Redstate

It's not an amnesty.  It's not much better, but it's not an amnesty.  But so what?  It's not a solution, or even an approach towards one.  It's a diversionary measure.  If, as the proponents of this approach claim, we can't identify the 12 million illegals now (which is why, we're told, we can't deport them), how are we supposed to get them into this program?  Is it on the honor system?  What's their incentive for coming forward?  So they can get benefits?  Lots of them already do.  Go to college?  See the DREAM act.  So they can pay taxes?  Yeah, right.  They've been here this long without being deported, or, if they were deported, they just came back.  Why pay $2000 to do something they've been getting away with for years in the first place?  Finally, who really believes that the problem of the sympathetic Honduran grandmother on dialysis will go away with this proposal?  If we can't muster the will to deport her now, who really thinks that we'll make her leave some time in the next six years?  It's not going to happen.  This whole plan is one of enforcement deferred, for the sake of appearing to do something about the problem.  The worst part is that it's a Kennedy bill, a man who was closely involved in the immigration disasters of 1964 and 1986.  We're supposed to trust him now?

All the reasons that I personally oppose the bill. In order to get the illegal immigrants to enroll in any program, you have to offer a genuine carrot, and a $2,000 fine isn't it. Which is why, as much as it may be distasteful, I support giving them outright amnesty, which I think they would go for, as long as we can be sure they're willing to assimilate (learn English, etc.)

But, as I've said, and as you've pointed out, 1986 has taught us that we shouldn't even have this discussion until the border is secured first.

In my ideal world, the Sensenbrenner bill would get passed first, THEN McCain-Kennedy would get passed.

Sadly, I'm sure that what will actually happen is that some worthless compromise bill will come out of the conference committee.

Whatever law(s) Congress ends up passing on this issue, whether it be the Sensenbrenner bill or the McCain-Kennedy proposal, your concerns about border enforcement will remain.  As border enforcement is the prerogative of the executive, President Bush is within his rights as chief executive to refuse to enforce a "get tough" bill like Sensenbrenner's if he chooses.  He won't do so publicly, but let's say hypothetically he signs the Sensenbrenner bill.  Within a few months you will see published reports of executive intransigence and/or incompetence in enforcing the bill's provisions, I almost guarantee it.  This will occur whether Bush resists enforcing it or not, given the inertia of the DHS bureaucracy and its general incompetence.   I don't think it will even be able to build a wall correctly.  Put simply, Republicans' sense of anxiety over border enforcement will not be put to rest no matter how tough the laws from Congress get.  There will be gains at the margins, perhaps, but overall the immigration picture will be similar to what it is today.

Personally, I am not very sympathetic to the Sensenbrenner bill.  I am inclined to support McCain-Kennedy.  We will have to become comfortable with the idea of a porous border - the real question is how to assimilate the immigrants that are here and will continue to come into this country.  We can't do that with summary deportation, and I think such a policy would seriously damage both the image of the United States and our economy and culture (yes, I think lots of immigration benefits American culture).  The McCain-Kennedy requirement of English learning, civics classes and fair restitution for having comitted a crime is very reasonable and in line with American views of justice, in my opinion.

I doubt it would be that hard to scrounge up $1000, between payroll advances, family, loan sharks, etc, if its the difference between deportation and staying put.  I like some of the rest of the provisions, but the fine is scarcely debilitating.  

If the 6 year rule is enforced, and those who do not pay the fine are consistently arrested and deported, it's no amnesty.

But until proven otherwise, I say this'll just be 1986 all over again, where the open-borders side gets all it was promised, and the law-enforcement side gets nothing.

Are we to believe that a BCIS that plays catch-and-release now, and has institutional pressures now against raiding businesses that hire illegals, is going to do a 180 should this bill take effect?

It seems to me odd that people who claim that 'rounding up' all the illegals is impossible, should also support this bill.  Won't arresting all the illegals who overstay the 6-year rule be just as impossible, both politically and logistically, as it would be to arrest them all now?

I believe, though I am not positive, that $2,000 is the roughly the going rate charged by Coyotes to bring people over the border.  That's a market-based indication of what people are willing to pay, so it seems to me that, if anything, it's a little low.

You say you don't see enough of a "carrot" in this proposal, but surely a shot at citizenship, and not having to live in fear of INS knocking at your door is enough of a carrot?  

if we auctioned off $1,000 bids in Mexico for people to obtain a 6-year free pass to work in the U.S., would it have many takers?  Of course it would.  It would be a great deal given the wage differential, particularly in peso terms, for Mexicans.  (I'll leave aside the discussion of how financing mechanisms would develop to enable them to make the down payment, if needed).  

