In what I can only describe as the op-ed version of a nine paragraph sneer, the Opinion Journal mockingly derides Tom Tancredo and his immigration legislation:
So there you have it. Tom Tancredo has done everyone a favor by stating plainly the immigration rejectionists’ endgame–turn the United States into the world’s largest gated community. The House took a step in that direction this month by passing another immigration “reform” bill heavy with border control and business harassment and light on anything that will work in the real world.
***Given that record, it’s hard to see the House Republican bill as much more than preening about illegal immigration. The legislation is aimed at placating a small but vocal constituency that wants the borders somehow sealed, come what may to the economy, American traditions of liberty or the Republican Party’s relationship with the increasingly important Latino vote.
Besides mandating the construction of walls and fences along the 2,000-mile Mexican border, the bill radically expands the definition of terms like “alien smuggler,” “harboring,” “shielding” and “transporting.” Hence all manner of people would become criminally liable and subject to fines, property forfeiture and imprisonment–the landscaper who gives a co-worker a ride to a job; the legal resident who takes in an undocumented relative; a Catholic Charities shelter providing beds and meals to anyone who walks through the door.
Read the whole thing. Obviously, the WSJ’s pro-business leanings are what motivated this piece, but it is striking in how mercilously they attack Tancredo.
Blue Neponset
I don’t think the WSJ is being unfair to Tancredo. IMO, they are right on the money.
Tancredo’s legislation is a good example of cutting off our nose to spite our face. Our economy won’t run too well without immigrant (both legal and illegal) workers. Unless Tancredo and his gang have a way to replace the 11 million illegal aliens with legal ones our economony is going to be in some trouble under their ‘Berlin Wall’ immigration plan.
Angry Engineer
If our economy can’t function without the current number of illegal immigrants, then we need to increase the number of people we allow to enter this country legally. That’s just common sense. “Controlled immigration” does not have to mean “little or no immigration”. That takes care of two of the Journal’s problems – the economic standpoint, and Republican pandering to Latinos. Unless, that is, the Journal sees illegal immigration as a way to wage war on minimum wage laws.
I’m not so sure where the Journal gets this idea that rampant lawlessness is somehow necessary to uphold the “American traditions of liberty”.
Doug
It highlights a rift in the Republican Party. Business Republicans presumably like the access to cheap labor. Pat Buchanan type anti-immigrationists want to seal the borders.
The current system where the immigrant’s presence is illegal but where the laws are poorly enforced seems to maximize access to cheap labor. A great number of illegal immigrants with few legal rights = low wages. That, in turn, presumably puts downward pressure on the wages of legal workers.
I’m not at all comfortable with the xenophobic, sometimes racist, tinge of a lot of anti-immigration sentiment; but I also do not like the effect the current system has on wages for American workers.
Steve S
15 years ago, you’d go into Mcdonalds and it was all high school kids working there. Today it’s mexicans.
Where are the high school kids working?
Doug
The attractive ones are working at the mall chain clothing stores.
capelza
I hate to sound like an old dufferette, but I’m telling you, the kids don’t want to work the “scut” jobs anymore. Until a few years ago, the restaurants and fish plants around here hired high schoolers in the restaurants (back kitchen) and the fish plants actually paid a pretty good wage and had long term employess (some even had health care). Not anymore. The real decline in fish plant wages is fairly dramatic. When the minimum wage was 2.65 (1978, I was only 5 when I worked there of course. :P ) )I was getting paid 3.25 to 3.75. Now all the same jobs are minimum wage and primarily filled with hispanic workers.
Sojourner
Pay real wages for real work. That’s a much more moral alternative than taking advantage of illegals who have no legal rights.
slightlybad
I think the next presidential candidate of either party who gets behind immigration reform is going to have a big advantage. The detractors think that its all a racist plot ’cause we all hate the Mexicans, which I think is total horseshit. I’m all for controlling the border because of the security implications. I’m more than happy to increase legal immigration as long as we can actually document the people coming in. That, presumably, should be the Republican position, but they actually seem more interested in holding wages down for business.
