Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Fox News Flunks   [Ramesh Ponnuru]

They just ran a panel with Mara Liasson, Fred Barnes, and Juan Williams—not a single bill-skeptic among them. So nobody was there to answer their arguments.

Liasson's was that critics of the bill as amnesty have to answer the question, What would you do with all the illegal immigrants here if you're not going to deport them all? Fine. The answer, as Andy McCarthy has pointed out, is that there is no reason we have to do anything at all with them this year or next.

Barnes's was that people had criticized Italian immigrants 100 years ago, and everything worked out fine. True: But current immigration differs from earlier waves of immigration in ways that probably make it more problematic. For example, we share a long border with the major source of our immigration now, and the skills gap between native-born and immigrant workers has increased. Also, maybe one reason everything worked out well is that we took a 40-year time-out from immigration.

Finally, both Barnes and Williams argued that simply enforcing the laws would lead to severe economic consequences. They offered no proof, and it's just implausible that slowly ratcheting up enforcement would have this effect.

A little more diversity, please.

05/22 07:02 PMShare