Jeb!: Look, I'm Going To Do Amnesty But I Will At Least Talk About Border Security

You can read his 6 point border security plan here. It's all the stuff we've been hearing for decades (A mandate for a biometric entry/exit system has been on the books since 1996 and has never been created)

Here's the key bit from Jeb.

These six proposals, when combined with a rigorous path to earned legal status, would realistically and honestly address the status of the 11 million people here illegally today and protect against future illegal immigration. While passions run high on this issue, there is no rational plan to deport millions of people that the American people would support. It would disrupt communities and families and could cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

I tend to agree that there's no real support for a "plan to deport millions of people", though there might be in the future. That doesn't mean that we have to have amnesty. It also doesn't mean that you can't deport those you find through the criminal justice system, work place enforcement investigations and raids, etc.

The real questions for Jeb! are what's the content of this "rigorous" process for legalization (he's pretending he's not for a path to citizenship here so let's humor him) and the sequencing of events?

As we see with all the broken enforcement and security measures a plan that simply consists of legislative promises to increase security/enforcement in exchange for immediate legalization should be a non-starter. We'll get the amnesty (and Yes, It's Amnesty) and the enforcement will slowly fade from memory.

If Jeb! is serious about this he needs to make it clear that the only plan he will support consists of security and enforcement measures that are proven to be in place and working for some number of years (3-5 seems reasonable) not just written down on some piece of paper somewhere and filed away never to be seen again. Only after that can we even begin to talk about legalization.

So no you're never going to "hunt them down and round them all up" (which is a strawman) but you can certainly deport those you do find while making it harder and less attractive to be here illegally. That should reduce the number pretty substantially before any amnesty talk.

Personally, I'm not holding my breath.

posted by DrewM. at 11:48 AM

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