Results 1 to 4 of 4
Like Tree7Likes

Thread: No ‘Comprehensive’ Immigration Reform Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/ar

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

  1. #1
    MW
    MW is offline
    Senior Member MW's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    North Carolina
    Posts
    25,717

    No ‘Comprehensive’ Immigration Reform Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/ar

    No ‘Comprehensive’ Immigration Reform

    by KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON August 6, 2017 4:00 AM

    GOP should focus on illegal immigration first.

    Conservative efforts at health-care reform are, for the moment, a shambles. Conservative efforts at tax reform are foundering as well, though their prospects may be sunnier, given the habitual Republican appetite for tax cuts of almost any description, including irresponsible ones.


    Both the tax-reform project and the health-care project have run into trouble because of a lack of intellectual and political leadership: Washington’s sock drawers are stuffed full of conservative proposals to rationalize taxes and to nudge health care in a more market-oriented direction, but herding those congressional cats — and conservative activists, think-tankers, PACs and super PACs, aspiring presidents, etc. — in the same direction requires real political leadership. That is made difficult by the fact that the loudest conservative voices — the talking mouths of cable news and the talk-radio ranters — have a very heavy financial incentive to be dissatisfied, or at least to pronounce themselves dissatisfied, with whatever it is that Republican congressional leaders decide to support, while the president himself, who has decided that railing against Congress will be his substitute for leading them in his direction, has similar incentives.

    If these two issues are any indicator, then the Trump administration’s keystone issue — immigration reform — is on a course to end up wrecked upon the same rocky shoals.

    Can that be prevented?


    The Republican party is at odds with itself over what it actually wants out of an immigration policy. One the one hand, libertarian-leading Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce crowd think that the case for free trade is also the case, more or less, for free immigration, that the free flow of goods and capital across borders ought to be complemented by the free flow of labor. The “open borders” Republican is mainly a straw man deployed by the talk-radio gang: Advocates of a genuine open-borders policy of the sort that Great Britain maintained in the 19th century, when immigrants could show up in London without so much as proof of identity (much less a visa), are scarce. But there are a fair number of Republicans who prefer relatively high levels of immigration, including relatively high numbers of low-skilled immigrant workers from Latin America.

    Opposing them are more restrictionist populist-nationalist Republicans, some of them in the Trump mold and some of them intelligent and responsible. These include those who see the world the way my colleague Mark Krikorian does, believing that current levels of immigration are bad for domestic workers, especially low-wage workers, and that recent immigrants have placed undue burdens on domestic institutions, especially the social-welfare and criminal-justice systems. They want lower immigration across the board, not only a crackdown on illegal immigration but also a significant reduction in legal immigration.

    Can these differences be resolved in such a way as to allow the emergence of a unified Republicans approach to immigration?

    Yes. And not only that: Democrats can be brought on board, too.

    Democrats, in reaction to Trump, are at the moment moving rhetorically in a more liberal direction on immigration. But that is not where the Democratic base is right now, especially in the Rust Belt and the Midwest. At Bernie Sanders rallies I attended in Iowa during the primaries, union-hall Democrats offered up many an earful about the need for immigration control, and Senator Sanders himself denounced the Republican view of immigration as an “open borders” scheme hatched by right-wing billionaires looking to undermine the economic position of the American working class. Many of those voters no doubt cross the aisle for Donald Trump in places such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Democrats cannot afford to lose those voters permanently, and they know as much.

    So, where to begin?

    Begin by cordoning off the issue of illegal immigration.

    With the exception of a few oddballs and ideologues, we can all agree that whatever our national immigration policy ends up being, it must be conducted in an orderly and lawful fashion. That means that getting control of illegal immigration needs to be the first order of business. Happily, that is something we can do without waiting years or decades to build new walls that will, in the end, address the problem only partially. (Most illegals do not wade across the Rio Grande; they enter legally on visas and then violate them.) Through workplace enforcement (mandatory use of the E-Verify system) and modest financial controls (making it hard to cash a check or pay remittances without proof of legal status) we can greatly reduce the economic attraction of illegal immigration to the United States. (Border walls, properly understood, are not about illegal roofers and avocado-pickers: They are about terrorists and their instruments.) Jeff Sessions could do a great deal to advance this if he happened to haul in a few poultry-plant bosses or general contractors for employing illegals. There is no shortage of cases from which to choose.


    Republicans should pursue this first and in legislative quarantine from other immigration reforms: It emphatically should not be part of a “comprehensive” immigration-reform package. Illegal immigration is — focus, now — illegal. We can take positive steps to control this problem right now, in a relatively straightforward fashion at relatively low cost. If our more libertarian-leaning friends are correct (I’d bet against them here) and the nation’s agricultural industry is hamstrung by a lack of workers — if the United States should decide that it has a shortage of poor people with few professional skills — then that problem can be addressed in the future fairly easily. If what happens instead is that the price of tomatoes and landscaping labor goes up a little bit, then the republic shall endure.

