Posted on 04/05/2002 11:49:34 AM PST by Korth
For many years the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal has been waging a vigorous crusade in behalf of unlimited immigration. Over the last 40 years, though, opinion polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose an increase in the level of immigration — so the pro-immigration forces have sought to keep the issue off the political agenda. They have presented immigration as so economically desirable and politically inevitable that only innumerates, fools, and bigots could possibly oppose it; anyone who did so was promptly declared "out of the mainstream." Meanwhile, immigrants — legal and illegal — continued to flow in, unimpeded, at a rate of up to 1.5 million new entrants a year.
September 11 changed all that. Given that the hijackers were all immigrants, common sense suggested that this might indicate some failure of immigration law; legislation to tighten up border security was surely required.
That legislation duly arrived before the House of Representatives recently in the form of the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Bill. Most of it is uncontroversial and consists of measures most people regard as necessary to strengthen America's security against further terrorism — for instance, sharing information among intelligence agencies and tightening up our inadequate visa-screening practices. (No more visas for dead terrorists would be a start; over time, we could even insist on no more visas for live ones.) Yet this measure was stopped procedurally in the Senate (by Robert Byrd) because a provision that actually undermined security had been attached to it.
This provision — 245(i) of the immigration law — would allow immigrants, legal and illegal, who have employer or family sponsors to remain in the U.S. while they seek a "green card" rather than have to return to their homelands and apply for U.S. residency from there. More than 200,000 people are thought to be covered by this legislation. But its impact on immigration would be far greater than the raw numbers suggest, since every person who obtained resident alien status and in due course citizenship would then be entitled to bring in his family members. Indeed, President Bush supports 245(i) on the grounds that it represents "family values." That is true, of course, but the family-values argument cuts both ways: Existing law would reunite those immigrants with their families abroad. Yet what does either argument have to do with enhancing national security?
Let us therefore return to the main question: Why is 245(i) inconsistent with the remainder of the bill? The bill's entire rationale assumes — with vast justification — that the existing arrangements for border security and visa control are wholly inadequate. It is very likely therefore that those who entered the country under them include terrorists, criminals, and other undesirables. If we simply allow them to remain in the U.S. undisturbed while they seek permanent residency, we are undermining the tighter security the bill is supposed to advance. It would be much more consistent with the bill's intention to compel them to apply from abroad — where they would have to undergo a serious examination of their claims at a U.S. consulate.
Admittedly, not all aliens presumptively covered by 245(i) would obligingly depart if the bill were to pass without it. But we would then reasonably suspect that those who stayed calculated that they would not survive examination at the consulate. And on the face of it, that would be an additional reason for thinking that they should not be allowed to remain in the U.S. Such arguments, at any rate, persuaded the waverers: Despite strong support for 245(i) from the White House and the GOP House leadership, the majority of House Republicans voted against it. The House immigration-reform caucus, chaired by Colorado Republican Tom Tancredo, suddenly became a fashionable hangout. The GOP grassroots kept congressional phones ringing in opposition to the measure. Organizations such as the American Conservative Union, which have hitherto held themselves aloof from immigration issues, came down firmly against it. And Sen. Byrd, denouncing it as "lunacy," temporarily halted the train. Moreover, because 245(i) was widely seen as a stalking horse for the administration's plan for a wider immigration amnesty that would legalize the status of 3 million Mexican illegals, this had the makings of a larger political crisis, one that threatened to derail the bipartisan policy of virtually uncontrolled immigration.
At which the point the Wall Street Journal rode to the rescue, with editorials on March 18 and 28. Their apparent basic argument was that border security is essential, that the entire bill should therefore be supported enthusiastically, and finally that Byrd, along with Tancredo and other "anti-immigrant" Republicans, is to be condemned for standing in the way of enhancing national security by objecting to the 245(i) provision. Even as a basic argument, however, this sounds odd. The Journal has editorialized in favor of "open borders," and has never formally retracted this view; but from an "open borders" perspective, there is no particular need to enhance border security. If the Journal has now abandoned any sympathy for open borders and embraced border security wholesale, then it should logically want to close past security loopholes (and catch those who ran through them).
Of course, the Journal's main purpose in these two editorial statements was not to enhance border security at all, but to protect existing high levels of immigration against any impulse to reduce or restrict them following September 11. In that cause, it employed a series of arguments that would scarcely pass logical muster in a drunken brawl.
