Friday, November 16, 2007
“just an attempt to, as they say on Wall Street, ‘put lipstick on that pig‘“
While waiting to see what, if any, public converstaion takes place on those border issues there’s another, somewhat related, conversation trying to take shape. In the Irish Times, campaigner Frank Sharry, executive director of the US National Immigration Forum, reckons it could take up to 10 years before US immigration reform “becomes viable to have it back at the table” - and not just because of contradictions between Ministers of State. From the Irish Times article [subs req]
Sharry believes that despite the tough measures contained in the Bill (undocumented migrants would have had to pay thousands of dollars in fines and would not have been eligible for permanent residence for eight years, for example), Republican opponents succeeded in portraying the proposal as an amnesty that would reward law-breakers. Democrats, themselves unsure about its feasibility, were half-hearted advocates. “So the combination meant the grand bargain that was negotiated in the backroom, when it went public, was something of an orphan.”
Frank Sharry is also sceptical of any proposed bilateral ‘special case’ agreement for Irish illegal immigrants, as suggested by Dermot Ahern previously.
While Sharry is supportive of the Government’s efforts to secure a bilateral agreement that would regularise the status of the undocumented Irish, he is not convinced it will succeed.
“I would be supportive of it, but I don’t see its viability, because people on the right will label it an amnesty and people on left will say, ‘how come these white immigrants are going to get status rather than many others?’”
Meanwhile inside the paper there’s an additional article [subs still], by Trina Vargo founder and president of the US-Ireland Alliance, who argues that “Irish-Americans trying to get a special deal only for Irish illegal migrants in the US are wrong.”
The US immigration system needs fixing, but it requires a comprehensive and united approach. The deportation of 12 million people is clearly not possible, and pragmatism favours efforts to create an earned path to citizenship for those in the US illegally. Sadly, that effort has been stalled.
But to support a special deal that would single out illegal Irish immigrants for preferential treatment would be morally wrong, could harm the US-Ireland relationship, damage the high regard in which Irish-Americans are held, and lead to a divisive debate in the US between the Hispanic community and the Irish-American community.
The Irish economy is strong, and a special deal is not justified on economic grounds. The majority of those attending the rallies for the illegal Irish immigrants are young people, people who came to the United States when jobs were plentiful at home.
These are not people who fled extreme economic hardship, political persecution, physical torture, or an undemocratic government. Jobs are so plentiful in Ireland that in recent years, Government officials have travelled to the US to urge the Irish to return home. It is to be celebrated that Ireland is now a country of wealth, prosperity and opportunity. Now one of the richest countries in the world, it is a not a place anyone has to leave.
Supporters of a special deal for the Irish say there is precedent, that this was done for Australia. What they neglect to point out is that those visas had nothing to do with illegal immigrants. They were about trade agreements and facilitating the movement of professionals to the US. They were temporary visas subject to stringent eligibility requirements. The visas were only available to those with specific professional skills and for specific jobs pursuant to trade agreements.
There is also talk of trying to mask a “special deal” by cloaking it in innocuous immigration provisions but this is just an attempt to, as they say on Wall Street, “put lipstick on that pig”.
Pete Baker @ 12:10 PM
What exactly, as a law-abiding citizen who doesn’t commit fraud or tax evasion, do I get out of this “grand compromise?”
Several million hard-working, tax-paying, legal workers.
Posted by on Nov 24, 2007 @ 07:12 PMSdB: “Several million hard-working, tax-paying, legal workers. “
Who benefits more from that transformation, the legalized worker or the American tax-payer? I would argue is isn’t the tax-payer, in so far as the damage, in the form of credit ratings, IRS hassles and the like are still extant—normalizing their status does nothing to correct the damage inflicted and the pathetically low fines will not go to the injured parties. Likewise, since their presence in the United States is an economic calculation that ignores legal considerations, unless the increase in pay received by legalizing their status exceeds the taxes that will be removed, what is their incentive to normalize their status?
Likewise, the US half of the problem is that businesses are addicted to illegal labor they can pay sub-par wages—how is legalizing the illegal immigrants going to fix that problem? In the same vein, it does nothing to “cure” Mexican poverty—they will simply maintain their monopolistic and oligarchic politics and export their poverty to the United States.
Lastly, the loss, in terms of the deformation of the social compact, the toleration of illegal behavior and the encouragement of the next wave of illegal immigrants, far outweighs the benefit.
Posted by on Nov 24, 2007 @ 07:51 PMDread, I thought I’d made clear the links, or “access”, to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal opinion pages are not for your benefit.