That said, I'm sorry to disagree with you, but this is amnesty.  $1,000 is not a penalty.  It is a token figure meant to say "there is a penalty" when the ill-gotten gains from their offense is much larger.  How do we quantify it?  We'd have to sum up the security risk contingency, per-capita wage deflationary impact, the demoralizing impact of non-patriots in our midst, before we even get to the hard costs to our social services infrastructure.    

Compared to this supposed "fine," let's take, as a point of reference, what happens when an American citizen breaks insider trading laws and makes an illegal profit.  They are forced to pay treble damages, if found guilty (BTW, I've never understood why the SEC uses "treble" instead of "triple").  That is a far cry from a token fee that people would be willing to front in order to gain access to our job market.  

Of course, the real shame is that we're taking the law-breakers under our arm while telling those who  play by the rules to keep waiting to participate in our society.  Cella's point about the willingness of would-be immigrants to follow our laws as the minimum indicator of willingess to assimilate cannot be repeated often enough.

I guess we were on the same wavelength.

I think the answer is yes.  Contrary to your assertions that illegal immigrants wouldn't step forward to accept fines and civics classes just like they won't step forward to accept deportation, I believe most illegal immigrants want to be legal, but don't take the steps to do so because of the risk of deportation.

Why, do you ask, would illegal immigrants want to become legal?  First of all, consider the effects of immigrant crime.  Yes, it is likely higher than native-born crime is.  But before we rush to stereotype immigrants as criminals, consider that one possible reason is that much, if not most, crime among immigrants goes unreported because victims fear deportation if they go to the police.  If more of these victims become legal, law enforcement in immigrant communities would start working more like it normally does, and we'd see more effective action against immigrants who really do pose a threat to society.

Secondly, continuing with that point, fear of deportation really is more important than you think.  Most illegals live in constant fear of it, and would be willing to pay fines and take classes to make the threat of it go away.  The entitlement regimes in some states, especially Arizona, have also grown more unfriendly to illegal immigrants in recent years, which will encourage legalization.  It is important that we restrict these entitlements to legal citizens only, and I hope the McCain-Kennedy proposal will include provisions for federal benefits if it does not already do so.

But to build a wall and start mass deportations makes little sense, economically or diplomatically.  Sensenbrenner's bill appears to me to be all stick and little or no carrot.  We won't solve our problems that way, given the executive intransigence I mentioned below.  We need to encourage illegals to legalize and assimilate, not simply punish them, and I do believe that most truly desire to become legal.

describes amnesty as "a blanket abolition of an offense by the government, with the legal result that those charged or convicted have the charge or conviction wiped out.... Amnesty is not a pardon as some believe, since a pardon implies forgiveness, and amnesty indicates a reason to overlook or forget the offenses."

The offense is being in the country illegally, except that they haven't been charged....yet.  The legal result of paying the $1,000 fine (along with the other stipulations) wipes out the charge.  And we know the reason to overlook or forget the offense is due to decades of lax law enforcement that has made the situation no longer tenable.  Sure sounds like amnesty to me.

I agree that most of these illegals will not have the $1000 to pay.  But considering that they broke the law getting into this country, it's not too much of a stretch to think that many will break it again to obtain those funds.  Kennedy started this fiasco in 1965.  I see no reason to back any proposal he's authoring now.  

Learning to walk begins with your first step.  Maybe we can't "arrest them all" as many would like, but we can take that first step in enforcing the laws already on the books, even if it means added costs of law enforcement and expansion of the courts.  To me, it would be a small price to pay to start signaling to future illegals that we mean business about deporting.

In political terms, virtual fences just don't cut it. Virtual fences, electronic fences, can be shut off as easily as flipping the switch to OFF. There needs to be a real fence that can't be shut off with a switch, or I don't think enough of the voting public will go for it. They want a razor-wire fence.

No fence, no dice.

####################################################

to my question is merry laughter, but how about this proposal:

1. Build a wall, north and south
2. Eliminate all guest worker programs
3. Keep it illegal to hire undocumented aliens
4. Offer citizenship to anyone who shows up and is willing to take the test(s).

In other words, condition working here on willingness to pledge allegiance. Solve the problem by securing the border and ending what is to me the abhorrent ban on legal immigration.

Who, under that plan, is treated unjustly?  Only those who would reap the benefits of our land without paying loyalty to it.

