An August 25 editorial in the New York Times (That’s 8 Out of 457,000) that talked down the Bush administration’s report-to-deport program drew a response from Lamar Smith (R-TX) worth passing along.  The editorial takes on what it calls the “continuing campaign of raids and arrests,” calling that policy “brutal, simplistic and also ineffective.” It is simple, and is proving to be highly effective as a deterrent when combined with attrition through enforcement practiced in many states.  Representative Smith’s response reminds us of the successes of enforcement and offers alternatives the editorial avoids:

You claim that neither current enforcement activities nor “mass deportation” can adequately address illegal immigration. But you don’t mention another alternative, attrition through enforcement, that is working to put an end to illegal immigration.

Illegal immigrants are voluntarily leaving states like Arizona and Oklahoma, and counties like Prince William County, Va., because of recent laws aimed at preventing illegal immigration.
Eliminating incentives for illegal immigrants is a step Congress must take. The current practice of birthright citizenship — granting automatic citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants on United States soil — creates a tremendous incentive for people to come here illegally and stay.

America is the only industrialized nation that doesn’t require at least one parent to be in the country legally before a child becomes a citizen. Congress should put an end to this practice.
Illegal immigration is not a problem without a solution. Enforcing current immigration laws and eliminating incentives like the job magnet and birthright citizenship would work over time.

Lamar Smith
San Antonio, Aug. 26, 2008

The writer, a Republican from Texas, is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.

SAN FRANCISCO-A Mexican native who was twice shielded from deportation as part of San Francisco's sanctuary city policy has been charged with attempted murder for allegedly gutting a man with a box cutter last year.

Eric Antonio Cahun is the second man to face serious criminal charges after having been freed under San Francisco's sanctuary policy, which city officials thought prevented them from reporting juvenile offenders suspected of being in the country illegally to federal authorities

Court and police records show that Uc-Cahun, now 19, was a juvenile when he was arrested two times in 2006 on gang-related assault charges in San Francisco in 2006.

He served four months in juvenile hall for the latter offense and still was on probation in May 2007 when he was arrested for the slashing in San Mateo, where he remains jailed.

Earlier this year, San Francisco prosecutors charged 21-year-old Edwin Ramos with triple murder in the June road rage slayings of a man and his two sons. Outrage over the city's policy prompted Mayor Gavin Newsom to reverse it. More than 50 juvenile offenders since have been referred to federal immigration officials.

In a report released June 24, the National Border Patrol Council criticized the agency's relaxed educational requirements, shortened training periods and less thorough background checks.

It urged Congress to intervene to maintain border security.

"They want the best and the brightest, but they're going about it in the wrong way," union president T.J. Bonner said. "They're rolling the dice with our homeland security."

But Border Patrol brass maintains that today's ranks are better educated, better trained and more diverse than any in the agency's past.

"If you're comparing past and present, the requirements are more stringent than they've ever been," said Lloyd Easterling, a Washington, D.C.-based spokesman for the agency.

The debate underscores seething tensions from the Border Patrol's old guard of agents, as well as the morale issues that leaders face to turn the agency into one of the federal government's premier law enforcement arms.

Did you know that the United Nations has a “Special Rapporteur” on the rights of migrant workers?  It does.  His name is Jorge Bustamante, and since 2005, his job has been to comment on the treatment of migrant workers around the globe.  Recently, in one of a dozen reports around the web (this link came from rightsidenews.com), he compared Prince William County, Virginia’s (meager) attempts at securing our border and upholding our laws as, well…  Jorge puts it this way:

“Jorge Bustamante, U.N. Human Rights representative, said that without social pressure on the federal government there will be no change in the treatment the compatriots receive in the United States. He added that without an immigration accord the probabilities are greater each day that xenophobia will triumph in the United States, with the consequent Nazi style arbitrary detentions and deportations.”

Enforcing the law (simply asking for identification when stopped by police or after an arrest) is a violation of human rights, and will lead to Nazi style detentions?  That is rhetoric (a slippery-slope logical fallacy), pure and simple, and takes away from the debate. 

In a short article that appeared on the same news link, the single reason we should all disregard Jorge’s sensational, even irrational conjecture to focus on border security and enforcing the law:

“three Turkish males, age 20, 21 and 34, were detained by Mex. immigration officials in Campeche after their passports showed no visa or admission stamp into Mexico.”

Campeche, Mexico is a l-o-n-g way from Turkey, and a long way from the American border as well.  Since the young Turks had not passed through customs to enter Mexico, it is difficult to decipher their intentions.  It is possible that they were simply on vacation, or (as the story indicates) they may have been there to unload the 230 kilos of cocaine they were found with.  They could be terrorists, or selling drugs (that end up in America) to finance terrorism.

WARNING:  Reading beyond this point requires an appreciation of irony:

Mexico obviously asked the three Turkish nationals for their identification and passport, and when it was discovered that they were not citizens, and did not have a legal right to be in Mexico, they were “detained by Mex. Immigration officials.”  Yes, that’s right.  Mexico used the same supposed “Nazi style” tactics used by Prince Williams County, Virginia. 

We must stop playing politics with this very volatile situation, before someone gets hurt.  It is essential that we (be allowed to?) secure our borders, just as any other country does.  It is critical that we assert our intention to enforce our laws in the same manner other countries (like Mexico in this case) do, without being cast as Nazis, racists, or xenophobes.

And it is critical we are able to do so without our efforts being sensationalized when they are just common sense solutions to real problems that effect Americans every single day. 

The most difficult thing to do when discussing America's immigration policy is to keep the focus of the debate on substantive solutions.

