Now that the Party of No Brains, led by master taxwriter and Congressman Dave Camp has come up with another reason why the current immigration reform bill passed by the Senate will never make it through the House, a picture very familiar to the Party of No Guts should emerge: PNBs don’t want immigration, even if the proposed USD 48 billion pork barrel-flavored Great Fence of America with Agents became a reality.
(Laughing) There just seems to be some abnormal fascination with Mexicans on the part of PNBs which will stand in the way of any immigration bill being passed.
I’m not the biggest fan of the current bill since I haven’t forgotten how America doesn’t have a credible track record of enforcing what few immigration statutes we already have on the books. I also can’t be sure that the legislation will be based on sound labor economics principles – y’know, balancing the demand and supply of labor – that will be stronger than recommendations. The Center for Immigration Studies says that 47% of illegal immigrant households receive aid from a welfare program, while 96% of all illegal immigrant households have at least one working adult. If true, you have to ask yourself if allowing more unskilled workers into the country just to give them EBT cards sounds like an intelligent idea.
Here’s an idea: Peg the number of legal immigrant workers allowed into the US and the number of immigrant-to-citizen transitions to the amount of success realized in implementing border control provisions defined in the legislation. In other words, no more new citizens can be created if the borders can’t be controlled. The current bill’s pairing of legal immigration to enforcement is not strong at all since the only consequences from missing the enforcement goals are to receive some recommendations from a commission.
While we’re discussing ideas, I’m not sure why we’re willing to spend so much money on a fence when about half of the immigrants are not jumping fences. We can use technology to solve another source problem like immigrants overstaying their Visas.
The bill calls for a new department to look at labor shortages and trends by industry and make recommendations to Congress. I don’t like the word “recommendations” when we’re talking about Washington. Is there a way to give these recommendations some teeth?
The welfare issue concerns me and is part of a larger discussion the country needs to have about public assistance. Continuous checks to families doesn’t end the poverty cycle and cutting benefits haven’t reduced poverty. I’ll save that for another discussion…
song currently stuck in my head: “be my monster love” – david murray
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