Bush finally takes notice

President Bush should know he’s not doing us any favors by offering to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. It’s already his job. Yet that’s the deal in his new guest-worker proposal: Keep the cheap labor flowing to business, and maybe I’ll start going after employers who hire illegal aliens. This mindset is making Americans crazy, and Democrats have taken notice. The public sees illegal immigration as its No. 1 international worry, according to a recent survey. Long afraid of the issue, Democrats are beginning to tackle it in a serious and politically potent way.

Two Democratic governors, Arizona’s Janet Napolitano and Bill Richardson of New Mexico, have declared states of emergency along their borders with Mexico. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is calling not only for better border controls, but also for enforcing laws that punish people who employ illegal immigrants. That last item is key. Bush’s immigration game has been to divert public attention with a big military-style show at the border.

But once illegal entrants get past the border, and millions do, they are free to undercut the wages and benefits of natives and legal immigrants. Bush has failed to do what would really halt illegal immigration — apply the employer penalties long on the books. The neat thing for Bush is that he gets to please business interests. Meanwhile, the costs of providing social services for the illegal population fall on state and local government budgets, not his. Until the cheap-labor crowd took over the party, Republicans were the stalwarts in defending the borders. Democrats shied away from this issue and its sometimes-racist overtones. They also saw immigrant families as their future constituents.

But the consequences of uncontrolled illegal immigration have so flooded other issues; it can no longer be ignored. Some conservative Republicans are yelling at Bush to address the rising public anger. They see trouble ahead for the 2006 congressional elections. Their best hope is that most Democrats remain frozen in old thinking. So when Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean opines that using this issue in 2006 would turn immigrants into “scapegoats,” Republican strategists must sigh with relief.

The good doctor from Park Avenue should take an educational trip to some carpentry shops on Long Island. There, he’ll find legal immigrants being put out of business by illegal aliens working at competing shops down the street. The story repeats itself across the nation. The conflict isn’t just between immigrants and natives. It’s between illegal immigrants and legal immigrants. The class-war aspects of uncontrolled immigration have begun to register with other Democrats. Consider the weird argument that illegal immigration is good because it keeps down the cost of lettuce, hotel rooms and restaurant meals. Of course, it does.

It’s odd that everyone expects to pay the going American rate for the services of lawyers and doctors. In this view, only the sweating classes are supposed to keep prices low. Congress does enforce immigration laws for some better-off workers. For example, the H-1B visa program brings in foreigners with specialized and technical skills. The annual limit of 65,000 H-1B visas was quickly reached this year, but Congress refused to raise it.

By contrast, the people who mop floors or paint houses compete in a labor free-for-all, and Congress just sits back. The border patrol is picking up increasing numbers of non-Mexicans, many from the Middle-east countries we worry about. Polls show that homeland security remains a weak spot for Democrats, so a plan to stop the chaos at the border could help them. But sympathy for individuals should not trump national defense and protecting the economic security of working Americans.

Continued Non-Enforcement

In his column appearing in The Californian on Aug. 26 ("Both parties fuel immigration rage"), Jay Bookman correctly asserts that solutions to illegal immigration aimed at the immigrants won't work because they do not address the "overpowering economic incentive creating that tide." He maintains that only by removing the economic incentive can illegal immigration be controlled at an acceptable rate. That is also true.

Bookman concludes that "simple policy changes, such as requiring businesses to confirm a job applicant's name and Social Security number with a government agency" as well as enforcement and punishment of employers hiring illegal immigrants, would do much to remove the economic incentive. He ponders why legislators have failed to advocate such approaches.

The answer is simple: They don't work. The Simpson-Rodino bill of 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, took the carrot-and-stick approach. It allowed longtime illegal immigrant farm workers to become legalized while requiring employers to guarantee that their workers were legal residents. The law provided sanctions for those caught employing undocumented workers. The legalization aspect backfired because it unintentionally spurred more illegal immigration as family members emigrated from their home countries to join their newly legalized relative. The law also opened up new avenues for fraud and forgery.

