Mark Krikorian's response to well-known amnesty shill Richard Nadler. Part of a debate in the NRO:
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National Review Online
the corner
Friday, May 22, 2009

An Imaginative Evasion [Mark Krikorian]

Richard: You didn't answer my question, choosing instead to answer another. I'll respond to your question in my next post, but first, I asked "Why would anyone fall for the claim that the government is finally serious about enforcement (and thus can be trusted with an amnesty) until programs like the jail checks (and E-Verify and US-Visit, etc.) are actually up and running, institutionalized and functioning?" Your allies on immigration — Bush, McCain, Obama, Schumer, as well as the lefty advocacy groups — all understand that this lack of credibility was the core reason for the failure of amnesty in 2006 and 2007.

If W had started enforcing the immigration laws vigorously in January 2001, he might well have prevailed on amnesty, regardless of my views on the subject. After the 2007 train wreck (which genuinely shocked him), he finally understood this, and finally began to permit the immigration service to start doing its job. McCain made the same point during the campaign. President Obama, in his 100 Days press conference, likewise:

If the American people don't feel like you can secure the borders, then it's hard to strike a deal that would get people out of the shadows and on a pathway to citizenship who are already here, because the attitude of the average American is going to be, well, you're just going to have hundreds of thousands of more coming in each year.
But there's a long and disreputable track record of supposedly tough measures being gutted at the funding and implementation stage, from IRCA's employer sanctions to SEVIS (tracking foreign students) to US-Visit (check-in/check-out at the border) to the "virtual" fence and more. That's why the burden is on amnesty supporters and the government — the legislature, executive, and judiciary — to demonstrate that they're not lying this time, that enforcement measures are actually in place and functioning, before any talk of amnesty is appropriate.

05/22 12:40 PM

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