Call Their Bluff

It's getting a little boring, listening to the excuses of a pretentious party making excuses for not wanting to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill. The 14 Senate Republicans had to have a $30 billion border enforcement sweetener thrown in before they dared to vote yes. Let’s move on Democrats, quit cowering and settling for a less than acceptable bill. The chickens will come home to roost.

If you’ve been around national politics awhile, you know it’s John McCain and Chuck Schumer calling the shots and with a wink and nod, allowing Marco Rubio to take the praise and the shots as if he is the man in charge. The White House has a lot of input but they are being told to stay in the shadows until President Obama gets to sign the bill. President George W. Bush made another passionate plea to his party to fix the broken immigration policy but it fell on deaf ears as it did when he was still the president. At least the House GOP is being true to their beliefs, even if it’s not in the best interest of the national party.

There’s a new  GOP strategy to pursue the 5 million white voters who sat out in 2012, rather than give up their core principles. That strategy assumes that over 90% of those white voters will vote for them and that the party will not lose the coalition they have. That’s a flawed plan. If white women make up at least 50% of those white voters who stayed home; the GOP’s current female health policies will continue to drive that group away. Giving up on any group means that you have no confidence that your policies are good enough to overcome any differences you might have.

People like John Price and others think the illegal immigration issue is about speaking English, calling the aliens criminals, and public assistance, so that leaves no room for reasoning and the same goes for the open borders crowd. We will always have a racist and unreasonableness component to the issue. People on both sides of the issue know it’s about amnesty or de-facto amnesty; whatever you want to call it. What are we going to do about the 11 million people who are here illegally?

I read a good post the other day describing the steps he had to go through prior to applying for citizenship. I understood why he didn’t think it was fair for anyone to go ahead of the line without going through the same procures that he did. I do think the poster went a little too far by equating entering this country illegally (misdemeanor) to murders and rapists. We have degrees of criminality and the circumstances are very different.

Just by going on what I’ve heard through the years, either in conversation, or listening to others (TV, friends, etc.); we to have two trains of thought about the path to citizenship. The Dreamers want immediate citizenship since they were brought to this country at a very early age. The laborers, entrepreneurs and others want legal status, because they don’t have to live in the shadows anymore. The laborers know that they will never be able to afford the penalty, pay enough back taxes, so legal status(work visas) would be great with them because they eventually want to return to their home country.

Why is entering the United States illegally different from other crimes? The answer is; intent and demand. The majority of the people entering our southern border have been enticed by broken immigration system and willing employers but that does not excuse the breaking of laws. The immigrants were willing to work for subpar wages and under subhuman conditions because it’s better than what they had, so it was a win- win situation for the employer and illegal immigrant and that satisfied the demand and intent.

Today, we have 11 to 12,000,000 people who either overstayed their visas or entered this country illegally, and that’s unsustainable for obvious reasons. We can militarize the border, implement E-Verify, build a 2000-mile fence, but we’re still left with the question of want to do with the undocumented immigrants. If you say deport them all, then tell me how you plan to do that and how much it would cost? Imagine that you have twelve bees in your house (and I’m not equating bees to the immigrants) so  you seal up your doors and windows but guess what? The GOP wants attrition to solve the problem but that’s never shown signs of working.

I understand the argument of not rewarding law-breaking but I also know that sometimes we have to make exceptions like the plea-barging agreements we make with criminals on a daily basis.

You can’t tell me that employers do not know (for the most part) who they are hiring. Small construction companies, packing companies, and restaurants are all supposed to verify Social Security numbers with the state but the agency says they do not. A lot of immigrants are paid in cash to avoid the documentation and it provides a bigger profit for the company. With all the sequester moves, the government cannot possibly keep up with their audits. I bet if I could make a trip around Victoria (good VA article for a young reporter) and asked to see the Immigration -9 (I-9) form, many employers would not know of its requirement and those that did would not have one. The I-9 form requires the employer to get two forms of ID from the new employee, complete with address, phone number and other relevant information.

A comprehensive immigration bill would put a lot of private immigration detention prisons out of business, and it would force companies to comply with our labor laws. I think the eventual documentation of those who are here illegally will be its greatest value.

I haven’t found a good argument to counter those who say “giving amnesty will only encourage more illegal entries.” But then again, I know that we don’t live in a perfect world.

I have a lot more but it’s almost time for my grueling torn rotator cuff therapy.. 

.