Thursday, June 25, 2009

¡No, Se Puede!   [Mark Krikorian]

Shortly before today's White House summit on amnesty, "Emanuel Says Immigration Reform Bill Lacks Votes to Pass." Implicitly agreeing was Nancy Pelosi, who said today that the Senate would have to pass an amnesty before the House would take up the subject. That said, Chuck Schumer is making a real effort at improving the marketing for amnesty. He's even using the verboten words "illegal immigration," adding that "When we use phrases like 'undocumented workers,' we convey a message to the American people that their government is not serious about combating illegal immigration, which the American people overwhelmingly opposed."

Schumer also called for a biometric worker verification system, though this is also little more than a marketing gimmick. I'm actually not averse to it, but it's a pie-in-the-sky right now. Instead, to prove seriousness about enforcement, the government needs to implement the actually existing tools right now and upgrade them as time goes on. E-Verify, for instance, would be better with biometric identifiers. But it's darn good now, especially when combined with the Social Security Number Verification Service (SSNVS) and no-match letters, and they're working to integrate more photos (which are, after all, a form of biometric identifier) into the system too, by incorporating passport photos and getting states to provide their digitized driver’s license photos. What we need is for Congress to phase in E-Verify for all employers now, something that will take several years to roll out, assuming judges even allow it to go forward. But this administration won't even implement the rule requiring federal contractors to use E-Verify, and the House has rejected a number of Republican amendments to do just that (and also rejected an E-Verify mandate for recipients of TARP funds). So Schumer's got a long way to go before he can overcome the public suspicion that "their government is not serious about combating illegal immigration."

In fact, the talk of fingerprints and iris scans is actually a distraction — a bill that promised such technologies in the future but allowed for an amnesty up front would result in the same bait-and-switch as in 1986, because such technologies would take years to implement, assuming they even withstood the scrutiny of meddlesome judges, and in the meantime the illegals would already have gotten their amnesty. This is the iron political logic behind "Enforcement First" — before there's even any discussion of amnesty.

06/25 03:22 PMShare