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Contributors
Krikorian - Contributor
Mark
Krikorian is executive director of the Center
for Immigration Studies.
[go to Krikorian index]
 Bush
Plan for Illegals
Out
of Touch with Reality...
[Mark Krikorian] 2/9/04
President Bush's plan to grant amnesty to millions of illegal
aliens and allow millions more to enter the country is a fundamental
disconnect with reality and should be rejected out-of-hand.
Though the president says many details would be left to Congress
to iron out, his outline fails even to address issues that should
be basic to any immigration plan and clearly is not intended
as a serious effort at all.
Rather it
is a sentimental gesture, designed mainly for political benefit
and based on
clichés about "huddled masses" and "a
nation of immigrants."
Among the fundamental issues ignored by his proposal:
Administrative
capacity: The White House does not appear to realize that the
federal government simply doesn't have the ability
to manage such a program. In the past, when immigration authorities
lacked needed personnel and other resources, the result of such
overload was massive fraud.
One consequence was the issuance of a green card to Mahmud Abouhalima
in the 1986 illegal-alien amnesty; once he had legal status,
he was able to travel to Afghanistan to get terrorist training,
which he used to lead the first World Trade Center bombing.
This isn't a detail that can be worked out later - dealing with
this must be at the center of any genuine effort to fix our immigration
mess.
No
provision for enforcing the new rules: The reason we're in this mess
is that immigration laws have not been enforced
in the past, and any effort to fix things has to address how
new rules are going to be enforced.
The president justified his proposal by implying that we have
succeeded in gaining control over immigration since 9-11. This
is clearly untrue. Though there have been some modest improvements
in immigration control since then, most of the needed reforms
haven't even been attempted.
Two examples:
Nothing whatsoever has been done to develop the "Chimera" system,
a vital tool that would provide real-time access to law enforcement,
immigration and intelligence information on every alien who seeks
admission to the United States. And only 13 - thirteen - companies
were fined for hiring illegals in 2002.
No
limits on numbers or wages: The small guest worker programs in current
law have various controls to try to ensure they don't
do more harm than good. The new White House plan, on the other
hand, would permit any employer in any industry to import any
number of workers and pay them any wage above the legal minimum.
This is so radical, and so potentially devastating to the middle
class, that it is clear no one even thought through the implications.
Birthright
citizenship: Under the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment,
all babies born in the United States are
American citizens, including those born to illegal aliens. The
president's proposal makes no mention of this, despite the fact
that the guest workers enrolled in the program it envisions,
both former illegals and new workers, would give birth to several
hundred thousand babies each year. Again, this is not a minor
detail, but a central point.
Workers
won't go home: It's been said "there's nothing
as permanent as a temporary worker." Every guest worker
program in human history has created large-scale permanent immigration,
but the White House seems unaware of this fact.
The president's proposal includes some hackneyed gimmicks intended
to encourage workers to return home, but they have all been tried
unsuccessfully before, as anyone with a modicum of curiosity
could have discovered.
Simply put, the president's advisers have not served him well
by presenting him with such an amateurish proposal. Congress
would be abdicating its responsibilities if it were to vote for
it.
copyright
2004 Center for Immigration Studies
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