Thread: The Great Immigration Non-Debate

June 18, 2013 8:32 PM
By Charles C. W. Cooke
nationalreview.com



About seven and a half months have passed since last November’s general election sent the Republican political elite into a tailspin and rendered inevitable an attempt at immigration reform. Now we sit on the cusp of a Senate vote. “We’ve got to move forward on this legislation,” Senate majority leader Harry Reid insisted on Tuesday. “This may not be one of our normal weekends.”

Still, Americans could be forgiven for thinking this has been one of our normal debates. The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S.744) is another omnibus piece of legislation that has been shoddily scrutinized. So good has been the Gang of Eight’s master class in misdirection that they may well manage to push a sweeping reform bill past the world’s greatest deliberative body without the people’s having had any meaningful debate on its most important provisions.

Our language, always critical to healthy political culture, is all over the place. “Immigrant” has been co-opted and turned into a proxy word for “Hispanic”; “immigration reform” has effectively come to mean “dealing with the southern border and legalizing illegal immigrants”; and, while the word “comprehensive” has been used openly, most of the bill has been ignored. Those familiar with S.744 will know that its thousand pages touch pretty much everything: employment-based immigration, family-based immigration, asylum seekers and refugees, per-country quotas, STEM, employment law — the lot. Yet all anyone seems to want to talk about is Mexico.

Besides the few journalists and advocates who have closely followed the deliberations, there has been almost no review of what is a serious reinvention of the legal immigration regime.

We relentlessly argue the merits and demerits of a “path to citizenship” for those who have broken in without our permission; we prattle ad nauseam about “border security” and its role as a “trigger” for “amnesty”; we constantly poll the same question.

Most of all, we argue the politics of the thing. News-watching Americans are treated to gossip about Marco Rubio and Chuck Schumer; they are shown profiles of people “living in the shadows”; they are asked to think about the 2016 election; and they are reminded that the president thinks that “the time is now.” The soon-to-be-revolutionized legal process by which one and a half million people per year will come into the country and live among us apparently merits no consideration.

In the Washington Examiner, Byron York cited a fascinating exchange between Senators Sessions and Schumer in which Schumer himself demonstrated the reflexive and instructive assumption that all immigrants to the United States are coming across our southern border, legally or illegally.

There was a striking moment in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s debate on the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill when Republican Jeff Sessions and Democrat Charles Schumer argued over the number of immigrants who would be allowed into the country under the new legislation.

Sessions cited reports suggesting the figure would be more than 20 million over the next decade in addition to the 11 million or so who are already in the United States illegally. Schumer took issue with that, although he wouldn’t name a figure of his own.

Then Schumer declared the whole dispute beside the point. “It is not that, ‘Oh, this bill is allowing many more people to come into this country than would have come,’” he said. “They are coming. They’re either coming under law or not under law.”

Given the incessant focus on “Hispanics,” I do not blame Americans who labor under the false impression that this is a bill designed solely to addresses the fate of illegal immigrants. Nevertheless, they should be made aware that it does an awful lot more than that. If S.744 becomes the law of the land, the United States will welcome around half a million more legal immigrants into the country annually than it does under current law. (This chart from the Center for American Progress is useful if you ignore the brazen lie about the likely effects of the border-security provisions.) That this hasn’t been subjected to hardier perlustration is astonishing.

Usually, I am an outspoken critic of democracy. Unless it is severely checked, majoritarianism carries with it the inherent and ineluctable flaw that voters may use their power to deprive their fellow citizens of their liberty and their property.

Immigration, however, is a virtuous exception to the rule. Immigrants do not have a “right” to live in the United States but are admitted only with the permission of the native polity. Which of our national issues could be more deserving of widespread public input than that of who is to join the country’s ranks? Why is it missing?

Serious questions proliferate. In its search for a compromise, the Gang of Eight has pretty much wiped away the current legal-immigration system and started over. Do Americans know how that system worked and what they are losing? More important, do they know what they are gaining in its stead, and with what they will likely be stuck for the next 30 or so years?

Do they want the total amount of immigration to increase significantly, as S.744 allows? What mixture of skilled and unskilled immigrants does the public consider appropriate for a nation with an unemployment problem and a dysfunctional welfare state? Is the bill right to abolish the green-card lottery, which grants permanent residency to a randomly chosen 50,000 people per year?

Is establishing a points regime for skilled immigrants — similar to the systems used by Britain, Australia, and Canada — a good thing?

The bill lifts country-specific limits on employment-based immigrant visas, which opens the door for new immigrant populations to be dominated by India and China. Is it a sensible thing for the United States to abandon its long-held policy goal of ensuring that the country is not asked to assimilate too many immigrants from one place at any given time? If so, what price “diversity”?

And do Americans know that, as the Immigration Policy Center notes, “family- or employment-based applicants whose applications have been pending five years or more under the current system will become eligible for a visa”? Or that the new system abolishes the “immigrant category for siblings of U.S. citizens,” and that “visas will no longer be available to married sons or daughters of U.S. citizens who are over 30 years of age”? Do they recognize that, even after these changes, family connections and not skills will still serve as the way in for the vast majority of immigrants?

We are told by advocates of amnesty that we must at least acknowledge that the Hispanic beneficiaries of S.744 are “already here.” This is indisputably true, so surely the more important demographic question is, “Who new will this bill let in, and does that suit us?”

