Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
1. The Party Lines Grow Clearer (Op-Ed)
2. Mark Krikorian debates DREAM Act on News Hour (Video)
3. Mark Krikorian debates DREAM Act on Bloggingheads.tv (Video)
4. While the DREAM Act Dominates the Scene, a Bit of Haitian Action Elsewhere (Blog)
5. Military DREAM Is a Mirage (Blog)
6. DREAM in Uniform (Blog)
7. Potemkin ICE (Blog)
Republicans, Don't Even Think About DREAM!
The so-called DREAM Act partial immigration amnesty—one of the Democratic priorities being pushed in the current lame-duck Congress— isn't dead yet. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's game plan for passing it seems clear: Wait until the big tax bill passes and Republican senators are released from their "no cloture" pledge. Then try to break out enough "yes" votes to get to 60 at the buzzer, right before Congress adjourns.
Majority pundit sentiment says Reid won't be able to do this. But a week is a long time to expect squishy GOP senators to hold out against a wave of criticism from respectable kibbitzers and ethnic-identity politicians (e.g., "If Senate Republicans kill the DREAM Act ... many millions of Hispanics will take it as a slap in the face"). In particular, I'm worried some anti-amnesty Republicans might be tempted by the argument that passing DREAM—which in theory applies only to illegals brought to this country when they were under age 16 who graduate from high school—will make it harder to pass a larger "comprehensive" amnesty in the future.
I used to think that, until I thought about it. After thinking, I suspect President Obama is closer to the truth when he argues that DREAM is in fact a "down payment" on "comprehensive" legalization.
Why? After all, pro-legalization types have traditionally worried that passing DREAM all by itself would kill "comprehensive" reform by cherrypicking the most appealing group of illegals (those who came here "through no fault of their own")—making it that much harder to pass a law legalizing all the less appealing groups.
This sort of thinking is in line with the traditional liberal approach of using heart-tugging victims, especially children, as the tip of the spear for far broader programs. (Even within the class of 1 or 2 million DREAM beneficiaries, we hear mainly about the "the valedictorians in their classes, the presidents, the stars of their sports teams, and the people who win the college bowls.") It's why legalizers resisted until the last minute (i.e. now) making a push for a separate DREAM bill that wasn't part of "comprehensive" package. Once the DREAM kids were taken care of, who would be the poster children for the Big Amnesty?
But were the legalizers right about this? The "think of the children" approach doesn't always work. Marian Wright Edelman led brigades of kids to Capitol Hill to sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" when she was defending welfare benefits that went to parents as well as children. That didn't stop Congress from passing the welfare reform she opposed. And it's not at all clear that DREAM was working to produce "comprehensive" amnesty. The DREAM kids were lost in the vast mass of "comprehensive" reform, which would have affected potentially 11 million. Did you even know that DREAM was part of Bush's 2007 plan?
Suppose Congress passes the DREAM Act. Will that use up the supply of poster children for "comprehensive" reform? Of course not. There will be plenty of other appealing cases, including the cases of those who are denied citizenship by DREAM's own rules.
The arbitrriness and complexity of DREAM's requirements and categories is seen as a problem by the left. But maybe it's a dialectical strength, from their point of view. The Act's crazy quilt of deadlines and precondidtions, combined with the massive fraud that will follow its virtually irresistable invitation to false applications, will create a system seemingly doomed to collapse of its own weight.
Penalize a kid who came to the U.S. four years before DREAM, rather than the requisite five? Who spent only a year and a half in college instead of two years because he was busy working? Who went back to Mexico for a year instead of living here "continuously"? Who was too honest to lie on his application--so he stays illegal while hundreds of thousands of his less scrupulous brothers-in-undocumentation get in?
Some of these distinctions will be finessed in practice, as Heather MacDonald notes, through the widespread application of the law's "hardship" exemption. Illegal immigrants who get 10 years to complete the Act's requirements and don't complete them are unlikely to actually be deported. But the press will have a feast with the arbitrary rules, whether they are applied or not.
And some of the rules that are most likely to be applied--such as the GED requirement--are morally unstable. If the DREAM kids are appealing because they didn't choose to come across the border and all they know is America, why should they also have to graduate high school again? Do you have to have an 1100 SAT to be an American these days? The temptation will be to say, "The hell with it. this is crazy. It's simpler to just amnesty everyone."
And that isn't counting the pressure to legalize all the new illegals drawn by the international signal DREAM sends: "Come illegally, bring your kids, and you might be a winner!"
True, the "it's simpler to cover everyone" line doesn't always work either. It didn't work in the late 1960s when the elite consensus favored a "guaranteed income" that would dispense cash across the board, overriding old-fashioned, hard-to-police distinctions between people who worked and people who didn't. The voters, it turned out, liked those old-fashioned distinctions.
But the distinctions created by DREAM don't have a similar moral clarity. The great strength of the anti-amnesty movement, after all, is the clear line it draws between legality and illegality. DREAM replaces that with the line between GED and no GED, between four years and five years, between 29 years old and 31 years old. It will be hard to stop future Congress from busting through these weak moral lines and expanding the amnesty, perhaps "comprehensively."
The drafters of DREAM are almost certainly hoping that this happens, even if they are not actually setting it up to happen. Hence their "down payment" rhetoric. If, like me, you don't want "comprehensive reform"--if you want border enforcement first, amnesty later--it's a down payment you don't want to make
SOURCE (See the original for links)
Background
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.
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