Solving our immigration problems must take precedence over emotionial debate regarding the myriad of social symptoms produced by ineffective border control, and inconsistent enforcement of the law.  That challenge is echoed in South Carolina, where a recent tragedy has seemingly distracted lawmakers, making it difficult to address a state fix to a federal problem.  From IslandPacket.com, an editorial entitled "Immigration reform must be more than a Band-Aid":

A dispassionate discussion about immigration reform may be nearly impossible in Beaufort County today in the wake of the death last week of 17-year-old Josh George of Bluffton.  The man charged in the two-vehicle collision that resulted in George's death had no driver's license and no car insurance. Law enforcement authorities are working to confirm his identity and his immigration status.

But a clear-headed discussion is what we need and what we expect from lawmakers in Columbia. If the state is going to take on the job of policing immigration, then lawmakers need to be using their heads, not their hearts to grind out the details.

Given that Senate and House conferees are trying for the second time this legislative session to compromise on a bill, we're not very optimistic they will produce a bill that accomplishes what they say they want to accomplish -- getting tough on businesses that hire illegal workers and thus taking away the reason many illegal immigrants are here.

It's difficult to know what, if any, immigration reform bill will get approved this session, which ends June 5. But we know one thing for sure, someone will be unhappy. Perhaps, everyone.

Read the rest of the story here

There are many reasons why our current immigration policy is wrong for America, good, bad, or indifferent, but they are merely symptoms of a larger problem, and distract us from examining the root cause of our dysfunction.  Our border is not secure, and anyone (with any intention) can walk into our country, unchallenged, and do whatever they wish.  If "anyone" can walk across the border to find work in America, then a terrorist can walk across the border with a suitcase nuke, fake docuemnts, and a roadmap to America's soft underbelly.  That's common sense, and that's a problem we need to solve.

The longer we do nothing, the more difficult the solution will become.  As the editorial stated, doing half of "something" (applying a Band-Aid) is not the answer we want to hear from career politicians with feet firmly planted on both sides of the issue.  We need to do the right things in order to be effective, like upholding the law, inviting rational discussion regarding common sense solutions, and securing our borders to protect our national security.  If those things are accomplished, won't the other things improve?  What do you think?

In Oregon, the 2006 election cycle saw candidates focus on immigration as a wedge issue, with mixed results.  In a recent Statesman Journal story from the Oregon campaign trail, other topics are leading the conversation in 2008:

"While there was a lot of noise in the last election on [immigration], particularly as it related to Republican candidates, the reality is that when push came to shove, it didn't, frankly, seem to have that much bite at the ballot box," said Tim Hibbitts, a pollster with Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall, a polling firm in Portland [Oregon].

Readers will remember that the 2006 elections saw us on the lead-up to the immigration battle on the hill, when the changing of hands in Congress set the tone for the McCain/Kennedy comprehensive reform bill the following summer.  It was the apparent lack of interest in the issue on behalf of voters in places like Oregon that convinced national politicians that voters wanted something different.  Not that the issue wasn’t important, it just didn’t seem to hurt or help candidates all that much:

Hibbitts said he disagrees with the notion that voters punished candidates who took a punitive stance on illegal immigration during the 2006 campaigns.  "Candidates thought immigration was going to be more salient at the ballot box, and it wasn't," he said, "so politicians have moved on to other issues they think will resonate with voters."

Given recent polling conducted by American Solutions, it is possible that the candidates simply had the wrong message (or even competing messages) for voters on the issue.

When the American People are asked their views on immigration, they speak with the clarity of an 80% tri-partisan majority:  Use English as the official language of government, enforce our laws, control who has access to our country, and actively promote assimilation of legal immigrants into our culture by educating them in English and American history.

When stated so gracefully, issues like these are easy to understand and contrast with the usual political rhetoric.  Americans have no distaste for immigrants, and they understand the plight of employers and politicians, but they recognize that there is a problem and simply want results.    

What do you think?

Newt's newsletter this week discusses NY Governor Spitzer's plan to give driver's licenses to people here illegally.

You've probably heard of New York Democratic Gov. Elliot Spitzer's misguided plan to issue driver's licenses to immigrants in this country illegally.

What you might not have heard is that the federal government is now on board with the insanity in the Empire State.

The Associated Press is reporting that this weekend the federal government "cut a deal" with Gov. Spitzer to allow the creation of a three-tiered license system in New York -- with licenses going to illegal immigrants.

You can read the entire newsletter here. The section on the driver's licence plan is about halfway down.  

Douglas MacKinnon writes on the illegal immigration drama in Prince William County outside of D.C. in his column "Illegal Aliens Declare War on the United States, Part II."  As Congress proved itself incapable of enforcing the law, some localities such as this one have decided that the only way to curb the problem of illegal immigration is to attempt to do it themselves:

"When we last left it, Prince William County in Virginia was trying to defend itself and its legal inhabitants against the massive influx of illegal aliens pouring into the county. A migration that is putting a tremendous strain on the infrastructure of the county while substantially raising the crime rate.

Toward that end, the county logically decided that the best way to combat this invasion by illegal aliens was to simply enforce the laws. Mistake. At least as far as the illegal aliens, their left-wing lawyers, and the left-leaning Washington Post are concerned. The illegal aliens and their lawyers, with a huge public relations assist from the Washington Post, basically decided to declare war on the county in response."

After Congress has failed the American people for years by not securing our borders, and the tragic execution of three students in Newark by an illegal immigrant who was released after being charged with sexual assault of a child, it's not surprising that localities feel that they are left with no choices but to try to tackle the issue themselves.

Find the whole piece here.
Read Part I of his column here.