned about the costs to entitlement programs, public education, and the health care system? We’re “restrictionists” because we want Congress to go through the usual legislative process to examine the many, many details of this deal and ensure they’re carefully considered, rather than negotiating the deal in secret, giving certain groups veto power over provisions, and then ramming it through on the floor?

To ignore or reject all the publicly available evidence of security and cost-related issues associated with a deal like this, and they are numerous and serious, is to diminish the credibility of the editorial writers at the Journal who write this stuff. They’re beginning to sound like big-spending, soft-on-security liberals.

The “restrictionist wing” of the GOP is called the conservative movement. We believe in things like the Constitution, which is full of restrictions. I thought our friends at the Journal editorial page believed that the size and growth of entitlements should be restricted. I guess not, since Robert Rector at The Heritage Foundation points out that this deal will destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid even faster than projected. I would have thought that after 9/11 the Journal editorial page would want to better restrict the manner in which aliens come to our country. I thought they understood that Homeland Security, and ICE in particular, were bureaucratic disasters largely incapable of competently implementing an extremely complex new set of immigration requirements. I guess they now believe otherwise, contrary to numerous GAO and other studies. But this is why so many “restrictionists” insist on more physical and technological barriers to slow illegal entrance into our country.

Now, as for this canard that we want “millions of foreign families … uprooted and forcibly removed from the country,” I’ve yet to hear any leading “restrictionist” expert or organization advance this position. With few exceptions, those of us in talk radio – Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Neal Boortz, among others – haven’t urged such a thing. I’ve not seen anyone responsible for National Review’s editorial policies embrace this position. Maybe the Journal’s editorial writers can name names.

Of course, deportation must be part of any enforcement scheme. It has been part of every major piece of immigration legislation since our founding. There are currently over 600,000 aliens in our country who’ve had their cases adjudicated, who were supposed to leave but haven’t. ICE can’t find them. But the false image the Journal editorial page wishes to create is one of brown shirts knocking on doors and dragging people from homes and businesses and carting them away.

I do wonder, however, how the Journal would enforce any law – immigration or otherwise — without an enforcement mechanism beyond a financial penalty. And I assume the new deal that’s in the works provides for deportation at some level.

No, what I hear and read and say is that there are many ways to create economic disincentives that discourage illegal aliens who are in the U.S. from staying here and discourage others from entering our country in the first place. But the Journal’s editorial writers would oppose most if not all of them, as would the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its members, because their priorities are not necessarily the same as, say, the “restrictionists,” i.e., most Americans.

05/19 10:30 AM