There is a small subset of people who will fail the citizenship exams, or fail to be timely about it.  I'm not sure how big a hole that is.

Building a wall presents unpleasant imagery, so the logic of the plan may fall apart amidst the aforementioned merry laughter.

Won't arresting all the illegals who overstay the 6-year rule be just as impossible, both politically and logistically, as it would be to arrest them all now?

Yes quite obviously it will be. IMO there are really only two serious options to consider- 1)allow for legal continued residency (ie let them stay) 2) Attach significant criminal penalties to employers hiring illegals and seriously enforce (ie force them out). I haven't seen any other options that merit serious consideration one way or the other.

THe mass deporation thing is not realistic, and any kind of guest worker thing with as you note impossible to enforce "return to Mexico" requirements is also a joke.

Was eating dinner, but according to CNN it appears they are going to be discussing both the McCain (Eventual Citzenship/Guest Worker) and the Frist (Security Propsal) at the same time in the senate tommorrow.

You pay a fee and you get something of great value in exchange for it. Something you can't usually buy on the market at any price. That does not fit the definition of a fine. If it were an actual fine, the person paying it would get nothing of value in exchange.

A work visa is very valuable. Citizenship is very  valuable. At these firesale prices, it would certainly be worth coming here right now just to take advantage of it. The amnesty or not debate is largely irrelevant anyway (it is just a label) but this still qualifies as an amnesty in my book.

You need a physical barrier to prevent entry of vehicles and to slow down or stop people from infiltrating.

Would your opinion of the $1000 dollar fine change instead of paying up $1000 up front,  the illegal aliens have to sign their name and fill up the paper work now, and pay the first $1000 in some future timeframe (six months or a year) allowing them time to earn it.  Followed by the other $1000 payment in 6 years when they try to get their citizenship.

A ditch has alot less of a psychological prescene than a wall, yet can have the same effect.  Though it would be very costly to produce.

How much the Wal-Marts in Mexico could sell work visas for? Surely they could get a lot more than $1k.

I don't care at all about the psychological effects of a wall. In any case the only people who are going to see the wall are those who are crossing illegally. We have walls in urban areas already. It is out in the desert that we have nothing at all.

There have been numerous reports of border smugglers taking several thousand dollars per person to sneak people across the border. Immigrants who have already paid such a fee to a smuggler would probably find $1000 a relatively small price to pay to be left in peace for six years, rather than risk being deported and repaying a smuggler.

One thing that such a fine could do, is sort out migrant workers from gang members. Workers would have a legitimate source of money to pay the fine--gang members might need to resort to crime to get the money, and if they're caught, they could be thrown out.

One question about the fine...what is the fine money used for? More border patrol agents? Inspectors to check out employers who might be employing illegal immigrants?

If there are really 12 million illegal immigrants in this country, the fines could bring in $12 billion. With that kind of money, the government could probably hire lots of inspectors in the border states to find these people, and the program could pay for itself.

from Brownsville to El Paso. The mis-named Rio Grande isn't much wider than a ditch.

But keeping a ditch underwater in the Arizona desert might be more expensive than a wall.

I got the impression that the most errenous area of the US border was in the Arizona region, and this is one reason why the Minuteman did their inital partrol in Arizona.

If anybody has any data about where the most errenous parts of the border is please provide it.

way painful, so as to discourage it.

My concern is that we don't seem all that concerned about controlling the illegal end still.

I am not really opposed to a guest worker or even this amnesty/non amnesty but close plan, I just want to make sure we make violation of the law after it is implemented very painful for the workers and anyone who employs them.

Part of the problem with illegal immigration right now is there is no teeth in any kind of border enforcement.  

So where's the part where they go after those hiring the illegals?  

Sure secure the border, build the wall, do what ever works, but if you don't go after the reason why illegals come here, then they will continue to come.

Anyone who thinks that INS/ICE rocking into a business, rounding up illegals for deportation is going to last long given the way MSM and Liberals will portray that sort of thing is just nuts.

Try the same thing where INS/ICE hits a business, checks legal status of workers, maybe checks for wants and warrants of illegals found, writes a ticket to the business for violations and then leaves any illegals without outstanding warrants behind. Far as I know, business have to follow employment laws like paying taxes, workman's compensation and all the other payroll taxes, they have no have not rights, only individuals do, legal or not.

There's a provision in the bill that requires employers to affirmatively verify the legal status of their employees, subject to a 10 year prison term (!) for failure to comply.

Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act (Introduced in Senate)[S.1033.IS]

(Introduced in House)[H.R.2330.IH]

We need a wall, with gates, each of which has a great big sign over it reading:

Enter, all who would share our burdens and be relieved of theirs.

the fine (or fee) is comparable to what other countries are charging would-be immigrants. The Canadioans ahve $1000 application fee plus a $900 acceptance fee-- in Canadian funds that would, until recently, be not much more than our $1000.

Does the legislation actually define "affirmatively verify," or does it just direct the executive branch to write regs containing the definition? Is the jail time mandatory?

Too harsh a punishment.  That sort of punishment will be overturned in court as being disproportional to the crime committed, or not prosecuted at all. You think the 9th Circuit would uphold that level of punishment for a non violent crime...nah!

I'd rather see a Civil fine of something like $2K a head plus something like $10K for egregious violations which would not get thrown out.  

"Secondly, continuing with that point, fear of deportation really is more important than you think."

Are you serious?  They don't fear deportation, just look at all the protests around the country.  They know they can do whatever they want, short of felony crimes, and nothing will happen because our government looks the other way.  Local police stop illegals for driving violations and of course no auto insurance, no drivers license, car's not registered, etc.  They are arrested for the no license, etc. they call INS and they say they don't have the staff, time or the room to deal with them, just let them go.

The town next to mine used to be a hard working American town, now it looks like a section of Saul Paulo Brazil.  In the downtown section, 50% of the stores are brazilian and over 5% of the town is illegals from Brazil.

Now I can't find the provision in the statute. I may have conflated this with another statute I was researching today. All I can find now is that the fines are doubled for violations, and a provision is made for this electronic verification system, and requirements for employers to use it.

It doesn't rebut it.  My point was that it was comparable to a free-market price, NOT a penalty for breaking the law. And if we, as a nation, made the determination we wanted to let in 1 Mil more legal immigrants than now, a $1000 fee might be a reasonable fee to accomodate that.  But to point to that charge, call it a fine, and say that it wipes the slate clean for a history of breaking our law is pure silliness.  

Oh, and BTW, you'll note that the other nations you've mentioned actually care to enfore their laws against ILLEGAL immigrants.  We seem to be the only Western Country that doesn't care if people choose a legal or illegal corridor to come here.

That $1000 doesn't guarantee you anything. That is why people are willing to pay coyotes thousands of dollars to bring them here illegally (and I think it is more like $10,000+ to come here illegally from Asia). If anybody in the world could get into Canada legally for only $1900, they would just go there instead.

Here we are selling a work visa for $1000 to anybody who can get here in time (or can pretend they got here in time). No limits, no approval, no nothing. Not comparable to what any other country on the face of the earth does as far as I know.

With that kind of money, the government could probably hire lots of inspectors in the border states to find these people, and the program could pay for itself.

The current budget of the Border Patrol is $35 bln a year. So if every one of those illegals did this tomorrow they could double the size of the Border Patrol for about 4 months. $12 bln isn't a lot of money.

Nothing but increased fines there. I'll see if I can find it.

For 9 freebie illegal hires before the new penalty kicks in?

Also prescriptions for Labor Department to make regs. PUUUUUUKE, just what we needed.

Is another viable route... you can even take vehicles across it depending on the water level. That is where the confrontation with the Mexican Army supported drug runners in SUVs took place. They ran back across the river. One of the SUVs got stuck so they set fire to it (after transferring off the drugs).

Even when breaking the law, there is strength in numbers.  They didn't fear deportation as part of a major crowd because crowds a) grant anonymity and b) a sense of confidence.  If you think police are going to shake down several tens of thousands of protesters for IDs, you have another thing coming.  However, on an individual basis, deportation does hang as a constant cloud over most illegal immigrants' lives.  It happens often enough that it's not an imaginary threat, which is really the DHS's goal - it would be impossible to actually deport all these people, but they figure they can frighten enough into generally not causing trouble.  That's not a bad strategy, given the massive amount of immigrants, legal and illegal, that DHS has to keep track of.  However, why would an illegal immigrant want to risk that threat if they can pay a fine, take English, and swear a pledge of loyalty?  To me, that would seem to be a pretty good deal.

No it won't.

Because there are no penalties for not applying for permanent citizenship.  If there are no penalties then some may take advantage of it, but others will simply continue to work illegally.

And since nothing is done about the borders, there is nothing to stem the flow of even more illegals.

If you were to add a year limit for applying for the program, you would at least sunrise when people had a chance.

There are no consequences to having come here illegally in the first place.

$1000 ... please .. talk to anyone who has gone through legal immigration and they will tell you that they have spent much more than that to become citizens.

