Friday, April 20, 2007

Trigger-Happy   [Mark Krikorian]

Congress Daily reports today that "A core group of senators that has been meeting almost daily for the last several weeks is close to announcing the outlines of a comprehensive immigration bill that could be the basis for Senate debate in late May." A part of the possible deal would be "a 'trigger' mechanism that would delay implementation of a guestworker program until enforcement mechanisms are in place." There's been talk of this phony "trigger" idea for a while now, but until I spoke with some congressional staffers last night I didn't realize how phony it really is. The idea is that there would be certain enforcement benchmarks that would have to be met before a guestworker/amnesty program kicked in. It sounds plausible enough, but it isn't.

The first problem is one that Mickey Kaus has written about — that having a promise of amnesty in a bill, regardless of conditions, just serves as a magnet for illegals to enter (or stay) and keep their heads down until the amnesty kicks in. But even worse is what the staffers explained to me: any deal including a trigger would actually give illegal aliens legal status (amnesty) immediately, while enforcement efforts were improved — so all that would be "triggered" is the illegals' opportunity to get a green card, not their ability to keep living and working here under some other status, which would continue indefinitely if the trigger conditions were not met.

04/20 04:42 PMShare