Cheers.
Posted by on Nov 24, 2007 @ 09:14 PMsusan: “Dread, I thought I’d made clear the links, or “access”, to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal opinion pages are not for your benefit. “
Given the breaking down of the NYT walled garden, I know that access there is not an issue.
The WSJ is hit or miss, although I understand that Murdoch is looking to break down the walled garden there as well.
That said, as I have pointed out, none of what you suggest on illegal immigration will cure the problem or change the dynamic—so why bother with it? Legalizing the illegals will do nothing to wean those businesses who want illegal labor off of it, nor will it correct / change Mexico’s policy of exporting it poverty to the United States to deal with. All you are doing is insulting those who go through the legal process and rewarding those who chose to break the law.
Now, should there be a guest worker program? Yes. But that should not be made available to those in the nation illegally. Nor should it be enacted before the government lives up to its obligations and enforces the laws regarding the border. Lastly, those municipalities and other entities who have been actively undermining enforcement of the law should be brought back into line. University systems offering in-state tuition should have access to Federal monies cut, those states offering sanctuary should have law enforcement monies cut, with those amounts cut re-purposed to that state’s INS / ICE offices, etc.
Posted by on Nov 25, 2007 @ 04:41 PMWhich legal immigrants am I insulting, Dread, the ones you refer to repeatedly in this thread as “anchor babies” or the ones you repeatedly refer to as “wetbacks”?
Shall we pause here so you can claim that I am being “politically correct” and that “wetbacks” is used exclusively to refer to illegal aliens entering the United States from Mexico? Go ahead, try. Slugger’s readership is sophisticated enough (translation—watched enough American cop shows and movies) to know the term “wetbacks” is often employed as a derogatory, racist term aimed at any and all Hispanics regardless of how many generations they’ve been in the US.
So, continuing on with our magic carpet tour of mainstream American editorial opinion, today we touch down in Washington, D.C. The lead editorial from yesterday’s Washington Post:
Decency on Immigration
Apart from John McCain, it’s hard to find that quality in the Republican presidential contest.
Saturday, November 24, 2007; Page A16THE SPEAKER was discussing the human face of illegal immigration. “People are continuing dying in the Sonoran desert, and it’s just a very sad thing to see,” he said. “One 3-year-old baby died, a 16-year-old girl with a rosary in her hand. There’s a side of this that grieves me terribly. These are God’s children. They’re not from another planet, and the whole thing . . . frankly, this whole issue saddens me a great deal.”
These statements were moving, but they would not have been especially remarkable except for the fact that the person speaking is a presidential candidate—a Republican presidential candidate, in fact—at a time when the campaign has taken a particularly toxic tone when it comes to the issue of immigration. In a meeting with Post editors and reporters the other day, Arizona Sen. John McCain described the toll that he believes his championing of comprehensive immigration reform took on his campaign. “It was the issue of immigration that hurt my campaign,” he said. “I have not encountered a domestic issue that has provoked the emotional response that this issue does with a lot of Americans.”
Indeed, even as Mr. McCain was speaking, his GOP rivals were busy turning an ugly immigration debate even uglier. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who said in 2005 he thought that the McCain-Kennedy comprehensive immigration approach was “sensible,” and former New York mayor
Rudolph W. Giuliani, who as mayor protected illegal immigrants from being reported to immigration authorities when they sought police protection or hospital care, competed to see who could sound toughest.“As governor, I opposed driver’s licenses for illegals, vetoed tuition breaks for illegals and combated sanctuary city policies by authorizing the state police to enforce federal immigration law,” Mr. Romney said in a statement. “As president, I will secure the border and reject sanctuary policies by cities, states or the federal government.”
The Giuliani campaign shot back, in a statement by communications director Katie Levinson: “On Governor Romney’s watch, the number of illegal immigrants in Massachusetts skyrocketed, aid to Massachusetts sanctuary cities went through the roof and Governor Romney even went so far as to hire illegals to work on his lawn.” Mr. Romney and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson have also taken shots at former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee for allowing the children of illegal immigrants in Arkansas to qualify for in-state tuition and academic scholarships if they graduated from high school there. As Mr. Huckabee told Fox News, “the basic concept, and I know this is still an anathema to some people, I don’t believe you punish the children for the crime and sins of the parents.”
Illegal immigration provokes strong emotions, understandably so. But it would behoove all the candidates to engage in a little less chest-thumping and speak with more of the decency and compassion that Mr. McCain exhibited.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/23/AR2007112301493.html
Posted by on Nov 25, 2007 @ 07:17 PM