Immigration unquestionably does hold down wages. I have never seen illegal immigrants making sub-minimum wage, contrary to popular belief. Where I live, most Mexican (and Salvadoran and Guatamalan) immigrants work in construction, landscaping and chicken processing plants. They mostly earn $7-10 dollars an hour. A lot of people argue that there is no one else willing to do those jobs. Well, maybe not at $7/hr, but if no one was taking them, wages would have to go up. I don’t know about chicken processing, but you can’t outsource construction and landscaping. I can’t understand why more Democrats and liberals aren’t speaking out against illegal immigration. It’s holding down the wages of the working class that they purport to represent. Tightening the labor pool would also force more companies to pay a “living wage” without those stupid laws that some Dems are trying to push. I assume that it’s because there are some Latino interest groups in key states that they can’t live without.
I just think that there is a lot of anger in working and middle class America about illegal immigration, and neither one of the parties (other than a few guys like Tancredo) are doing anything to address it.
Geek, Esq.
Tancredo is the most visible member of the Malkin wing of the Republican party–the ones who think nuking Mecca should be an option.
Anderson
Enlighten me, folks. I’m a yellow-dog Bush hater, but I see no reason not to amend the 14th Amendment to eliminate birthright citizenship in favor of requiring that one parent be a citizen.
Why would that be a bad idea?
Vlad
“I have never seen illegal immigrants making sub-minimum wage, contrary to popular belief.”
My dad has. He picked tomatoes with a crew of migrants one summer back in the ’60s, back when he was in high school (mostly to get away from home and have something to do).
I have no reason to believe that things have changed since then.
demimondian
Well, I have two lines of arugment I could follow. They will reach different audiences, so I’ll give you both.
There’s the pragmatic one, which is to point out that the idea is unenforceable. What about the children of resident aliens? What about the case where one parent is a citizen, and the other is an illegal alien? Do you punish the kid for the illegal parent, or reward her for the legal one?
Then, there’s the argument from principle, which is to ask why that’s fair. Is it really a benefit to be an illegal with citizen children? Do you realize that means you can be deported and the US will detain your children at the border in foster care? [ultrasnark]Now *there’s* a fine deal, eh? Better get a goodbye hug, Mom — your kids are off to Hell![/ultrasnark] Better still, has the kid done anything wrong? No — so you’re punishing the child for the sins of the father? Oh, *yeah* baby, that’s equal rights for everybody.
It’s just a bad idea.
Mr Furious
Here’s my merciless attack on Tancredo…
Anderson
There’s the pragmatic one, which is to point out that the idea is unenforceable. What about the children of resident aliens? What about the case where one parent is a citizen, and the other is an illegal alien? Do you punish the kid for the illegal parent, or reward her for the legal one?
Children of resident aliens take on the citizenship of their resident alien parents, according to the laws of those countries.
As for the 2d point, that’s why I said one parent. Mom *or* Dad can be a citizen & you’re a citizen.
As for the “principle” side, is it really true that we deport aliens & put the kids in foster care? Examples?
And is it “punishing” a child to make a legal determination that he’s a citizen of his parents’ country, not of this one? Rank Americo-centrism! ;)
Anderson
You complete fucking incompetent dick.
Well, if it fucks, can it be completely incompetent?
Grumpy Physicist
Re: birthright citizenship
There’s also the slippery slope to watch out for. Can you prove that all of your ancestors entered the US legally? If g’g’g’grandpa snuck in, then g’g’grandma shouldn’t have been a citizen, ditto for g’grandpa and grandma, your dad and you.
Oh no, they would never push things that far. Uh huh, sure. Watch the news much?
There are countries (Japan, Germany, come to mind) where your ancestors had to have been living there in ~1900 for their descendents to be considered citizens. Doesn’t matter if you, your parents, your grandparents, have been born and raised there, speak the language, is immersed in the culture, and have never been to your supposed other “homeland”. Nope, sorry, your distant ancestor didn’t touch all the bases, so you are screwed.
