First Close The Borders!

[Annie]

Getting it right:



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy.../AR2006040601380.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

First a Wall -- Then Amnesty

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, April 7, 2006; A19

Every sensible immigration policy has two objectives: (1) to regain control of our borders so that it is we who decide who enters and (2) to find a way to normalize and legalize the situation of the 11 million illegals among us.

Start with the second. No one of good will wants to see these 11 million suffer. But the obvious problem is that legalization creates an enormous incentive for new illegals to come.

We say, of course, that this will be the very last, very final, never-again, we're-not-kidding-this-time amnesty. The problem is that we say exactly the same thing with every new reform. And everyone knows it's phony.

What do you think was said in 1986 when we passed the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration reform? It turned into the largest legalization program in American history -- nearly 3 million people got permanent residency. And we are now back at it again with 11 million more illegals in our midst.

How can it be otherwise? We already have a river of people coming every day knowing they're going to be illegal and perhaps even exploited. They come nonetheless. The newest amnesty -- the "earned legalization" being dangled in front of them by proposed Senate legislation -- can only increase the flow.

Those who think employer sanctions will control immigration are dreaming. Employer sanctions were the heart of Simpson-Mazzoli. They are not only useless; they are pernicious. They turn employers into enforcers of border control. That is the job of government, not landscapers.

The irony of this whole debate, which is bitterly splitting the country along partisan, geographic and ethnic lines, is that there is a silver bullet that would not just solve the problem but also create a national consensus behind it.

My proposition is this: A vast number of Americans who oppose legalization and fear new waves of immigration would change their minds if we could radically reduce new -- i.e., future -- illegal immigration.

Forget employer sanctions. Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won't do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put in cameras. Put in sensors. Put out lots of patrols.

Can't be done? Israel's border fence has been extraordinarily successful in keeping out potential infiltrators who are far more determined than mere immigrants. Nor have very many North Koreans crossed into South Korea in the past 50 years.

Of course it will be ugly. So are the concrete barriers to keep truck bombs from driving into the White House. But sometimes necessity trumps aesthetics. And don't tell me that this is our Berlin Wall. When you build a wall to keep people in, that's a prison. When you build a wall to keep people out, that's an expression of sovereignty. The fence around your house is a perfectly legitimate expression of your desire to control who comes into your house to eat, sleep and use the facilities. It imprisons no one.

Of course, no barrier will be foolproof. But it doesn't have to be. It simply has to reduce the river of illegals to a manageable trickle. Once we can do that, everything becomes possible -- most especially, humanizing the situation of our 11 million illegals.

If the government can demonstrate that it can control future immigration, there will be infinitely less resistance to dealing generously with the residual population of past immigration. And, as Mickey Kaus and others have suggested, that may require that the two provisions be sequenced. First, radical border control by physical means. Then, shortly thereafter, radical legalization of those already here. To achieve national consensus on legalization, we will need a short lag time between the two provisions, perhaps a year or two, to demonstrate to the skeptics that the current wave of illegals is indeed the last.

This is no time for mushy compromise. A solution requires two acts of national will: the ugly act of putting up a fence and the supremely generous act of absorbing as ultimately full citizens those who broke our laws to come to America.

This is not a compromise meant to appease both sides without achieving anything. It is not some piece of hybrid legislation that arbitrarily divides illegals into those with five-year-old "roots" in America and those without, or some such mischief-making nonsense.

This is full amnesty (earned with back taxes and learning English and the like) with full border control. If we do it right, not only will we solve the problem, we will get it done as one nation.

 

[Annie]

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/62017.htm

HIDDEN BOMBS

By KRIS W. KOBACH

April 7, 2006 -- IMMIGRATION-BILL SURPRISES
HOW do you slip legislative poison past a U.S. senator? Bury it on page 302 of a bill.

The Senate's Democratic and Republican leaders yesterday announced a compromise on an immigration bill - with some details still to be worked out. But details that may continue from the bill passed out of the Judiciary Committee should definitely be deal-breakers.

Like that surprise hidden on page 302 - which would replace the country's entire bench of experienced immigration judges with pro-immigration advocates.

With a few exceptions, today's immigration judges (who serve for life) are dedicated to enforcing the law, and they do a difficult job well. This bill forces all immigration judges to step down after serving seven years - and restricts replacements to attorneys with at least five years' experience practicing immigration law.

Virtually the only lawyers who'll meet that requirement are attorneys who represent aliens in the immigration courts - who tend to be some of the nation's most liberal lawyers, and who are certainly unlikely as a class to be fond of enforcing immigration laws.

It gets worse. Immigration judges are now appointed by the attorney general - whose job it is to see to it that laws are enforced. The Senate bill gives that power to a separate bureaucrat, albeit one directly appointed by the president, making immigration courts more susceptible to leftward polarization.

The second nasty surprise? Just before the committee approved the bill on the evening of March 27, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) offered the "DREAM Act" as an amendment. It passed on a voice vote.

The DREAM Act is a nightmare. It repeals a 1996 law that prohibits state universities from offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens. The principle, of course, is that no illegal alien should be entitled to receive a taxpayer-subsidized benefit that out-of-state U.S. citizens can't get. But the committee's bill allows illegals to be treated better than those U.S. citizens on tuition.

The bill also gives an amnesty to the nine states (including New York) that have been flouting the '96 law, two of which (California and Kansas) are now facing lawsuits (I'm a counsel to the plaintiffs in both cases).

The third nasty surprise lies in what the bill fails to do. The measure envisions a massive amnesty for illegal aliens now in the country - but doesn't give the Citizenship and Immigration Service (CIS) the personnel or infrastructure to implement the amnesty.

In March, the General Accounting Office (GAO) issued a scathing report on the CIS's inability to effectively detect immigration fraud.

The last time we enacted a major amnesty, in 1986, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (the CIS's predecessor agency) processed some 3 million amnesty applications from illegal aliens. It found 398,000 cases of fraud - and missed thousands more. Now CIS may have to implement an amnesty four times larger.

Yet CIS already faces a backlog of several million applications for immigration benefits. And the GAO found that CIS managers pressure staff into "meeting production goals" by approving applications quickly - which means that fraud goes undetected. Adding millions of amnesty applications can only make things worse. And the latest Senate "compromise" - giving immediate amnesty only to aliens who've been in the country for five years or more - makes the process even more complex and fraud-prone, as illegals use fake documents to "prove" long-term residence.

In 1986, the terrorist Mahmud "The Red" Abouhalima fraudulently got amnesty as a seasonal agricultural worker (in fact, he was a New York cabbie). That status allowed him to travel to Afghanistan for terrorist training - which he later used as one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.

Terrorists know how to game the system. Janice Kephart, former counsel to the 9/11 Commission, released a study last year on how easily terrorists obtain immigration benefits. Of 94 alien terrorists in the United States, she found that 59 were successful immigration frauds. That includes six of the 9/11 hijackers.

The Senate bill does nothing to address this problem - while throwing a massive new load on the bureaucracy. A new amnesty will almost certainly ensure that more terrorists gain the legal right to walk our streets.

They will no doubt show their appreciation by attacking innocent Americans. And that will be the nastiest surprise of all.

Kris W. Kobach, a professor of law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, served as counsel to the U.S. Attorney General, 2001-'03. He was the attorney general's chief adviser on immigration law.