Lost in the immigration wilderness

The NY Times appears to have missed the message of voters on the immigration issue. It editorializes today:

The nation certainly sounds as if it’s in an angry place on immigration.

A major Senate reform bill collapsed in rancor in June, and every effort to revive innocuous bits of it, like a bill to legalize exemplary high school graduates, has been crushed. Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York hatched a plan to let illegal immigrants earn driver’s licenses — and steamrollered into the Valley of Death. Asked if she supported Mr. Spitzer, Senator Hillary Clinton tied herself in knots looking for the safest answer.

The Republican presidential candidates, meanwhile, are doggedly out-toughing one another — even Rudolph Giuliani, who once defended but now disowns the immigrants who pulled his hard-up city out of a ditch. A freshman Democratic representative, Heath Shuler of North Carolina, has submitted an enforcement bill bristling with border fencing and punishments. Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, for whom restricting immigration is the first, last and only issue, says he will not run again when his term expires next year. I have done all I can, he says, like some weary gunslinger covered in blood and dust.

The natural allies of immigrants have been cowed into mumbling or silent avoidance. The Democrats’ chief strategist, Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, went so far as to declare immigration the latest “third rail of American politics.” This profile in squeamishness was on full display at the Democratic presidential debate last week in Las Vegas, when Wolf Blitzer pressed the candidates for yes-or-no answers on driver’s licenses and Mrs. Clinton, to her great discredit, said no.

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These are the ingredients of a realistic approach to a complicated problem. It’s called comprehensive reform, and it rests on the idea that having an undocumented underclass does the country more harm than good. This is not “open-borders amnesty,” a false label stuck on by those who want enforcement and nothing else. It’s tough on the border and on those who sneaked across it. It’s tough but fair to employers who need immigrant workers. It recognizes that American citizens should not have to compete for jobs with a desperate population frightened into accepting rock-bottom wages and working conditions. It makes a serious effort to fix legal immigration by creating an orderly future flow of legal workers.

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America is waiting for a leader to risk saying that the best answer is not the simplest one....

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America already has a leader who embraced the NY Times approach and it was rejected. His name is George W. Bush. The comprehensive approach was rejected not just because opponents used the term amnesty. It was rejected because the country has no faith that the enforcement provisions of the law would be enforced. They have reasons to doubt the seriousness of the the government when it comes to immigration laws and they certainly have reason to doubt the seriousness of the Times in supporting enforcement as can be seen by the ridicule heaped on the new proposals for enforcement first.

Another problem with the so called comprehensive approach is that voters perceived that there were inadequate consequences for those who came here illegally, when their path to citizenship was easier than that of those who come here legally. This leaves the correct perception that such "reforms" will only encourage future violations of the law. The only way we will get controlled legal immigration is by making the consequences of coming here illegally more onerous than doing it the right way. Perhaps that is why new legal immigrants support Republicans.

The Times itself is reporting elsewhere in the paper there was "an unanticipated flood last summer of applications for citizenship and for residence visas" that has swamped the Citizenship and Immigration Services. Elsewhere it says, " The deluge has been so great that the agency is struggling to send out notices acknowledging it has received the applications." It manages to barely acknowledge that the "surge" in applications is because of the perception that we are getting serious about enforcing the law.

Meanwhile, Ann Coulter is hopeful that Democrats will take the Times' advice on the immigration issue.