As with most things, Americans have various responses to these questions. Still, they can answer them only if they are asked — and they have not been asked. Harry Reid had better rush his bill through before a national debate breaks out.

Charles C. W. Cooke is a staff writer at National Review.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...rles-c-w-cooke

Originally Posted by Jean

The bill lifts country-specific limits on employment-based immigrant visas, which opens the door for new immigrant populations to be dominated by India and China.

Last time I looked, both those countries had high barriers to entry. I guess they want to preserve their cultures and their jobs.
************************************************
Americans first in this magificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

LATEST NEWS ON IMMIGRATION DEBATE

• The Hill: Momentum shifts in Senate immigration debate
• The Hill: Senate awaits Corker-Hoeven language to proceed on immigration reform
• The Hill: Senators reach critical border security deal on immigration bill
• The Hill: Senate votes 54-43 to reject Cornyn plan for border security 'trigger'
• The Hill: Reid: ‘We can pass this bill before us’
• The Hill: Corker: Border security provisions in bill are ‘almost overkill’
• The Hill: Boehner gives ObamaCare immigration warning
• Reuters: U.S. border 'surge' would place agent every 1,000 feet
• The New York Times: Stealth campaign from the White House for an immigration bill


I have been watching these debates if you can call them that on cspan

Corker-Hoeven: Schumer’s Wimp Brigade Rides to the Rescue


By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary) | June 20th, 2013 at 06:42 AM

WIMP (wmp)
n.
A subatomic particle that has a large mass and interacts with other matter primarily through gravitation.
n. Informal.
1. a weak, ineffectual, timid person.
Political


Representing a state like North Dakota and scoring a 47% from Heritage Action while working overtime to save Democrats and pass a dying amnesty bill

Imagine if Democrats elected senators from blue states in the northeast who worked behind closed doors with Ted Cruz to craft national right to work legislation or a compromise plan to privatize Social Security? That’s about as likely as Lady Gaga joining the Family Research Council.
Yet, we continue to elect Republicans like John Hoeven who work behind the scenes to carry water for the progressives. They gravitate to one-sided compromises that sell out our Republic like flies on ethanol.
By now, you’re probably asking, John who?
Yes, Hoeven has been awfully quiet since being coronated in 2010. Aside for the occasional noise about the Keystone Pipeline, he doesn’t do much in the Senate…other than vote to raise the debt ceiling, fund Obamacare, implement an internet sales tax, support earmarks, increase food stamp spending, and vote for every subsidy under the sun.
Now he has taken it upon himself to serve as the less charismatic appendix to Bob Corker in saving Schumer’s dying amnesty bill. After being outspent exponentially in this fight by the insidious open borders lobby, the truth that We the People have disseminated on this issue is taking its toll on Schumer and his allies. Nobody in the House wants to touch this bill with a 10-foot pole, and the pathway to 60 votes is diminishing every day.
In come Corker and Hoeven to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and negotiate a poor-man’s Cornyn compromise with the Gang of 8. In their ineluctable desire to pass an amnesty bill with the requisite window dressing, the new wimp coalition is pushing yet another phony compromise. Yes, because constituents from states like Tennessee and North Dakota are flooding their offices with calls demanding “give us amnesty or give us death.” According to Politico, this deal would be a watered-down version of Cornyn’s amendment, which Erick already exposed as pathetic:

The emerging deal would soften Republican requests for a strict requirement that 90 percent of illegal border crossers be apprehended to hit a “trigger” toward a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, but would provide an unprecedented increase in border security funding and officers and a guarantee on finishing the fence along the Southern border, sources said.

They also say they will double the border patrol. But what good is more border agents if the administration ties their hands? Most importantly, all the triggers in this plan will occur after legalization. So somehow we are supposed to believe that they will actually implement these enforcement triggers after they already have their amnesty. Needless to say, Schumer calls their work “really productive.”
Folks, at some point we need to start gaming out red state Senate races far in advance in pursuit of a real Republican instead of reflexively thinking about picking up the state with just any R. It is that mentality – a lazy tendency to pick the first candidate with high name recognition months in advance – which has saddled us with a bunch of prairie progressives from the red states in the Great Plains.
This cycle we have opportunities to pick up seats in Nebraska and South Dakota (and maybe some other states nearby). We can easily settle for the candidates with the highest name ID without lifting a finger to change the dynamic like we did in Texas with Ted Cruz. We can easily support another progressive like Mike Rounds to run in South Dakota and have a John Hoeven clone in the Senate; another man who interacts with Schumer-matter primarily through gravitation to Democrat deal making. But what’s the purpose of electing a Republican who will use his party ID as leverage to allure fellow Republicans into the Schumer trap?
If these people can’t even stand strong on such a bedrock issue from a state where the people sympathize with our views, they can’t be trusted on anything.
It’s time to paint the Great Plains red.

http://www.redstate.com/2013/06/20/c...to-the-rescue/

Originally Posted by Jean

Given the incessant focus on “Hispanics,” I do not blame Americans who labor under the false impression that this is a bill designed solely to addresses the fate of illegal immigrants. Nevertheless, they should be made aware that it does an awful lot more than that.

IMO the proposed amnesty legislaltion makes the world - or at least the United States - safe for the super rich. People like George Soros and Mark Zuckenberg are principal funders. Zuckenberg is one of the new class of super rich who don't believe that they owe anything to the country which nurtured them and made their success possible. So they finance people who will flood the country with cheap labor - and even more significantly, undercut American sovereignty.
***************************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade