The Immigration Bill
If you’ve been following the debate in Congress, you probably are aware that President Bush and a bipartisan coalition of Senators have proposed a comprehensive immigration reform bill. It’s “comprehensive” in the sense that it includes the trifecta of border security, legalization, and employer enforcement.
Politically I’m pretty much a national security conservative. Not a religious conservative, nor quite a neocon. And when it comes to immigration, I’m actually kind of liberal. Living in NJ, I’ve worked with many different people classified as immigrants (Arabic, Russian, Turkish, Argentinian, Columbian, Cuban, Israeli, Mexican, French, German, English, Canadian, African, Korean, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani) who were hard workers and became good friends. I don’t know if they are all legal or not, but I do know that they contribute to the fabric of our country. Our country was built by immigrants. Legal immigrants that is.
But from a national security viewpoint, the borders cannot be porous.
For me, the solution to the immigration problem comes down to (in order):
The problem I have with the bill in Congress right now is that I don’t trust our government. On paper, I can live with most of the bill and quible over the benchmarks for implementation. But in reality, I don’t expect them to enforce ANYTHING. If this becomes law, they will issue Z-Visas to all illegals (legalizing them), not build the fence, and not build the employment ID system. You just know it!
I propose the following solution:
Create a treaty with Mexico that establishes an exchange program. For every 15K immigrants, they must take a congressman. We’ll gain 15k mostly hard working people, and they will get an esteemed colleague from Whocares. Sure, Mexico will get screwed once 535 of these blowhards show up in Mexico City looking to run the show, but so what. They only work for a couple of months a year anyway. Mexico can handle it.
