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Amnesty, Again
This country should have learned -- apparently, it has not

By Mark Krikorian

National Review

President Bush has kicked off his reelection year by proposing an
amnesty for illegal aliens dressed up as a guestworker program, plus
the importation of millions of new guestworkers and a significant
increase in immigration. What is the White House thinking?

The administration first floated the idea of a guest-worker amnesty in
2001, during President Bush's honeymoon meeting with Mexico's
President Vicente Fox, but discussions came to a halt because of 9/11
(as well as ferocious opposition from House Republicans). Over the
subsequent two years, the administration issued occasional statements
expressing the continued desire to reach an immigration deal with
Mexico-but the complete lack of substance in these pronouncements,
combined with Secretary of State Colin Powell's careful efforts to
keep expectations low, suggested it was little more than talk, intended
to appease the beleaguered Fox administration and curry favor with
hostile Hispanic racial-identity groups in this country.

But there is more to the current amnesty talk than the sweet nothings
of diplomacy. The president has unveiled the outlines of his proposal
in anticipation of his planned meeting with Fox during the January
12-13 "Summit of the Americas" in Monterrey, Mexico. It is
described as a guest-worker program, but the "guest" concept is
deceptive; in fact, the program would provide for the permanent
importation of thousands new workers from overseas and amnesty for
illegal aliens already here.

As to the first of these goals, the president has frequently said he
wants an "immigration policy that helps match any willing employer
with any willing employee." Taking him at his word would suggest a
return to 19th-century unlimited immigration, with the American labor
market open to the world's other 6 billion people. And, in fact, this
seems to be the objective, because under the proposal, employers would
decide which workers come into the United States, though it would
maintain the fiction that Americans would have to be offered the jobs
first.

Providing U.S. employers of low-skilled labor access to the entire
workforce of the Third World would inevitably drive down wages and
benefits for Americans, creating ever more "jobs Americans won't
do." The White House seems to view immigration as similar to trade,
seeking a market-driven system that allows free movement of people. But
immigration and trade are fundamentally different issues. As Henry
Simons, a pioneering University of Chicago free market advocate wrote
in 1948: "To insist that a free-trade program is logically or
practically incomplete without free migration is either disingenuous or
stupid. Free trade may and should raise living standards everywhere . .
. Free immigration would level standards, perhaps without raising them
anywhere."

Although this importation of new foreign workers would be the more
far-reaching component of the White House plan in the long run, the
amnesty portion is the more controversial and relevant politically.

NONE DARE CALL IT AMNESTY
Not that amnesty supporters ever use the "A" word. A couple of
years ago, the National Council of La Raza commissioned focus groups to
prepare for the fight over amnesty and concluded that they should never
utter the word. As a result, amnesty proponents have concocted a series
of ridiculous euphemisms, which have been embraced by the White House
and others: "normalization," "legalization,"
"registration," "permanence," "earned adjustment, "adjusted
work status," and-my favorite-"phased-in access to earned
regularization."

The only time supporters use the word "amnesty" is when denying
that their proposals constitute an amnesty at all, as in the
president's repeated statements that he opposes a "blanket
amnesty." Unfortunately, coming out against a "blanket amnesty"
is meaningless. What country would grant legal status to every illegal
alien, without so much as a cursory background check? The huge amnesty
passed by Congress in 1986 (billed as the first and last in American
history) was clearly not a "blanket" amnesty, since there were
residency and other requirements applicants had to meet, and 10 percent
of the 3 million applicants were rejected.

It is true that the Bush Amnesty would work differently from the 1986
version. First, illegal aliens would be relabeled "guestworkers"
under a renewable three-year status, thus allowing them to remain here
legally, get driver's licenses, travel freely, etc. Then, they could
apply for green cards under the normal legal-immigration system, free
from the fear of deportation. However, rather than allow the backlogs
to grow astronomically, as would happen otherwise, the president's
plan would significantly increase legal immigration quotas so as to
accommodate the new applicants. In other words, this is a kind of
two-step amnesty, where the former illegal aliens can remain
indefinitely in a contingent status, awaiting the day that their number
comes up for a green card. But the mechanics are irrelevant to the
central fact: Illegal aliens would be rewarded with legal status, and
that's amnesty. To suggest otherwise is an insult to our
intelligence.

So what? What's wrong with legalizing millions of hardworking illegal
aliens? Let me count the ways.

What part of "illegal" don't you understand? Amnesty undermines
the rule of law. In the first encounter these people had with our
country, they broke our law. It would be one thing to use the model of
a tax amnesty and give illegals 60 days to leave the country, no
questions asked, after which the hammer of enforcement would come down.
But the Bush Amnesty would instead reward illegals with the most
coveted asset on the planet-permanent residence in the United States.