Though early attempts to enforce employer requirements were well-publicized, the effort languished until there was little or no enforcement. The reason: Such a policy is by its nature impractical, unenforceable and unpopular within the context of a free-market economy. If there were an easier, economically viable solution than reliance on immigrant workers, legal as well as illegal, employers would jump at the chance, as they would be able to avoid the legal complications and language issues with such a labor force.

Opponents of illegal immigration emphasize the economic burden it places on government and the taxpayers, while defenders of the immigrants point to their economic contributions. Their labor allows Americans to enjoy much lower prices on produce as well as many other products and service and many contribute taxes, while often not reaping the benefits. Whether one aspect outweighs the other can't accurately be measured. It's also irrelevant because they are directly proportional to each other: The more the economy relies on undocumented immigrants, the greater will be both the burden and the benefit. They are integral to the economy.

To remove the economic incentive for illegal immigration would require two things: A legalized labor force would have to become available within U.S. borders to replace the undocumented workers, and economic conditions would have to improve beyond the border from regions from which the tide of illegal immigrants flows. Given the huge disparity in wealth between the United States and these countries, the latter scenario is not going to happen in the foreseeable future.

This country's plight is not unique. The European Union is grappling with the same issue as hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia take up residence in Western Europe without documents. Mexico has its own illegal immigration problem on its southern border. Even the small kingdom of Thailand copes with illegal immigrants who come from Burma, Cambodia and Laos looking for work.

The same economic law applies in each case. Socioeconomic realities supersede the imposition of a politically created border. On the United States' southern border, the sociological aspect is just as obvious as the economic: Southern Californians still live in places with names such as Los Angeles and San Diego and on streets whose names begin with Calle and Avenida. The roots and fruits of that culture remain in place. If the United States took the politically odious and incredibly costly step of erecting the equivalent of a Berlin Wall along the entire southern border and succeeded in throttling illegal immigration, the only conceivable way to avoid a collapse would be through the creation of a labor force to replace the evaporation of workers.

Where's the Holloway coverage with other missing Americans?

Two southwestern states, Arizona and New Mexico, declared states of emergency at their borders with Mexico over the issue of illegal immigration. Meanwhile, Nuevo Laredo and other Mexican border communities are awash in bloodshed as rival gangs kill one another and anyone else who gets in the way over control of the lucrative drug trade and its routes. Mexico, gearing up for a presidential race in 2006, is arguably in tatters, with no solution to its or our problem of illegal aliens. Countries with effective economies, functioning judiciaries and law enforcement agencies that are not in thrall to or chilled by drug cartels have neither as major exports their own citizens nor cities requiring federal takeovers in feeble attempts to achieve order.

But these two problems - illegal immigration and drugs - have one thing in common that is routinely given short shrift by observers of the situation. That would be the United States - its unhealthy and seemingly insatiable appetite for illegal drugs and its limited need for unskilled workers.

Recently, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Antonio Garza said he closed the U.S. consulate in Nuevo Laredo to punish Mexico's government for its inability to stem border violence. Later, he said he was acting to protect U.S. lives. Earlier, he requested that the State Department issue three travel advisories alerting U.S. citizens and residents to the dangers of traveling to Mexico's border regions. All travel advisories were curtailed by political forces.

Mexicans are the ones to worry about

Mexican drug cartels have effectively taken over control of the U.S. illicit-drug market from the Colombians, bringing their turf wars to the doorstep of their major customer, USA Today reported Aug. 18. Mexican traffickers have used the profits earned as smuggling middlemen to finance their campaign to take control of the illicit trade, experts say.

"With the successful dismantling of some of the biggest cartels in Colombia, it was only natural that the Mexicans, who had for years had close contacts with the Colombians and knew the routes and the business, would take over," said Jorge Chabat of the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City. "Now, they are fighting among themselves."

"Today, the Mexicans have taken over and are running the organized crime, and getting the bulk of the money," agreed U.S. drug czar John Walters. "The Colombians have pulled back."

The U.S. drug trade is estimated to be a $142-billion annual business. As Mexican groups battle for control of the industry, violence has grown along the U.S.-Mexico border. Governors in both New Mexico and Arizona have declared emergencies along their borders with Mexico amid a rising wave of trafficking, violence, and illegal immigration. A recent shootout between traffickers in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico -- which neighbors Laredo, Texas -- involved high-powered rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and bazookas. "There really is a feeling that you can get away with murder in Nuevo Laredo," said Michael Yoder, the U.S. consul general in the city.

