If Uncontrolled Illegal Immigration Is A National Security Threat, Can We Now Do Something About It, Please?

During the debate over the amnesty bill, the pro-amnesty champions often echoed the complaints of conservatives. Illegal immigration without controls results in us not knowing who's here in America (they're in the shadows!) Uncontrolled immigration diverts precious law enforcement resources from tracking "terrorists and drug-dealers" to hounding "landscapers." Etc.

Well -- it seems we're all in agreement about that! That being the case, will the Administration and open-borders forces now unite to begin enforcing current immigration laws, finally getting that employment verification system up and running, punishing employers who hire illegals, finally fixing the visa computer system so that we can track who's here illegally and who's overstaying their visas, and -- dare to dream -- putting additional border agents and a fence to help lighten the patrolling load on the border?

Or was all that national security talk just a lot of crap to sell the amnesty?

Bush, McCain, Chertoff, Graham and even Teddy Kennedy have made representations to us about the national security threat uncontrolled immigration poses. Having made the case, they are duty-bound now to actually address it. They cannot claim one week that uncontrolled immigration jeopardizes this country's security and the next week take the position that America can only address this issue so long as agri-business and the open-borders lobby are getting paid off with guest-worker programs and amnesty for 15+ million. Either it's a threat, or it's not -- and if it is, it has to be addressed, whether or not special interests are getting paid off in the deal.

This isn't politically impossible. Byron Dorgan, as liberal a Democrat as one could wish, expressed a desire for enforcement-first as the solution -- at least a first-step solution -- to the problem. Liberals like him are animated by pro-union, pro-wage-inflation sentiments, but so what? They're more reliable votes for enforcement-first than most Republicans. Dorgan seems to want to control the border just to control the border (and thus reduce the unending influx of cheap labor), which puts him, oddly enough, on the non-WSJ conservative, sovereignist side of the table. There are enough Democrats like him to garner a majority, or even sixty votes, for enforcement-first measures, when combined with a unified or near-unified block of Republican voters. (Okay, we'll lose Specter, Hagel, McCain, and Graham -- the usual assholes.)

Various improvements for border security either garnered majority support in the Senate or -- this is the larger category -- would have garnered majority support had the amnesty bloc not been so determined to beat down any amendment to the bill. Even common-sense why-aren't-they-doing-that-now? provisions -- like Coburn's proposal we actually enforce the law as written -- were beaten back by the amnesty-bill block, but almost certainly would pass if offered as stand-alone provisions.

How delicious will the campaign commercials be if Congressmen continue voting against actually enforcing the law as written? Few Congressmen, and fewer statewide-elected Senators, have such job security that they can afford to do so. So let's take Senator Lott's advice and start voting, start legislating.

Are we men and women, Mr. Lott, or merely mice?

Bush, McCain, Graham, and Kennedy -- and Kyl, and Lugar, and Lott, and all the rest -- have told us repeatedly that "doing nothing" is "not an option."

Good. It seems we have a consensus. Doing nothing is not an option. So let's do something -- first, improve security beyond laughably-inadequate status.

Then we can actually begin having a discussion about amnesty and guest workers.

posted by Ace at 01:21 PM

| Access Comments