Our Broken System(s)

A bit over a year ago I had written a post on immigration reform where I mentioned the process relative to the Constitution of the Confederate States:

But it’s an interesting document to read on a historical level. With some seventy years of experiencing congressional shenanigans in Washington, the Confederates apparently learned a few lessons about restraining rabid lawmakers from from peeing in the porridge.

Article I, Section IX:20 reads:

“Every law, or resolution having the force of law, shall relate to but one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title. ”

Think of the possibilities if the Founders had thought of that!

As it relates to modern things, I was struck by Bush’s notion that immigration reform must be “comprehensive”, as he put it, to be effective. I protest that notion and summarily reject it. In fact, it’s exactly that thinking that gives us bad laws so filled with unnecessary compromises that it’s no wonder Americans don’t have much faith in government – especially Congress.

I still hold these beliefs.

I was struck this morning while watching Fox News Sunday when Michael Chertoff, head of DHS, was saying that the administration had tried “everything” to bring about immigration reform. He sighted last year’s failed attempt, this year’s and he had the obnoxious temerity to mention that even “enforcement only” had failed last year. This is beyond misleading. What did get passed last year was a bill to build a security fence which, under his grossly incompetent leadership, has hardly begun. Secondly, Bush has pressured lawmakers all along that the only cure is a “comprehensive” measure and anything short of that was unacceptable.

But coming from this debate is a host of ideas of which Congress and the administration will be remiss if they don’t bring to the floor immediately. On Friday the editors at NRO wrote this:

The next step ought to be President Bush’s. As divisive as this debate has been, it did reveal a consensus on the need to enforce current laws. The president should accept that consensus and act on it. If necessary, he should request additional authority and resources for the purpose.

Under current law, the border can be secured and the administration can crack down on scofflaw employers. Contractors can be required to enroll in the government’s employee-verification system as a condition of doing business with the federal government. The Social Security Administration identifies tens of thousands of W-2 forms with false or stolen Social Security numbers. The IRS can fine employers who file a significant number of such forms.

That, along with a few other recommendations they posit make a great deal of sense and I propose that both DHS and the IRS are failing their duties by not enforcing laws that are already on books. But that argument still lays flat inasmuch as there are other things that desperately need to be addressed.

Jonathan Rauch in Reason Magazine recently penned an article titled The 1.8 Million Solution where he makes this point:

The most basic decision any immigration bill needs to make is this: How many immigrants does the country need and want? Bizarrely, this was the one question that the debate over the Senate bill did not seem to concern itself with.

Rauch’s plan is thus:

* First, raise the number of legal immigrants by about 50 percent, to about 1.8 million a year. That meets the economy’s demonstrated demand for workers.

* Second, provide pathways to permanence. Bring in these 1.8 million people on temporary visas, say for three to five years, with the promise of permanent legal residency (a green card) if they stay out of trouble, pose no security risk, and work or get a college degree.

* Third, don’t micromanage who gets in. Allocate visas using a simple three-way formula that gives about equal weight to family, work, and education: 600,000 family visas for close relatives of citizens and green-card holders; 600,000 work visas for people who are sponsored by an employer and have less than a bachelor’s degree; 600,000 education visas for people who hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, with first call going to those who also have employer sponsorships or family ties.

[...]

What the bill would do is exchange less-skilled for more-skilled immigrants. Fair enough; improving the balance makes sense. Today’s immigration stream is tilted lopsidedly toward less-skilled workers. Most legal immigrants come in because they are relatives of people who are here; these family-based immigrants have less education, on average, than native-born Americans, and they may or may not work after they arrive. Illegal immigrants generally do work, but they are predominantly low-skilled.

Both, what NRO and Rauch express, are legitimate and ideas in need of more attention, but the articles, in and of themselves, show a dichotomy in the argument that is striking. NRO points out that big issue for most Americans is a combination of lawlessness and border security and avoid the economic question while Rauch avoids the security issue and focuses on the market. I agree with them both but think that equal weight needs to be given to their respective positions.

I suppose what is unsurprising is the penchant for party leaders to put politics over policy. I was really struck by Speaker-Nanny Granny Nan when she made this comment:

Today, Republicans in the Senate had an historic chance to act in the interests of the American people, but chose not to. Although the immigration bill before the Senate was far from perfect, it would have served as a starting point to address this critical issue for our nation.