I won't say that this bill isn't a starting point, but I'm not willing to concede that as written its anything other than an amnesty bill dressed up pretty.

Penalties under USC Title 18 including 5 years in jail for making false and misleading statements, blah blah blah. Coupled with the prior reporting requirement (employer must submit proof of verification within three days of hire) I think you could interpret that as criminal liability for the employer.

talk to anyone who has gone through legal immigration and they will tell you that they have spent much more than that to become citizens

I haven't heard anyone make this argument before, but it's true, you spend a lot more than $1000 on legal fees to come here on a harder to get and more restrictive H1-B visa.

The problem is that what ever immigration law is created it will not be enforced. That is the problem. The current law is not enforced on humanitarian grounds and neither will the new one. Face it.

We assume most of the illegals are sending big dollars back to Mexico. Well, the remittances are running about $17 billion a year. Out of 12 million illegals, that's only $1,400 per year apiece. Assuming maybe half of the illegals are actually working (I just made that up), that's two grand you have to come up to spring two people. Almost as much as you send back to your family in a whole year.

For perspective, the average American citizen generates about $40,000 of GPD each year. If somewhere between one-third and one-half of all people are gainfully employed, that's in the neighborhood of $100,000 a head. Adjust for education and the fact that illegals generally work for low-end companies, and I have a very hard time believing the average productivity of an illegal is much less than $20,000. Again assuming half of them work, that's (conservatively) $120 billion dollars of black GDP, according to the back of my envelope.

Because to date, we have proven ourselves unwilling to enforce immigration laws, and I suspect that any future laws will mostly be either "feel good" or "voter seeking" without any effort to follow through.

I actually don't oppose some kind of amnesty like resolution, if it comes with an actual intent to secure the borders and have a zero tolerance policy towards future illegal immigration.

I don't care if that $1000 is 10 year's wages or one day's wages. It still comes down to the fact that we are selling visas for $1000 a piece. Anyone who wants one just has to get here and plunk down their $1K. Why wouldn't skilled workers just come here illegally and get their $1000 visa instead of going through the expensive and time consuming H1B process where they (maybe, eventually) end up with a (more restrictive) visa if you can find a company willing to do it (putting in their own time and money)? $1000 is a great deal for what you get.

Other than "Round them up, send them home" would you propose as a sanction that would satisfy your burning desire for "punishment"?  What is appropriate punishment that can get passed in a bill by Congress that President Bush will sign?

There are at least 12 Million people in this country illegally, probably more like 20 Million,  what is a realistic proposal for a punishment that actually be enforced? Are you willing to pay for the prisons, courts and everything else it would take to "punish" these violators of our laws?

At the end of the day, the policy establishes preferential treatment for those seeking immigration from Mexico. We have to get the details right, and that won't easy, but I'm not seeing a fundamental problem with it.

provision in the bill that requires employers to affirmatively verify the legal status of their employees, subject to a 10 year prison term

I'm skeptical when I see some draconian penalty touted as proof of seriousness. What really counts is what does an employer have to do to avoid that harsh penalty? Is the employer safe as long as he insists that every illegal alien he hires must present fake documents, that look semi-plausible in the dark?

I haven't been able to find the employer sanctions in the actual text of the Judiciary Committee bill (my limited ability wading through legislativese and thomas), and the newspaper reports are pretty thin on employer sanction details.

The Washington Post says up to 10 years in prison for employers who knowingly hire more than 10 illegals in one year. You can drive Arnold's Hummer through that "knowingly" loophole. Unless there are similarly harsh penalties for not maintaining records proving that you made a serious attempt to verify the employee's legality, the "knowingly" provision reduces the sanction to a joke.

The Post article also says employers are required to verify the legal status of the hires, but without details on what they actually have to do, I don't know if that amounts to any improvement. Remember, employers are already "required" to verify residency, and we see what a meaningless charade that currently is.

Maybe this bill really has some employer sanctions serious enough to actually induce employers to only hire legals, but I'll wait to see it before I believe it. Without credible employer sanctions, everything else (even with a triple wall and alligator filled moat) only adds up to millions more illegal intruders with no end in sight.

I don't know how you can have a preferable situation in Mexico to guaranteed acceptance here. Even with a guest worker program or increased quotas, you can be sure they will still fill up.

I'm against this proposal at this time. I think we need to do something about the border first. We shouldn't even be talking about this now. I believe we will have to offer those here amnesty (or amnesty-lite) at some point. This would be a good plan for that... but now is not the time to do it.

policy establishes preferential treatment for those seeking immigration from Mexico.