    There are many good and useful proposals for immigration, such as replacing family-oriented chain migration with a policy oriented more toward the economic needs and economic interests of the United States. President Trump’s “radical” proposal would reduce immigration to levels not seen since . . . the 1980s, which is to say, to a few hundred thousand immigrants per year rather than the million or million-plus of recent years. A period of relatively low immigration might help in the projection of assimilation, which currently is producing mixed results. My own preference is for an economically oriented policy that, callous as it may sound, is approximately Cato for rich people and Krikorian for poor ones: Bring on the highly educated and affluent, the doctors and investors and entrepreneurs, and maybe take a pass on the 13 millionth day-laborer.

    That’s a debate worth having. Indeed, the failures of Republican health-care and tax-reform efforts suggest very strongly that we need to have more of those debates in order to forge some kind of politically viable consensus behind conservative policy projects. But we do not have to do everything at once. Addressing illegal immigration is something we can do right now, something that Republicans and (most) Democrats can get behind — and should get behind.


    Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...-anything-else

    "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" ** Edmund Burke**

    Support our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & Amnesty by joining our E-mail Alerts athttps://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  2. #2
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Posts
    7,377
    Do we need any more people?

    Why?

    Aren't we capable of educating doctors, and other professionals. I seem to remember a time when we could.

    Why suddenly have people decided that Americans are helpless, stupid, can't be educated and others must come to our rescue.

    Our country is spending a ton of money educating children of illegals and immigrants - why aren't children of Americans being educated first?



    Let's send illegals home,complete with anchor babies, grandparents, etc,

    make sure refugees are really refugees and are temporary,

    deport any legal immigrant who has broken the law and that includes scamming the welfare system,

    put a halt to legal immigration for a few years

    and see if the reduction in population is so great, we would not need so many doctors, teachers, houses.

    Think of the strain on our infrastructure this sudden influx of people has caused. Wouldn't this relieve some of that strain and give us time and money to repair what is needed?

    Remember when they talk about all the workers we 'need' for something - these workers cause a 'need' as well.

    If companies were not making monies off illegals and not just employing them, but selling to them - they wouldn't want them here either.

    The agriculture industry, for example, makes a lot of money for employing them - no taxes to match, no health insurance, no responsibility (taxpayers have the responsibility) - THEN - they make a lot of money because their food products get purchased for the illegals by taxpayers in the form of food stamps, school lunches, etc.

    There are layers upon layers to this problem. Politicians - both parties seem to want to present just one side -

  3. #3
    Moderator Beezer's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2016
    Posts
    30,909
    Defund refugees, illegal aliens and asylum leeches.

    One way to SLOW it down and stop it.

    No taxpayer money.

    Immediately CUT OFF the One Billion to Churches facilitating their Human Trafficking and dumping people in our neighborhoods. The Churches can go help them on their soil...with their TAX EXEMPT money they save.
    ILLEGAL ALIENS HAVE "BROKEN" OUR IMMIGRATION SYSTEM

    DO NOT REWARD THEM - DEPORT THEM ALL

  4. #4
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    55,883
    I agree that there is so much room for common ground on stopping illegal immigration that this should be a number one priority, but I am also pleased to see some good legislative action by Republicans, several good bills are introduced and the RAISE ACT among them also addresses excess legal immigration, so I could not be more pleased right now with the DOJ, Trump and even Republicans in Congress working many angles and avenues to fix as much of this massive immigration problem, both illegal and legal, this session. But I also think we can do several things at once, and we must repeal the mandates of Obamacare, pass the repeal of McCarran-Ferguson, and pass the tax cuts as soon as possible.
    A Nation Without Borders Is Not A Nation - Ronald Reagan
    Save America, Deport Congress! - Judy

    Support our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & Amnesty by joining our E-mail Alerts at https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

Similar Threads

  1. The Book-Burners
    By Newmexican in forum General Discussion
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 10-22-2016, 12:41 AM
  2. Gutierrez: 40-50 House GOP will back reform of immigration (Video) Read more: http:/
    By HAPPY2BME in forum illegal immigration News Stories & Reports
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 08-09-2013, 06:24 PM
  3. Immigration reform 2013: GOP leaders say House must act Read more: http://www.politi
    By ALIPAC in forum illegal immigration News Stories & Reports
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 07-10-2013, 10:27 PM
  4. McCain to GOP: Accept path to citizenship in immigration-reform bill Read more: http
    By Buzzm1 in forum illegal immigration News Stories & Reports
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 01-27-2013, 04:59 PM
  5. Replies: 0
    Last Post: 06-08-2012, 01:51 PM

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •