The Bill Is Dead--May It Rest In Peace

I just read at Instapundit that the "immigration bill" is dead, having failed to gain enough votes to limit debate and move on. I for one am glad. They need to deal with sealing the border. It's hard to approach the "undocumented worker" issue with compassion, when any action taken toward legal status for people who've already come across illegally, without closing the border to further illegal entry, is a clear invitation to folks still on the other side to trek on over without going through the proper channels, because our government has no intention of doing anything to stop them. Don't get me wrong; I'm all for immigration. (Contrary to popular belief, not everyone who wants to control the borders is racist and anti-immigration. Most of us just want people to come here through official channels and out in the open, rather than flouting our laws at the very first opportunity, and then slinking around under the radar.) By all means, the political types should up the quota of people who can come here legally if we need more workers--that's a mutually beneficial arrangement--but the key word there is legally.

As far as the people who are already here, if the politicians still want to legalize the people that came in unsanctioned--while I would argue that a $1,000 fine won't cut it when the people who come here legally pay far more than that for the privilege, in money, time and trouble--I'm guessing that the American people would be a whole lot more amenable to Senatorial amnesty suggestions if they knew the illegal well had run dry. Once the borders are secured, it will be a whole lot easier for Washington to sell the notion of amnesty (let's be honest here), because people won't assume that this is just the first batch with more to come, as the amnesty of the 80s has turned out to be.

What they will never be able to sell me, however, is the notion of the illegals as the victims in this scenario. I almost choked at AP reporter Charles Babington's quote from Ted Kennedy, as Senator Kennedy lamented the failure of the much-protested immigration bill to move forward. Senator Dole gets it here, but Kennedy is somewhere in la-la land:

Sen. Elizabeth H. Dole, R-N.C., said many Americans "don't have confidence" that borders, especially with Mexico, will be significantly tightened. "It's not just promises but proof that the American people want," Dole said.

But the bill's backers said border security and accommodations to illegal immigrants must go hand in hand.

"Year after year, we've had the broken borders," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. "Year after year, we've seen the exploitation of workers."

Good grief. Kennedy makes it sound as if the broken borders were somehow a trap that snared poor unsuspecting Mexicans here into unwilling indentured servitude. I'm sorry, Senator, but those "workers" have been scuttling across our borders in droves to take advantage of jobs and wages they can't get at home, and "free" health care, and education and American citizenship for their children. That raises the question of exactly who is being exploited, don't you think? It wouldn't take a big leap to conclude that the real exploitation that Kennedy is contemplating is the electoral exploitation of all those registered, unionized Democrats he hopes to gain by legalizing these "undocumented immigrants."

Anyway, the bill is seemingly dead, and I hope it stays dead, until it can be considered from the American side of a nice tall fence.

Update: Rich Lowry has a look at the blogosphere and the power of the people that turned this bad bill off.

Border Opinions

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed today, Pete du Pont, former governor of Delaware, has an interesting analysis of the immigration bill which may find its way back into Senate debate this week. I agreed with a lot of what he had to say. How about you?

A Good Neighbor Fence

There's a rather interesting look at the political trend toward a fence on our border with Mexico, by Rich Lowry, at Townhall.com. It seems the fence idea is gaining momentum and, potentially, funding, from Washington. Both the House and Senate have now passed legislation authorizing several hundred miles of barrier. (Now the two sets of legislation have to be reconciled, which still could take a while.) The mere concept of a fence faced a good deal of opposition from certain quarters at its inception, but, over time, public opinion is swaying the politicians, who are gradually coming around to the notion that the U.S. citizenry at large want the borders enforced. I'm hoping that what they are realizing is that most of us are for both immigration and border security. It's not only possible to be both, I suspect it is the dominant position.

Honestly, I don't know a single person who has ever expressed, in my hearing, the desire that we keep immigrants out of the country. After all, most of us are ourselves descended from immigrants. However, we want people coming into our country who will obey its laws, and in sneaking across the border, illegal immigrants are breaking those laws at the outset. There are security issues, as well as economic ones. We want to know who's here, and for how long, and why. We want accountability, and we also want those who work here to pay their fair share of taxes, so that the infrastructure and services provided by government at all levels can be funded by everyone who uses them, not excepting those who are working under the table to avoid detection. In this case, I think most of us want a "good neighbor fence," one that will enable us to continue growing a positive relationship with Mexico, unhindered by some of the current fears and resentments.

Most people aren't heartless. I doubt very much that the average American resents the money that gets sent from here to Mexico. Dollars from here goes a long way toward helping the quality of life there, and many of us are happy to see how much immigrant workers can aid their families back home, but they need to do it legally, and contribute to the infrastructure and services that they use while they're here. If U.S. citizens are assured of safe borders, with a flow of immigration that is generous, but accountable, controlled, and not sucking the public trough dry without reciprocal contribution, there will be a lot less resentment on the part of those Americans who are, right now, frustrated by abuses of the system. Most of us recognize that there are many benefits, on both sides, to be gained by a healthy exchange of goods and labor between our neighboring countries. I'm a big "a rising tide floats all boats" proponent. The more Mexico prospers, the better off we all are, in the long run.

I acknowledge that not everyone wants large numbers of immigrant workers flooding the American job market. Some people fear competition for employment, coming from migrant workers who willingly work for less than Americans generally will. Many immigrants accept a lesser standard of living than the people born and raised in American prosperity, and for good reason; even what would be considered a lesser standard here is still very high compared with the conditions back home. I'm not dismissing the fact that some Americans find competition from immigrant laborers, and that that competition might keep some wages suppressed; however, a prosperous Mexico also purchases more goods than an impoverished one, so if Mexico thrives, we have the potential to create more jobs here as well. Again, looking at the long run, a goods-consumer contributes to economic growth. Prosperous immigrants become goods-consumers.