I've been hearing numbers like 12 to 20 million for the headcount of Mexicans in the US illegally. Is it just my imagination, or are we saying that somewhere between 1-in-10 and 1-in-5 of all Mexican citizens is illegally in the United States? Imagine if you grouped everyone in the US into families of five and sent one person abroad from every one of them. Can the illegal Mexican population really be that big?

..."At the end of the day" is because de facto the policy will affect primarily Mexicans, since they're mostly the ones who are here illegally. (There are a lot of illegal Irish here too, but nothing like 12 million. It's anyone's guess how many illegal Chinese there are.) It's preferential vis-a-vis people who go through the standard process, to give the illegals a streamlined path to legal status ($1000 fine, back taxes and some civics classes).

What section of the law did you read that in? That sounds bizarre and arbitrary. It would also probably exempt every small restaurant, landscaper and gas station.

and from experience I can say a $1000 fine in exchange for citizenship is extremely cheap.  I know a whole passle of non-Mexicans that would jump at this opportunity.

Sounds to me like you would have to knowingly hire 10 before this provision would affect you. I don't like that at all if that is the case. It would exempt a lot of the more egregious violators, those who hire illegal staff for their $20m mansions, for instance. Small business people in roofing or construction would be hit much harder.

Sorry to say it's a step towards a National ID, but what else can be done.

Title: To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to enforce restrictions on employment in the United States of unauthorized aliens through the use of improved Social Security cards and an Employment Eligibility Database, and for other purposes.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.00098:

Why come forward and pay a fine when the US govt doesn't have the stones to deport or even call them 'illegal'.

Does anyone expect the same spineless legislators to create and manage a database that tracks fines, and background checks while conducting english language testing??

I'd be laughing if this wasn't such a serious issue.

Neither party wants to deal with this problem and they won't unless we force them. So far both the House and Senate proposals are utterly worthless - since they won't be enforced.

Build the wall first.

...the 10 year prison provision appears in a proposal by Specter, not in McCain-Kennedy.

Proposal of Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.)

· Requires employers to verify legal status of employees. An employer who has knowingly hired more than 10 illegal workers in one year could face up to 10 years in prison.

It's cheaper than the frickin' plane ticket. There's a business opportunity: go back to Thailand and open a travel agency. Complete travel-package deal to the US: includes hotel, air, and citizenship.

Only residents as of May 2005 are eligible for this program. See the update.

Please don't confuse those that want their pound of flesh with facts that politicians are trying to treat illegals with some amount of humanity ;)

A friend works as a mechanic at a garage/autobody shop, and all the car detailers, half the tow truck drivers (about 7 illegals) and a handful more are illegals from Brazil and Central America.  I see most of them a few times when I stop by and they could not care less about INS, police or anyone else.  They do not in anyway fear deportation.  The tow truck drivers see police everyday when they show up to tow cars from accidents.  A few of them own houses and all are paid cash under the table.

You do not need to deport 11 million illegals, you only need to punish the employers who are breaking the law, and do not offer any social services or allow illegals to attend college, seize cars of illegals driving without a license/insurance/registration.  If the fines are high enough and the enforcement of them real, they will not risk highering illegals.  When there are no jobs, they cannot drive, etc., they will leave on their own.

I absolutely believe we need low skill labor, and believe it is necessary for significant economic growth rates but it needs to be done through increased visas rather than the amnesty.  Immigrants are great but to reward people who first broke the law to come here is not good policy.  We went through immigration reform in the mid 1960's, the mid 1980's and now again.  The prior two times we washed our hands and thought that solved the problem.  McCain's bill does it again and will only encourge more and more illegals who believe that if they just get here, at some point they will get amnesty.  We know why the democrats what this, they see another voter block to pander to, just like they want felon's to vote but I cannot understand Graham, McCain, Brownback, Spector is a Dem so...

I'm sometimes not sure if I'm looking at the correct bill in the thomas site, but I think what you linked to is to the House bill, much more to my liking than what just got reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

I agree a national ID card is required to make enforcement on employers workabl. I don't see that as a significant threat to privacy. The Feds (and banks and grocery stores and ...) already have mountains of data on all of us. An enhanced Social Security card would only make it more difficult for somebody to pass himself off under a fake identity, including stealing yours or mine.

At that time, there was a network of illegals who helped each other create very convincing "paper trails" that proved that they had been here for the requisite length of time (was it 5 years?). Since the statute of limitations has passed I'll tell you that I helped a few with this myself -- People I knew to be very hard workers and good members of the community.

