Part two of response to Joel

I've already offered up a clarification of sorts to the comment on my post regarding the Senate immigration bill (which has since been oustered from the Senate's agenda). The first part of Joel's challenge required a clarification of my thought process; the second part, I thought, deserved a separate post.

The question on the table is, "If you were to write an immigration bill, how would you nuance the various components in a way that would allow the bill to ever get 'bleeding hearted' and 'Mexican-phobic' Senators to approve it?" Before getting into how I'd address the issue, though, I'd first like to address the word choice used in the question.

One of the problems I have with the usage of loaded terminology is that the writer/speaker has the convenience of either masking his/her accusations behind the cloak of clever verbiage and insinuating that the motives of others are suspect, or falling back on "how everyone else is phrasing it." I have no idea if Joel meant to imply that proponents of a border fence are racists ("Mexican-phobic"), or if people in support of a more open border policy simply do so because they're too weak-stomached to face down a problem. He also could have simply meant "hardcore Republicans" and "hardcore Democrats" - but it doesn't matter, because many in the media are representing both the accusatory and the matter-of-fact tone-of-voice, so I'll work my post in response to both.

First, the easy one. Questioning the motives of your debate opponent is always more efficient (and usually more entertaining to witness) than arguing on the merits. Labeling someone a racist (in the case of immigration reform or affirmative action), a bigot (in the case of same-sex marriage), or a fascist (in the case of abortion or wiretapping) is certainly easier than researching the facts, rebutting assertions, and formulating a cogent response. Those who are accusing proponents of a border fence of being "Mexi-phobic" have seemed to me incapable of doing any of the above three tasks of a good debater, and, quite frankly, have given blank stares when confronted with many of the problems that have been pointed out in the Senate bill. And I'm certainly not suggesting that there weren't people who were prejudiced against Hispanics prior to the controversial border bill, but it seems suspect to me that the term "Mexi-phobic" and its synonyms had never been heard in mainstream discussion prior to the bill debate.

Now, the tougher part. The comprehensive reform bill was a bad idea in its conception, precisely because it was an attempt at comprehensive reform, not a complete expungement of past law and a rebuilding of a new one, or more workably, a piecemeal approach to the many facets of the problem on America's borders (especially the Mexican border). "Throwing out the old laws" was never really a feasible way to address the issue, so let's forget that one, and consider a piecemeal approach. The major items you need to address in such a battery of reforms include (1) border security, (2) immigration regulation and visa/guest procedures/regulations, and (3) what to do with illegal immigrants already inside the border.

1. We need a secure fence, and we need more border patrol agents. It's that simple. If you're protecting a building (let's say your business), you do much the same thing. To illustrate using this analogy, imagine a business where you're not so much interested in attracting people to the building itself - people will come into the building no matter what the perimeter looked like. The easiest, cheapest method of providing the first step toward security would be to build a fence that was difficult to go over (razor wire), under (a deep foundation) or through (reinforced concrete, for example). A look at the details of the wall that Israel is building to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out of civilian area would be a good case study for our own border permeability. Start there.

Now, industrious folk who are willing to risk their lives to cross such a fence would need to be dealt with as well. So employing the use of motion sensors to detect those hooligans, and quickly-deployable law enforcement personnel would be the backup plan to the fence. Requiring local police departments and sheriff's offices in addition to border patrol and national guard personnel to participate in the arrest of wall-breachers would be a decent thing to consider too, since liberal state and local government units are currently being negligent in refusing not only to enforce border laws, but also refusing to cooperate with federal officials who are just trying to do their jobs. This is deplorable, and it needs to stop. City, county, and state officials who tell their underlings that they are not allowed to enforce certain laws should be prosecuted - period. Imagine if your local chief of police issued a decree that bank robbers could no longer be pursued by the local departments "because most of our city's banks are inter-state banks, so it's an issue for the feds, not us."

One final item on border security, and then I'll move on. The bill in question had a serious flaw in it, and that was that the sitting president could "certify" when the border was "secure", thus triggering further pieces of the comprehensive bill. Sounds OK on the surface, but neither "certified" nor "secured" was precisely defined in the bill. One of the founding principles of American democracy is that we live under the rule of law, not the rule of man. When one person is granted the authority to define unilaterally the pivotal words in a law, you're moving away from the system of checks and balances, and toward arbitrary rule by corruptible people. The fact that our legislators chose to hinge major triggers on such fluffy terminology shows either gross incompetence at best, and malicious scheming at worst.

2. Now, to continue the business analogy... With the first step out out of the way, your business building is largely secure from outside threats, but you HAVE to let people come in, so what do you do to ensure the safety of your employees, your inventory, and that of your customers themselves? The business analogy starts to fall apart in the details here, since you're not going to background checks on your customers before letting them come in to browse the widgets, but bear with me - it's still a decent, if not overly-elementary, analogy.

One of the places where liberals and conservatives heatedly disagree is in how the "war on terror" should be prosecuted. Conservatives largely agree that "taking the war to our enemies" and treating it as a military matter. Of course, liberals have largely taken the stand that the terrorist threat should be treated as a law enforcement matter when there's not a government entity that's directly accountable for attacks (which is why the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan is not as controversial as Iraq).