Of course, there are other issues involved; the Mexican government is responsible, in the long run, for the economic climate south of the border, and those issues are far too complicated for me to get into without a lot more information than I have right now. My main point here is that I think it's a good thing that a border fence is gaining ground in Washington. Hopefully, Congress is seeing the light, that it's possible to be both pro-security and pro-immigration at the same time. It's encouraging that public opinion is having an impact on public policy. Maybe we'll see some consensus come out of the capital. Wouldn't that be a refreshing change?

Taxing Immigration

Nathan Smith, at TCS Daily, has some really interesting ideas about immigration and border enforcement, in a rather long, but quite readable article titled "Don't Restrict Immigration, Tax It". At the root of his examination of the open and closed border debate in the U.S. is the notion that whatever policy America establishes should have a net benefit to as many people as possible, immigrant and native resident alike. From Smith's perspective, this means open borders (not to include terrorists and other security threats, but the average person who wants to come here to improve their lot in life), with the proviso that people who come here to work, no doubt improving their situation, be subjected to additional taxes to compensate those who might be harmed financially by the competition from these guest workers. He calls his ideas the "rational middle ground", and while I would need to see this ground thoroughly covered by rational debate to be completely sure whether I agree with Smith's analysis, I see some merit in his propositions.

The article really is too full of content for me to summarize it for you, but I'll hit a few highlights. First, in advocating an open borders policy, Smith says that it "...must be resolute in denying welfare and taxpayer-funded social services to (most) immigrants, because any social safety net provided in the US will represent a higher standard of living than what prevails in many countries." This seems absolute common sense; we can't open our doors, and then pay to support everyone who would show up. Smith proposes that every guest worker be required to deposit with a government or authorised agency "...an amount equal to the cost of deporting them. Having made this deposit, the guest worker should be deported at his or her own pre-paid expense if he becomes unable to support him- or herself."

Second, Smith recommends a mandatory, automatically withdrawn from their paychecks, savings program for all guest workers, available for withdrawal only in the worker's country of origin, providing for incentive to eventually return home. As an alternative, when the account reaches a certain "citizenship threshold", the worker could forfeit the account and become a U.S. citizen. Smith's notion is that the money accumulated from such forfeiture would be distributed to all U.S. citizens, on an annual basis. As the final piece to this taxation-based border policy, "... a surtax will be charged to guest workers, the proceeds of which will be paid out either to all American workers, or targeted to the working poor, ensuring that American-born workers will have a higher standard of living than guest workers who earn the same market wage." This would probably alleviate resentment from the lower wage earners here, and since the guest workers would doubtless still be much better off than in their own countries, despite the extra taxation, could be agreeable to the visiting workers as well. If not, they could simply choose not to come. No harm, no foul. Something Smith didn't indicate, but that seems to me an additional point of merit from the perspective of the immigrant, is that once they became citizens, these guest workers would also be eligible to receive the annual sum. This would be some incentive to cooperate with the tax from the outset, offering eventual compensation for the initial sacrifice.

Smith looks at why he thinks our current border policies are both too restrictive, and basically unenforceable. He discusses how this new approach would make violations of the laws of the country more an issue of tax evasion than illegal entry, resulting not in deportation so much as confiscation of property, which he says would fit better into our general tenor of government. (He spends a lot of time discussing the source of authority of government, which I won't go into. He wrote an article on this topic that I read last year called "Hobbes, Locke and the Bush Doctrine", that I highly recommend. It's also long, and not an easy read, but worth the effort for understanding the philosophy of the roots of governmental power.) Smith goes into much more in his discussion of the reasons for, and the effects of a more open border policy, so as I said, I won't try to sum it all up here, or even try to decide at this point whether I agree with him. What I will say is that I hope I see more non-partisan, idea-oriented debate on this topic. Smith's ideas may, or may not, be viable and the solution to all our border woes, but at least they could move the highly divisive topic a little farther down the road toward a commonly acceptable resolution. I'll give Smith the next to last word:

In principle, since taxing rather than restricting immigration is in the interests of the median voter, a majoritarian democracy should be willing to pass it. Yet the idea of using immigration as a revenue source to offset perceived negative externalities has hardly been mentioned in the immigration debate. I don't think doubts about its feasibility are the reason. Rather, there's an ethical hang-up: people think it's discriminatory to make immigrants pay higher taxes, yet somehow it's not discriminatory to keep them out altogether, which hurts them much more.
Still, I think taxing immigration is an idea with a future, simply because it's the "rational middle ground" for which everyone is looking.

As for me, I'll reserve judgement, but keep an open mind.

Update: I think I should note that in his article Smith is critical of Duncan Currie from The Weekly Standard, relating to an article that he wrote, and I blogged in May, calling for a more substantial border fence. Smith approaches it from the perspective that our country allows very few people to immigrate legally, so fencing won't send immigrants through proper channels, but shut them out entirely. I, however, do not see the two notions as mutually exclusive. There is simply no rule that says if you guard your borders closely you can't also let in any number of immigrants you choose.

Skilled Labor and Immigration Don't Mix

Here's a look at the hotly debated issue of immigration reform from the perspective of an immigrant--a legal immigrant. Ilya Shapiro is a lawyer in Washington DC who, along with other highly skilled professionals like him, apparently has no prospects of US citizenship, or even a green card, despite legal entry and gainful employment. It looks like his only hope for permanent residency is to marry an American. Volunteers?