That’s not america. Tancredo should be ashamed of himself for taking out his paranoid fantasies on innocent children that haven’t even been born yet.
Anderson
Grumpy raises a good point, but I think that adequate legislation would redress the problem.
Imagining what that would be … say that you have to submit SSN’s for the parents with a citizenship application at the child’s birth, just part of the paperwork at the hospital. The feds have 30 days or whatever to process & return. If the child’s deemed a citizen at that time, it’s irrevocable.
There’s no foolproof system, but something like that ought to work.
(FYI, immigration is something I’ve spent zero time thinking about, and I pose my question above in genuine search of information pro/contra.)
slightlybad
Vlad,
I’m sure that at some point some illegal immigrants have been paid less than minimum wage, especially in agricultural jobs. I live in the mid Atlantic region, and my experience has been that there is a thriving market in fake documents. Plenty of large companies hire illegals, but the illegals have documentation and are thus put on the payroll like everybody else. This is winked at on both sides — companies don’t really care because they have done what they need to cover themselves. There is also widespread use of labor contractors, which generally amounts to one Mexican who is legal contracting to provide all of the labor to a particular job (usually construction). He then turns around and hires a bunch of illegal friends and relatives. The labor contractor is breaking the law, but again, the companies are clean.
demimondian
Sure. There was just a widely publicized case here in Seattle where a couple was deported to Somalia, leaving the kids behind. It’s even a problem for legals — my legal friends make damned sure they have their kids’ birth certs when they travel; their attorneys warn them of the same thing.
demimondian
So you create children who have no citizenship of children of asylum holders?
I realize you’re serious, and don’t deserve snark here — you’re not stupid, and you’re asking the right questions. The problem is, birthright citizenship is just the right thing to do. We are all Americans on this bus, no matter how we came to be here. Your parents could have gotten in illegally, but you can still grow up to be president.
Anderson
Demimondian, that’s terrible, but I don’t see how it makes any sense under even the current law. How is parental custody revoked simply because the parents aren’t citizens and the kids are? If the parents *wanted* to take their kids, how could they be disallowed from doing so?
I would have to see more on that.
Anyway, my brave new proposal would actually alleviate that, because the kids’ status would mirror that of the parents.
demimondian
The parents are criminals (they’re illegal, remember?) — the safety of the children can’t be guaranteed.
And, under your proposal, that will still the case: if we deport someone back to a war zone (which we do all the time, as a huge source of illegals is wars), we’ll send their kids back. W00t! Let’s make more child soldiers of them!
Anderson
The parents are criminals (they’re illegal, remember?)—the safety of the children can’t be guaranteed.
That would be a very stupid argument to make, if anyone made it.
Of course, if anyone would be so stupid, it would be our immigration folks.
Anderson
See, no sooner do I write those words, than I flip over to the Volokhs & see this from Judge Posner:
This is your brain … this is your brain in DHS … any questions?
demimondian
Anderson…priceless. I’m amazed at the creativity shown by the unnamed Board member showed…an FOIA request, indeed.
If I’d been Posner, I’d have sent him an FOIA request with the oddly worded header “Subpoena duces tecum”. Course, the Board member would probably have treated it as threatening mail, and notified the FBI about it.
RTO Trainer
Actually,
There is no need to amend the 14th Amendment.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
“And subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” is the magic phrase. If the child born is not subject to the jurisdiction of the US (and it is not if it’s parents are not) it is not a citizen.
This is just one more misinterpretation of the Constitution that has taken on a life of its own because of the amount of time we have allowed the misinterpretation to go on.
Note that state residence is also an issue. The parents and the child must qualify for state residency as well and each state has its own rules (though most are similar) for that.
demimondian
Historically, that’s not how the grammatical structure of the amendment was read. If you’re on US territory, you’re subject to the jurisdiction of the US, and that’s how the conjunction applied.