Anyway, people who arrived here after May 2005 will be showing up routinely with "proof" that they were here before the deadline.

right here. Says at the top S (as in Senate) 1033. this would indicate that it is, indeed, the McCain/Kennedy Bill.

It's shocking how stringent is because of how it's been demonized as an amnesty proposal all over the internet. It's a shockingly good bill, despite its authors.

that makes my blood boil.  12 million illegals who totally disregarded our rules and sovereignty get more rights and priviledges than my wife and her family who have tried to obey the system.  God help Richard Shelby if this becomes policy and my wife ever sees him again because she will unceremoniously rip him a new one.

It does not change my tacit approval of a strong immigration reform and acceptance that some things will just have to be accepted.  However, it will affect my support for any politician that supports amnesty for illegals without addressing those that have been denied or stymied by a system that punishes honesty and rewards criminality.

I can certainly appreciate your frustration with the process - although in fairness to the bill, after paying $2,000 in fines, waiting six years, and passing a language and civics test, then they go to the back of the line for citizenship.

Do you validate that they were really in the country as of that date? Some people are going to have zero paper trail. No bank account, no employment records, etc. If all it takes is someone to vouch for them, I could see plenty of abuse of that. If it was restrictive enough to filter out the fakers, it seems like it would filter out many legit applicants.

Now all I have to do is wade through the turgid prose (strike section 823 and replace "shall" with "may"...) and try to figure out what's going on. That prospect makes me reconsider whether I should be thanking you ;-)

I'm yet to be convinced that the enforcement really is so stringent. I'll have to see and understand the details on what the employers actually have to do, more important than what the penalties are. And you may be right, that how vigorously the executive actually uses the enforcement tools in the legislation may be crucial; I'd like to minimize the executive's discretion to ignore the law.

The section you are looking for is section 402. That doesn't really leave a lot of discretion to the Commissioner of Social Security.

The criminal penalty sections are 701(m)(1).

In section 701(e)(2). Admittedly, that's a weak point of this bill, and ideally I'd like to see language to the effect that, some period of time after the passage of the act, nobody gets to come forward and say they've been residents, which would at least put a final stop to attempts to game the system. However, the bill still has plenty of time for markup.

the illegals will go through this process while living and working in the US regardless of their job skills or English proficiency, while many of our relatives may never get the chance even to immigrate.  There is no "fairness" to this bill, yet I begrudgingly still see the need for it.

I had promised myself this year I would become more active in the party, here is my chance.

Well sorry it makes your blood boil, but lets get real here. We created the problem with 20 years of doing nothing about our borders, we enjoy the fruits of this cheap labor, even encourage it and there are 12 Million human beings who are here now and are not going away any time soon.

Yes they broke our laws, yes there should be punishment, but lets not a desire for retribution for these actions make us loose sight of the fact that these are fellow human beings. Hard working, honest, people of faith who for the most part are in our country to make a living for their families and themselves.

From a purely political point of view, Hispanics are a growing population in this country, and any political party that does not treat illegal immigrants with some modicrum of human dignity in crafting laws to deal with this situation will soon feel one heck of a backlash.

tough love crap especially where it is unwarranted.

It does not change my tacit approval of a strong immigration reform and acceptance that some things will just have to be accepted.

Just for kicks, try explaining to my wife how these "fellow human beings. Hard working, honest, people of faith" that broke the law are more deserving than her family of hard working, honest, people of faith that did not break the law.

It's not, but neither is lots of things where the governments has screwed up and end up "fixing" the problem later on.  

Try Busing in the 70's to fix "Separate but equal", I lived that one.

Try Affirmative Action to fix discrimination in hiring practices for African Americans, Women etc.

BBK is well awair that life isn't always fair; what you're doing at this point is just rubbing the point in on something that's personal to him. It's not necessary, so please move along.

Not because a wall in and of itself would be effective, but because the scandal of having a breeched wall would be a scandal in the media and their cattle in Congress.

It would change the dynamic, I think.  I hope to see freer borders along with it, but I'm probably dreaming.

I absolutely agree with this.  And it needs to be in it's own bill, without any hanger on provisions so the Libs can't demagog it as anything more than a Security bill.

We can deal with the illegals that are here now AFTER we secure the border.  