"Sucker!" The most immediate victims of amnesty are the millions of
people overseas on waiting lists seeking to immigrate legally. Even if
the illegals have to go to the back of the line, the fact remains that
we have rewarded their lawbreaking, and we thus mock those who did not
sneak into our country and sought to obey our law.

Overload. Immigration authorities simply do not have the administrative
capacity to manage an amnesty-however it is organized-properly.
There is now a backlog of more than 5.5 million applications for
immigration benefits, up 26 percent from the year before, and the
Department of Homeland Security is developing and implementing huge new
systems to track foreign students and visitors. Do immigration workers
in the midst of all this have so much time on their hands that they can
take on the additional task of ensuring that millions of illegal aliens
comply with the terms of their "phased-in access to earned
regularization"-not to mention doing their background checks?

Enemies, foreign and domestic. Of course, the corollary of
administrative overload is massive fraud, as overworked bureaucrats
start hurrying people through the system, usually with political
encouragement. We saw this in the 1986 amnesty, when applicants who
claimed to have picked watermelons from trees were legalized as farm
workers, because the INS was prohibited from devoting too much
attention to suspicious applications, lest the process bog down. This
can become a national-security problem, when ineligible people get
legal status-people like, say, Mahmud Abouhalima, a cabbie in New
York, who got amnesty as a farm worker under the 1986 law and went on
to help lead the first World Trade Center attack. Having an
illegal-alien terrorist in your country is bad; having one with legal
status is worse, since he can work and travel freely, as Abouhalima
did, going to Afghanistan to receive terrorist training only after he
got amnesty. And don't fall for the claim that illegal aliens who
have sneaked across the Mexican border yearn only to wash our dishes;
an Iraqi-born smuggler pled guilty in 2001 to sneaking 1,000 Middle
Easterners through Mexico into the U.S., and the former Mexican consul
in Beirut was recently arrested for her involvement in a similar
enterprise. Another amnesty is guaranteed-guaranteed-to give legal
residence to a future terrorist.

"It's a paycheck!" The morale of government workers responsible
for enforcing the immigration law is grievously undermined when their
political superiors continually talk about amnesty for the very people
who lied, cheated, and generally flouted the law. In this environment,
it's easy to understand how, for instance, an airport immigration
inspector in Miami could have allowed Mohamed Atta to re-enter the
country in January 2001 even though he had overstayed his visa the last
time; after all, why bother focusing on him when millions like him go
unpenalized and when political leaders make crystal clear that they
don't take our immigration laws seriously? Immigration workers
approach me all the time with their frustration at not being allowed to
do their jobs, and amnesty would ensure that they remain trapped in
this Dilbert universe, with Congress and the president filling in for
the pointy-haired boss.

Priming the pump. Amnesties don't solve the problem of illegal
immigration-they exacerbate it. An INS report released about three
years ago showed that after the 1986 amnesty, illegal immigration
increased markedly as family and friends of the newly legalized aliens
sneaked into the country. And the new illegals weren't just Mexicans,
emboldened to hop across the border; illegal immigration from other
countries surged even more dramatically, suggesting that amnesty's
role in encouraging further illegal immigration is a general
phenomenon.

We the People? Amnesty will create millions of new U.S.-Mexican dual
citizens, who, as early as 2006, may be able to vote in both
countries' elections. This would represent the fulfillment of
Mexico's efforts to extend its authority over a large part of the
American population-the most serious threat to our sovereignty since
the Civil War. The Mexican consulates in the U.S. already represent the
largest such network in any country, and the consuls are increasingly
taking part in domestic politics and governance. Amnesty would hugely
accelerate this trend.

Sticker shock. Illegal aliens can't receive welfare; legal immigrants
can. The fear of a fiscal earthquake is why Congress in 1986 barred
amnesty recipients from some welfare programs for five years and
reimbursed states a small portion of their aid costs for the former
illegals. But no amount of fancy footwork could avoid the fact that
permanently settling millions of unskilled laborers into a modern
economy costs the public treasury billions. A study ten years after the
last amnesty estimated that the newly legalized aliens had already
generated a net fiscal deficit of $24 billion. Is this really the time
to saddle states and localities-which would bear most of the
costs-with an additional unfunded mandate?

BAIT AND SWITCH
Okay, but even if you stipulate to all these problems, there's
nothing else we can do, right? We can't round up 9 to 10 million
illegals, so why not suck it up and weather the fallout of amnesty, but
resolve to mend our ways and put in place measures to ensure we don't
get more illegals in the future? This appears to be the marketing
strategy the White House has in mind, with talk of increased use of
technology at the border and tougher enforcement against employers who
abuse the system.