To begin with, it denounced Robert Byrd for delaying the enhancement of national security. Nothing wrong with attacking Byrd of course; it should be done regularly, preferably in song and verse as at the recent Gridiron Club dinner. But the Journal's attack risked giving the senator a good name. It asserted that he opposes the entire bill, even without the 245(i) provision, out of a desire for revenge — because the president blocked his proposal to add $20 billion in "pork" to a homeland-defense bill last year. In short order, the replies are: (a) Byrd now says he would support the bill without the extra provision — so call his bluff, if bluff it is; (b) Byrd's $20 billion for homeland defense may indeed have come from a notorious addict of "pork," but the Journal's concern for border security comes from a notorious addict of open borders — is that, too, insincere?; and (c) other Democrats, notably California senator Dianne Feinstein, have announced that they too will seek to block the border-security bill unless the counterproductive provision is removed.
So much for the philippic against Byrd himself. The Journal's second line of attack is to denounce conservatives for climbing "into bed with" Byrd. But on immigration in general, and on 245(i) in particular, the Journal itself is in bed with the AFL-CIO, ethnic-grievance lobbies such as La Raza and MALDEF, and the entire Democratic establishment headed by Sen. Tom Daschle and Rep. Dick Gephardt — indeed it has been in bed with them for so long that it must have stocked up on vast supplies of political Viagra. On both sides of the immigration argument, there are coalitions of unlikely bedfellows — which is not necessarily wicked; as Churchill remarked when he was similarly taxed, he never believed in inquiring into the motives of those who voted alongside him, as long as his own motives were decent.
A third argument is more subtle: It suggests that the 245(i) provision assists only legal immigrants. One editorial said that its beneficiaries had "entered the U.S. legally," and the other that "they entered the country legally and hold a visa that has either expired or is about to." In other words, they are in America illegally (or "about" to be). One of the most common methods of illegal immigration into the U.S. is to overstay a visa. Nor is this usually accidental or unpremeditated; many calculate that they will be able to escape the notice of the authorities and, in time, benefit from the amnesties that come down the pike every 15 years or so.
The Journal objects to calling 245(i) an amnesty, on the grounds that its beneficiaries have done nothing wrong. But overstaying a visa is a wrong and, if premeditated, a serious one from the standpoint of immigration law and border security. And to allow such illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S., effectively jumping ahead of law-abiding would-be immigrants in the entry line, because they have acquired an employer or a spouse during their sojourn, is a form of amnesty. Nor do amnesties benefit solely those immigrants of whom we might approve. As Michelle Malkin noted in a trenchant column, "at least one al-Qaeda-linked operative, convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot, obtained amnesty through a program intended for farm workers." How many terrorists might benefit from 245(i)? We don't know. How many Americans might not get jobs because 245(i) allows some genuinely hard-working immigrants to stay? Again, we don't know; maybe very few, if the rates of pay are low because the illegal immigrants can't really complain about them. But these doubts are surely reasons for cautious checking of potential fellow citizens and next-door neighbors rather than for welcoming them with open arms and porous borders, and then learning late in the day that they are not what they said on their application forms.
Of course, as immigration analyst Mark Krikorian has pointed out in these pages, any really serious checking of potential Americans can only be implemented when the INS (however reformed) has a lighter workload. And that would require a reduction in immigration, legal and illegal, to manageable (and, by happy coincidence, readily assimilable) numbers. What would it take for the Journal to accept that? An invasion of English-speaking editorial writers willing to work for starvation wages?
Bush should get serious about enforcing the voting rules on the books.
If you think the WSJ is a leftist rag, you are probably an $$$$$. The WSJ is for low taxes, small govt., free trade and was very tough on Clinton.
I don't understand why restricting immigration is liberal. If you look at the countries with the really tough immigration/emmigration laws, the ones that are most restrictive are socialist/communist and the ones with the least restrictive borders are the freeer societies. A free society is one that limits govt. power and that included the freedom to travel across the border.
yatta yatta yatta yatta
tousen kakujitsu
nihon daibyou
yannaru kurai kenkou da
Everybody say yattaa!
Historically, Jews have done best in multi-ethnic societies with lots of friction between groups. When the society is homogenous and united, it tends to focus on the Jew as "outsider."
Probably. These days nobody seems to give a rip about anything as long as they're not (seemingly)personally affected. Worse, they'll advocate policies detrimental to the US as long as it directly benefits them in the short term.
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