And I wouldn't even contract building the fence out. Have the Seebee's and Marine Combat Engineer Units do it. (I suppose you could use the Army/Air Force CE's too, but as a Former Marine, I'm biased.)  Condemn/buy a 1 mile wide strip on our side of the border (outside the border cities), and basically make it an exclusion zone.  3 or more razorwire fences, electronically monitored, aerially monitored with Spectre Gunships, and enforced with the Spectre's, Fast Movers(FA-18's) and Rapid Reaction Forces of Marines. And I'd put claymores in the center fence.

Would it stop ALL the illegals from crossing?  Probably not.  But a few high profile stops on the nightly news would make a big dent in it.  

We need to secure the border.  NOW.  If we don't, the rest is all smoke and mirrors.

Hey in LA at Macarthur Park you can get just about any kind of paper you need now so you are probably right to worry.

Check HR 94, which is the Secure SS card proposal by David Drier from California. It would not create a completely unforgeable ID, nothing is, but a secure SS card will hopefully make it harder (more expensive) to forge.  If you have a newish US Passport, this is the sort of technology being talked about.

Thanks for the pointers Leon, it did indeed save me time finding the relevant sections.

I confess to not being sure what to make of the text, and look forward to reading lawyers arguing about what it really implies, but my initial take is that it unfortunately does leave a lot of discretion to the executive to enforce it seriously or not.

As I read the bill, it requires Social Security & Homeland Security to set up a system where employers must ask for a quick confirmation or denial (subject to appeal) that a particular person is eligable for employment. Beyond that it gets pretty fuzzy about how reliable it has to be.

OK, the system has to utilize "machine-readable documents that contain encrypted electronic information to verify employment eligibility" and should "maximize its reliability and ease of use consistent with protecting the privacy and security of the underlying information through technical and physical safeguards," in order "to allow employers to verify that a newly hired individual is authorized to be employed" and employers must use the system to "verify the identification and employment authorization status for newly hired individuals ... not later than 3 days after the date of hire"

This looks like it would give a President and Commissioner sufficient authority to run serious enforcement if they wanted to, but few explicit requirements to inconvenience a President who decides some swing states have supporters he can't afford to alienate and who rely on illegal labor to stay in business. Such a President would certainly require that the newly hired lettuce picker present a valid social security number, but wouldn't be required to do anything extreme like check whether the same social security number is simultaneously being used by a manicurist a thousand miles away, or belongs to someone who died a month ago.

I also am not sure whether the President could get away with not vigorously looking for discrepancies between who's working and who's been verified by this system. I didn't track down the original bills that are being amended by this bill (e.g. replace fine $250 with fine $500), so didn't see what the penalties would be for not checking an employees eligibility.

Unless a criminal employer is a total retard, it will be next to impossible to convict him of knowingly hiring illegals. The only deterrent will be what the penalties are for not reporting new hires for verification, along with what is the probability of getting caught for not reporting a new hire.

Local police don't enforce immigration law.  The few departments that have attempted to do so have been stopped by the courts.  Most big city police departments have a publicly stated policy that they are uninterested in immigration status, for precisely the reasons you adduce:  they don't want to discourage people from coming forward.  

Yes, it is likely higher than native-born crime is.  But before we rush to stereotype immigrants as criminals, consider that one possible reason is that much, if not most, crime among immigrants goes unreported because victims fear deportation if they go to the police.

If that's true, then the crime rate is even higher than we know.  Not much of an argument for more immigration, is it?

But to build a wall and start mass deportations makes little sense, economically or diplomatically.

At the moment, I don't give a flying fig about the diplomatic consequences of building a wall between the US and Mexico.  The Sensenbrenner bill doesn't go far enough.  There should be a wall on the whole length of the border, not just a third of it.  But Mexico is neither an ally, nor a good neighbor.  It is a lousy little kleptocracy that encourages its citizens to break our laws, uses us as a safety valve in lieu of painful, internal reform, foments anti-American and anti-white sentiment (it's called populism), and is now, through a network of agitators and activists, trying to subvert our sovereignty and reverse the outcome of the Mexican-American war.  In saner times, the behavior of the Mexican regime would be a casus belli, but we are not living in sane times.  With respect to the economic consequences, we'll manage.  Somehow lawns got mowed and houses built in the 1950s.  Maybe California might even become a nice place to live again.

has a very easy time enforcing its immigration laws since it shares a land border with a country where the standard of living is comparable if not superior. Some Americans do want to emigrate to Canada, but they are highly skilled, well educated people who speak the language (one of them at least) and share something of a common culture. They are no more a problem for Canada than Canadians coming to the US are for us. As far as the rest of the world goes it's a long, long swim through cold waters to get to Canada.

We need a wall on our border. Canada doesn't.