But the regulation of immigration shows a huge hypocrisy on the left-hand side of the argument. Liberals have no problems in preventing convicted felons and people with mental illness from purchasing handguns, but ask for deeper scrutiny of 18-25 year-old males with Muslim names from countries known to train terrorists, and they'll be screaming "You dirty rotten racist!" faster than you can say "profiling". So people with autism purchasing a .38 is a problem, but contacting Interpol to see if Ahmed has ever been known to visit a Taliban summer camp is the act of insensitive Islamophobes - makes perfect sense. If there was a place where Democrats should shine, it's here. But we get nothing but racially sensitive, fluffy platitudes on how Islam is "a religion of peace" (which, largely, of course, it is, other than the 1% to 10% who are fanatics) and that Vicente Fox has America's interests in mind when he's publishing brochures on how to best elude the US Border Patrol. Please. The Democrats have no plan to combat terrorism, other than to bash Bush on anything he does. God forbid they retake the White House and retain Congress in '08 - they've had 6 years to formulate a cogent anti-terrorism policy, and they've unveiled nothing. Bush may have prosecuted Iraq poorly, and his vision of a democratic Muslim nation in the heart of the Middle East may indeed prove to be misguided once we have the benefit of hindsight, but at least he's doing something that can be argued as appropriate, and making a dent in the terrorist population while he's at it.

Bottom line: we need to know who is coming into our country, and we need to lean on the UN to pressure governments to grant access to criminal records of those seeking to come into our nation (if ever there was a use for the UN, this may be it). If you want to keep your records off-limits and your record-keeping procedures non-transparent, fine - your citizens will not be granted student visas, and permanent immigration is out of the question (asylum rules would remain largely untouched). This is not racist, it's realist. If you have a rule that says customers must leave their backpacks at the customer service desk while browsing your wares, and a customer refuses to do so, you first ask him politely to go back to the parking lot and leave the backpack in his car, or you deny him access to your shop. Is that racist? Or a reasonable way to protect what's inside your store?

Now obviously, not all terrorists have criminal pasts, so a path to citizenship that includes a few contacts with immigration officials is reasonable (for crying out loud, it takes at least two transactions with government officials to license your new car and apply for a driver's license - why can't we require immigrants to check in a few times before being entrusted with permanent citizenship?). And periodic check-ins for people here on visas is certainly reasonable - the guy asking if you need help finding anything at your local Home Depot is as likely to be ensuring you're not pocketing a few nails as he is trying to be helpful - actually, at Home Depot, it's extremely UNlikely that he's trying to be helpful (SNAP!).

3. Finally, what do you do with illegals who are already here? First, as I mentioned previously, prosecuting local and state officials who decree that enforcing immigration law is off-limits is a must. We have many (liberal) municipalities in this nation whose mayors, police chiefs, and other officials have told their officers that they are not even allowed to ask people who they stop for traffic violations what their immigration status is. Again, Democrats say they think combating terrorism is a criminal problem; violating immigration law is truly a criminal matter, but the ultra-libs say that it's... well... no one's problem! (hmmm, maybe THAT'S what the military is for - tracking down migrant farmers - yeah, that's it!)

Second, you make it economically non-viable for businesses to knowingly hire illegal immigrants, thus reducing the supply, and increasing the incentive for illegals to pursue legal paths to citizenship. How do you make businesses comply? Well, let's see - have you ever started a job? What's the first thing they make you do when you show up on Monday morning? That's right, they make you show your Social Security card and your driver's license or state ID! Why would that be so difficult to make universal? It's not. But it does bring up the possibility (certainty?) of falsified SS cards. Personally, even if you take illegal immigration out of the picture, the fact that one of the main pieces of identification that our government relies upon is a 2-color, non-laminated piece of paper is ludicrous. I don't want to replace state licensing requirements with a federal driver's license, but why is it so difficult to require that a more tamper-proof Social Security card be implemented? I know, I know - you get your SSN at birth, and you have to sign the card, and babies' signatures are impossibly hard to read... I'll give each of you 7 readers of this post 5 seconds each to come up with your own solution to that problem... 1... 2... 3... 4... 5... How many did you come up with - I came up with three - let's get together for a beer and we'll tackle that issue. Seriously.

Now, I'm not a big expert on CURRENT immigration procedures, so I'd be remiss if I attempted to re-vamp the process for becoming a naturalized citizen. I'll leave that part to people who know more than me. The last piece of my plan would be to eliminate welfare, student loan, and Social Security benefits for illegal immigrants (not emergency health care - that's heartless - BUT, once you're back on your feet, the wheelchair doesn't take you to the front door to go merrily on your way - it takes you to a waiting squad car, which in turn takes you to INS, where you'll register, and then begin your process toward legal citizenship, or you'll be returned to your homeland - at your home government's expense). I'd also ensure that any state governments who decide to offer in-state tuition benefits to illegals have their federal higher education dollars magically disappear. Hey, they did that for schools who said military recruiters couldn't come to campus, they can do it for "undocumented student" harborers, too.

Again, you can label me a racist if you will - though I assure you I'm not (as if that means diddley-squat, right) - but if you want to ever solve any of these issues, quit with the ad hominem crapola and engage the ideas. I think the above are pretty common-sensical, but I'm open to change my mind if you can show otherwise. But I'll do nothing but become more rigid in my stance if you simply want to throw the "Islamophobe" or "Mexiphobe" moniker my way...