Things to Like in the Immigration Bill

Someone had to have the kahonas to say it… And that would be me.
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Fred Barnes
Weekly Standard
06/11/2007

EXCERPT:

Conservatives are sometimes blind to what’s in their own best interest. This is especially true on immigration, all the more so on the narrower matter of the bipartisan immigration reform bill now before the Senate. The bill gives conservatives a large chunk of what they’ve wanted for years, plus some things they don’t want. The balance is heavily in their favor, though, and they’re crazy to oppose this once-in-a-lifetime chance to stop illegal immigration and enact sensible policies for legal immigration.

At the top of the list of what conservatives can get is significantly beefed-up security along America’s southern border. And that’s just what’s in the initial bill negotiated by Republican senator Jon Kyl and Democratic senator Ted Kennedy. Without blowing up the Kyl-Kennedy compromise, border enforcement can be further strengthened through amendments. Indeed, it was strengthened, in the first week of debate in May, with an amendment by Republican senator Judd Gregg that requires “demonstrated” operational control of the entire border with Mexico.

Then there’s the “trigger,” a brainstorm of Republican senator Johnny Isakson. It delays further reform–including issuance of Z visas allowing the estimated 12 million illegals in the United States to stay indefinitely–until all the steps to tighten border security have been taken.

Admittedly, Washington has a credibility problem on border security. Illegals have been sprinting across the border for decades, all but unimpeded. So it’s understandable most Americans don’t trust Washington to choke off the flow of illegals and cut it to an acceptable trickle. Here again, the bill can be improved, notably by adopting a suggestion of columnist Charles Krauthammer that success in securing the border be quantified–he suggested a 90 percent reduction in illegal immigration–before the trigger is activated.

Next is a temporary worker program. We desperately need one. There’s a labor shortage in America and not only in agriculture. That’s why businesses employ so many illegal immigrants in the first place. The Senate bill limits the program to 200,000 foreign workers a year, but that can and should be enlarged. And in a bow to conservatives, guest workers must return to their native country. There’s no special path to citizenship for them, as there was in last year’s Senate immigration bill.

Perhaps best of all, there’s a reform that’s been drastically undervalued by conservatives and everyone else: the end of chain migration. Currently, extended families of immigrants are given preference in entering America, and then the extended families of these extended families get priority, and so on. The chain goes on forever. This so-called “family unification” has meant we have practically no control over who comes in. Sixty percent or more of legal immigrants in recent years have arrived through this policy.

Also terminated in the Kyl-Kennedy legislation, thank heavens, is the “visa lottery” that lets 50,000 immigrants in annually, their names selected at random. Among those who have benefited was Hesham Mohamed Ali Hedayet, an Egyptian with a Muslim Brotherhood background whose wife won a green card in the lottery. In a 2002 terrorist attack, he opened fire on the line of passengers at the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport, killing two people.
Rest of story

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Just a differing view point. At least one could possibly see it as being not the best thing THEY would have hoped for, however, not the end of the world either.

The elimination of the ‘lottery’ is certainly a step forward. Entry to America shouldn’t be won like a game but it won’t be as tight as Fort Knox either. Even if we want it to be.

If things don’t work out because everyone whined about everything instead of trying to reach middle grounds with one another…I still stand beside my gun idea ^_^

~LOF. Right whether you like it or not.