It would be impolite to ask why these measures aren't being taken
already, given that the enemy is even now plotting to penetrate our
defenses and kill us. Let me point out only that this bargain-amnesty
in exchange for stricter future control-was the basis of the 1986
law. And as anyone with a modicum of common sense could have predicted
at the time, the deal was a trick. The law was indeed tightened,
prohibiting the employment of illegal aliens on the valid assumption
that removing the magnet of jobs is necessary to stem illegal
immigration. But enforcement was sporadic at best, and has now
virtually ceased. The consequences were hard to miss: 2.7 million
illegal aliens were legalized, but because there was little commitment
to law enforcement, every one of them was replaced by a new illegal
alien within ten years of the law's implementation.

To go back to the original question: What are they thinking? The
administration is populated by smart, public-spirited men and women;
how have they come to support such nonsense? The proximate reason is
politics, with the quest for a larger share of the Hispanic vote
clouding the judgment of otherwise sensible people. Though its
importance is wildly exaggerated, the effort to win more Hispanic votes
isn't a bad idea; it's just that this isn't the way to do it. The
Hispanic voters most likely to back Republicans are the very
law-and-order, God-and-country traditionalists who are left cold by
talk of amnesty. A Zogby poll conducted shortly before 9/11 found
Hispanics evenly split on amnesty. In fact, twice as many Hispanics in
the survey said support for amnesty would make them less likely to vote
for the president as said it would make them more likely to support
him. And when it came to congressional elections, support for amnesty
would lose four Hispanic votes for each one gained. Even more important
politically, of course, is the fact that amnesty is poison to the
president's conservative base. In fact, there are few policies more
likely to hurt Republican prospects. The same Zogby poll found
conservatives opposing amnesty 2-to-1, with about one-third of the
total saying they would actually be less likely to vote for the
president if he supported an amnesty.

But you don't need a pollster to tell you that. After Homeland
Security Secretary Tom Ridge in December called for giving illegals
"some kind of legal status," Rush Limbaugh, who has customarily
remained aloof from the immigration issue, spent 20 minutes of air time
lambasting him. Rep. Tom Tancredo, the Colorado Republican and
outspoken head of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, called
for Ridge to start enforcing the law or resign. Earlier in the fall,
Rep. J. D. Hayworth, an Arizona Republican, got 63 colleagues to sign a
letter to President Bush urging him to reject "any and all forms of
amnesty." And columnists from Michelle Malkin to Phyllis Schlafly to
Paul Weyrich have repeatedly weighed in to blast amnesty.

So, again, how can smart people think there's something to be gained
from amnesty? The answer is that Beltway and Wall Street Republicans
live in an elite echo chamber, where the received wisdom about
immigration goes unchallenged by respectable people. We conservatives
assume this kind of groupthink is just a liberal malady. After all,
which of us hasn't laughed at the comment by the New Yorker writer
who remarked after Nixon's 1972 landslide, "I can't believe it! I
don't know a single person who voted for him!"? But on immigration,
the disconnect between elite and public opinion crosses party lines.
The Chicago Council of Foreign Relations in 2002 polled the public and
opinion leaders on a variety of foreign-policy-related issues, and
found the gap to be greatest on immigration. The poll found that 70
percent of the public said that reducing illegal immigration should be
a "very important" foreign-policy goal, compared with only 22
percent of elites. The elite/public disconnect was even greater than on
issues where you would expect a wide gap, like support for foreign aid
or globalization or even the U.N.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial page exemplifies this disconnect.
So constructive on other issues, the paper is wholly out of touch with
America on immigration. Building on its prior record (it has repeatedly
called for a constitutional amendment that says, "There shall be open
borders"), the Journal responded to Secretary Ridge's call for
amnesty by saying that he deserves a raise.

Republicans need to save the president from his advisers, lest amnesty
become for him what illegal-alien driver's licenses were for Gray
Davis: the disaster he embraced because everyone he knew thought it was
a good idea. Amnesty shouldn't even be discussed until our
immigration system has been fixed. When it comes to considering tax
increases, the rallying cry of Republicans has always been "cut
spending first." In the context of an illegal-alien amnesty, their
cry must be "control immigration first." The White House seems to
think that they have put in place the needed immigration-control tools
and that they can now move to the next step. In fact, though, we are
years away from the infrastructure that we need to protect our borders.
And even then, we need to see eight or ten years of proven, ongoing,
border control and interior enforcement, with a properly functioning
and motivated immigration bureaucracy and a steadily declining
illegal-alien population. Only then is it appropriate even to raise the
issue of amnesty for the remaining long-term illegals whom we didn't
manage to deport or who didn't leave on their own. Nor is immigration
control a pipe dream, or achievable only with machine guns and land
mines on the border. We need only the political will to uphold the law
using ordinary law-enforcement tools, and to resist measures that make
things worse, such as new guest-worker programs. Once the message gets
out that it's not business as usual any longer, the illegal
population will shrink through attrition, and we will wonder why we
were paralyzed for so long by this problem.

Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration
Studies.