Voting Resources
Now Here is a GOP Immigration Platform!
by Norman Adams on May 27, 2009 at 10:20 AM
Here's an interesting article I ran across the other day written by Victor Davis Hanson. I agree with Hanson that there is no way to pull off a "mass exodus", and that we need to ship back the felons, and perhaps even the newest arrivals, but providing a path to citizenship for the rest? I just don't know about that. One alternative is to provide a positive ID program and allow those that want to remain here to work legally and have them pay their fair share of the tax burden. Not citizenship, but an opportunity to work and remain here legally.
Amnesty or Deportation?, by Victor Davis Hanson
It was easy to damn "amnesty" - given its serial history of only encouraging more illegal immigration. But the trick was always coming up with something less drastic instead like "earned citizenship," that culled out through deportation felons, and recent arrivals, while allowing the crime-free, long residing, and hard-working to pay some sort of nominal fine for breaking the law even as they applied for citizenship. I doubt this is what is meant by the euphemism "comprehensive immigration reform," but it is a workable idea when coupled with an end to federally-mandated bilingual documents and interpreters, and salad-bowl state-mandated ethnic separatism.
In other words, we say to the illegal alien: if you are working, if you have not committed a crime after arriving here illegally, and if you are willing to stay in a country that makes no special allowances for those who speak languages other than English or who claim some privileged ethnic heritage, then, yes, you can find a path to citizenship involving fines for your initial crime of breaking the law, and necessary background checks and testing of basic acquaintance with American citizenship. Such earned citizenship will fail of course, unless the border is closed through walls, increased patrolling, employer sanctions, and a change of popular attitudes about illegality; otherwise the process becomes serial, as it was in the past, and news of its magnanimity only encourages more to get northward A.S.A.P.
You can read the entire article here
We can work together to find compromised position - and a winning position for the GOP!
Comments
Immigration Reform
Many people say that there is no effective way to remove 20 million illegal immigrants from our country.
The most efficient way to remove 20 million illegal immigrants from our country is to persuade them to remove themselves and return to where they came.
Looking at the problem in that light, we need to explore ways that remove the incentive for coming to the US and staying. Removing jobs is one way, but employers are not reluctant to break the law and hire illegal immigrants and the few ICE sweeps that we have do net illegal immigrants, but it's a drop in the bucket.
The primary benefits that the illegal immigrants receive is US dollars. Dollars to send back to their home country. Dollars to live well here.
What if we strike directly at the very benefits that the illegal immigrants seek?
Since working without proper credentials or working with forged credentials are illegal, why don't we make people who are convicted of this crime have to forfeit all of the assets that came from the benefits of the illegal acts?
What if we seized cash, boats, cars, homes from the illegal immigrants when they were arrested like we do with drug dealers? Would the risk to these assets be enough to send the illegal immigrants back to their home country?
What if we shut down the illegal banks that operate in this country that permit illegal immigrants to wire money back to their home country?
In my opinion, these pressures would accelerate a reverse immigration process to rid our country of illegal immigrants.