Actually, this post is more of a placeholder than anything, a way to push myself to write something up this weekend. But fundamentally, it\u2019s about trust. The Republicans (or Republican base, anyway) don\u2019t trust the Democrats\/the administration to actually enforce laws securing the border or laws against the hiring of illegal immigrants. (Do Boehner, Ryan, etc.? I\u2019m not sure. Maybe they just don\u2019t care.) The Democrats want to use enforcement as a bargaining chip for amnesty because they don\u2019t believe Republican promises that \u201cenforcement first\u201d means just that, rather than enforcement only. <\/p>\n
You know what my first baby step would be? A true amnesty, in the sense of not punishing people for their misdeeds, as opposed to granting special privileges. This means I\u2019d take away the 10-year deportation penalty, and allow people living illegally in the United States to apply for family-based green cards (that is, for those married to citizens), student visas for prospective college students, or H1-B visas, for the highly-skilled \u201cDreamer\u201d poster children, on the same basis as other prospective immigrants. (Yes, I know there are some instances now in which a hardship waiver is possible, but not many.) <\/p>\n
(And, come to think of it, \u201camnesty\u201d isn\u2019t even the right word for a mass granting of legalization to illegal immigrants \u2014 we\u2019re not just eliminating penalties otherwise due to them, but we\u2019re giving them special privileges. But I don\u2019t have a good alternative.)<\/p>\n
Of course, I suppose the \u201cstudent visas\u201d part is no longer needed due to the President\u2019s amnesty-by-executive-order. \u2014 and that goes back to the trust issue. If Obama is willing to amnesty large numbers of people by administrative action, how can he be trusted to implement any enforcement measures at all? <\/p>\n
Just a few stray thoughts for a Friday morning before settling in to work. Your thoughts? (New commenter Peter H., I\u2019ll get back to you.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Actually, this post is more of a placeholder than anything, a way to push myself to write something up this weekend. But fundamentally, it\u2019s about trust. The Republicans (or Republican base, anyway) don\u2019t trust the Democrats\/the administration to actually enforce laws securing the border or laws against the hiring of illegal immigrants. (Do Boehner, Ryan, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n