Walters worries that the violence could eventually move north. "The killing of rival traffickers is already spilling across the border," he said. "Witnesses are being killed. We do not think the border is a shield."

A Mexican Invasion

A majority of U.S.-born Hispanics, 60 percent, support laws that deny driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, according to a national poll released Tuesday. By contrast, only 29 percent of foreign-born Hispanics feel the same way, said the survey by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group.

Congress approved the REAL I.D. Act this year, which makes driver's licenses valid for a range of federal activities — from boarding a plane to collecting Social Security benefits — only if they are issued solely to U.S. citizens and legal immigrants. Several states already have laws to ban or restrict illegal immigrants from getting state identification cards and driver's licenses.

In addition, 56 percent of Hispanics said they favor a temporary worker program that would let illegal immigrants continue to live and work in the United States for a number of years before returning home. President Bush has proposed such a plan, although it is unclear whether it would include any chance at permanent residency for temporary workers. In Congress, several proposals have been introduced, but they face an uphill battle because many lawmakers oppose giving any legal status to people who have entered the United States illegally.

The poll also surveyed people in Mexico, and found that Mexicans of all economic and social classes are interested in migrating to the United States. One-fifth of Mexican adults said they would be inclined to live and work in the United States illegally, and more than 50 percent said they would be interested in a temporary worker program that required them to return to Mexico after a certain period of time.

In addition, 35 percent of Mexican college graduates said they would go to the United States if they had the means and opportunity, and about 13 percent said that they were inclined to do so illegally. The portion of the poll in Mexico included home interviews with 2,400 adults in February and May of this year.

The results from both months were virtually identical, showing that the well-publicized "Minutemen" protest in April, in which U.S. citizens patrolled the Arizona-Mexico border to highlight the problem of illegal immigration, made no difference in public attitudes in Mexico, Suro said.

The U.S. survey included telephone interviews with 1,001 Latinos from June 17 to June 27. All surveys have a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

It's time to arrest the criminals at the U.N.

President Bush sidestepped the Senate democrats and installed the nominee John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations on Monday, ending a five-month standoff with Democrats who accused Bolton of abusing subordinates and twisting intelligence to fit his conservative ideology. David Gregory from NBC discusses the political repercussions of Bolton's appointment and says that what his critics have called his "undiplomatic" manner may be exactly what the Bush administration wants as it seeks to ruffle feathers at the world body. Fortunately, President Bush is aware that diplomats at the U.N. will be upset with any new ambassador that doesn’t follow the status quo. Currently, the U.N. has turned into a hypocritical organization plagued with scandal, cover-ups, and bribes.

U.S. Senator Jon Kyl today applauded President Bush's appointment of John Bolton to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, noting that Senate Democrats' obstructionism left the president no other choice. Well, he is certainly going to alienate Democrats who don’t feel that Bolton has any credibility and who think he is an undiplomatic choice for a diplomatic post at the United Nations. But, it also is clear that the White House factored some of this into their thinking. The president needs a strong figure at the U.N. He’s frankly not much of a fan of the United Nations, nor is Vice President Cheney. The president talked about the need for reform and plans to stick to it, or will withhold 50% of American dues. Senate Democrats' constantly increasing demands to see more paperwork before allowing a vote on Bolton's nomination was a "transparent charade," Kyl added, warning: "The Senate shouldn't get too carried away with our ability to say no, because if we do, the president ultimately has the authority to go around us. Democrats need to understand that their obstructionism has actually weakened the power of the Senate."

The president has not shied away from saying that Bolton is a tough guy. The rap on him from critics is that he is abrasive, even abusive. Bolton has been accused by filibustering democrats of trying to twist intelligence on the Iraq war, and burning too many bridges in his career. But, the president stands behind him and said that he has his complete confidence. In announcing the recess appointment, Bush noted that the US has gone more than six months without a permanent UN ambassador - since the last ambassador, former Sen. John Danforth, resigned. He said the post is "too important to leave vacant any longer, especially during a war and a vital debate about UN reform."