During the entire process, newly elected Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate have been committed to fixing a problem that past Republican Congresses have ignored for years. The President had an obligation to the American people to persuade his fellow Republicans to pass a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill. Unfortunately, he was unable to do so.

Instead, Republicans in the Senate blocked a bill that attempted to fix our nation’s dysfunctional immigration system. In doing so, they have failed the American people.

This comment from a woman who, as a member of the Church of Democracy, never misses an opportunity to remind us of what the American people want should be made law. But according to Rasmussen this law had so little support that Speaker-Nanny Granny Nan failed, intentionally I presume, her own litmus test. According the Rasmussen:

Among the public, there is a bi-partisan lack of enthusiasm for the Senate bill. It is supported by 22% of Republicans, 23% of Democrats, and 22% of those not affiliated with either major party. It is opposed by 52% of Republicans, 50% of Democrats, and 48% of unaffiliateds.

From an ideological perspective, the bill is opposed by 59% of conservatives, 54% of liberals, and 45% of political moderates. Among those for whom none of the traditional ideological labels apply, just 20% are opposed.

Support is found from 20% of conservatives, 32% of liberals, and 18% of moderates.

Just 32% believe it would be better to pass the current bill instead of doing nothing. Forty-five percent (45%) believe it would be better to pass nothing at all.

If the current bill passed, 71% of American voters believe that another bill would be required to focus on securing the border and reducing illegal immigration. That’s up from 65% in our previous survey.

I suppose that it’s somewhat fair that she points to GOP members of the Senate as killers of the bill, but from the standpoint of public opinion I find it hard to make an argument that Democrats were serving their constituency in supporting it. And her shot at Bush for not being able to convince enough of his party to vote “Yea” for cloture is also disingenuous inasmuch as she has been working to erode Congressional support for Bush at all costs. As the saying goes; be careful what you wish for. On top of that it seems that Bush emptied his cache of political capital trying to get this ill-formed measure on the books. It seems to me she should be thanking him for trying and sincerely doing so as it has achieved her goal of continually weakening the president.

Mike Harris did a good job of fisking Matt Singer on his politically correct sadness at calling these people “illegal immigrants.” It humors me when some think that a euphemism will make a policy discussion better. After all, these “human beings” are both illegal and immigrants. Now if he has disdain for the term “wetbacks” I concur, but how soft does the language need to be before it departs from substance?

There was another comment he made that I take issue with as well:

And never mind that cracking down on the border and implementing punitive measures against immigrants has never worked to stop the flow of migration before. The mindset is simple: If it feels good to pass a bill, do it. And damn the actual consequences.

First, simply because the government has been ineffectual in the past doesn’t mean that the task is impossible. This argument is held up by liberals repeatedly defending continuations and enhancements of previously failed Great Society policies of the ’60’s. In the second case, the feel good penchant to “pass a bill” is no more pronounced on the pages of Left In The West as anywhere in the modern political discourse. Glean through posting there and you’ll find repeated calls to pass laws that appear to “feel good” to the progressive writers there.

The politics of this issue are indeed tricky. On the one hand, if GOP lawmakers can somehow bring to the floor a boarder security measure standing on its own I can’t see a way that it will not pass. The $4.4 billion in the last bill was almost universally endorsed by both sides of the isle and Democrats will find it tough telling their constituencies why it has to be linked to a “comprehensive” measure (Yes, the scare quotes are intentional.) At the same time, I can’t see a political reason for the discussion on immigration quota and classifications to be put off either. Congress has implicitly admitted that the current levels of quotas are too low and there have been no lack of discussion either on how arcane the process of gaining legal immigration status is that it should also be brought up.

Now, if we can somehow generate the level of activism amongst the voters to ensure that this does not get put off until after the ‘08 elections we can turn this discussion from, as neo-socialist David Sirota puts it, “political theater” to an actual debate. And given that this issue is second only to the war for the voters I propose that the initiative to immediately re-engage the parts of this bill than can get passed be started in the blogs.

This, then, is my opening salvo and I encourage everyone to take the advice of the Confederates. Each piece of this should be its own measure. By doing so perhaps the do-nothing Congress might actually be able to, indeed, do something.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 1st, 2007 at 10:17 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.