Steve
If illegal aliens on US soil are not “subject to the jurisdiction of the US,” good luck deporting them, since the immigration authorities won’t have jurisdiction to act. “Subject to the jurisdiction” is equivalent to saying that you can be dragged into court if they do something wrong.
Anderson
Well, based on what I’ve seen so far, an amendment modifying the 14th to abolish birthright citizenship wouldn’t be the end of the world. (Somehow I was expecting to be flamed pretty hard.)
capelza
Not a lawyer or a Constitutional scholar, but how would amending the 14th alter the part that statehink up the “natural-born” rule for presidents. If we go messin’ with who is and isn’t “natural-born”, to me it somehow hinks the meaning of that phrase.
And will we include all the Cubans who once they get ahore get to stay (if I understnad that correctly)? Will their children NOT be US citizens? Or will this apply only to select groups or nationalities? But once an exception is made (say for Cubans) doesn’t that undercut the whole premise?
Darrell
This is a fight long overdue. Those siding with businesses who willingly hire illegal aliens vs. enforcing the law for the common good. Angry Engineer nailed it in his comment above in that we need immigrants, but WE get to choose who enters and who does not, vs having it dictated to us by illegal aliens who break out laws to enter the country
Why is it that I have scans on my driver’s license and embedded data in my new passport, but the law let’s me have a SS card without even a photo? It’s un-f*cking believable. With today’s technology, we could easily have biometric SS cards which could be used to crack down on employers, but because of many leftists (who supported motor voter) and their pro-business Republican allies, efforts at such common sense enforcement are being stymied
Do the math. If an illegal immigrant has just 3 kids, it costs taxpayers $20,000 – $30,000 per year (depending on what part of the country they live) for the 3 kids and that’s just for the school. Not counting the kids’ free lunches, free immunizations, free country and city health care for the entire family, emergency room costs etc, etc. Most of these illegal immigrants don’t make $20k/year.
Darrell
What’s wrong with the US enforcing our southern border in the same manner that Mexico enforces theirs?
The Mexican govt actually paid to produce a pamphlet for their citizens on how to enter the US illegally. Download it here. Unbelievable but true
capelza
And the hackers will thank you. Why don’t you just put a chip in your head, Darrell.
Darrell
Yes moron, the hackers will find it soo easy to replicate fingerprints.
capelza
Some biometric cards are NOT fingerprint oriented by can be scanned…with the chip in them that gives the pertinent information. For someone who hollers about others using Ad Hominem attacks on you, you are sure quick to do the same.
…google biometric SS cards, there is a world of information out there. Now if you had said fingerprints that would be another thing. Though, you don’t think that those can’t be counterfieted? I’m sure the industry that will counterfiet national ID cards is already working out the kinks…
Darrell
I think they would be much more difficult to conterfeit than existing SS cards which do not even require a photograph.
capelza
Dude, why do you want your social security card to be a biometric ID? I just, can’t for the life of me understnad why people are so willing to become even more linked to some database that has all their information. My social security card was issued for social security when I got my first job. Now babies have to have them.
It’s sad that it got appropriated by the IRS and everyone else, credit cards, etc, etc. I’d like to stop what has already happened, not give them even more ways to track me. And for a bunch of people who holler about “socialists” don’t it give you the willies to be willing to give it up for something called “social security”, and I don’t mean the safety net insurance plan.
Darrell
It’s not ‘more linked’ as you call it, it’s simply a verification that I am the holder of a legit SS number, nothing more than that. I am already linked with that number. This would be a verification of that link.
Typical leftist hysterics, you’re blowing up a common sense approach to dealing with an immigration problem into some sort of full scale war on your civil liberties in an attempt to polarize any action. Take a breath and find some perspective why don’t you?
capelza
“typical leftist hysterics”…conversation over Darrell. You don’t know Peta from the Posse Comitatus.