Immigration Reform Plan Very Plan-y
But how reform-y is it? Here’s the four-point graphic courtesy of USA Today.
Points One and Two are the necessities here, and have been for a long time. Point One, however, is contingent on making border security work. If this is just another Democrat Lucy to GOP Charlie Brown, then Senators McCain, Graham, Rubio, and Flake are just setting their party up for another fail.
Point Two is, well, pointless, unless we also reduce the tax and regulatory burden Obama and the Democrats have put on America’s entrepreneurs, whether natural- or foreign-born. To give you an idea of how bad things are, net migration from Mexico is now zero or maybe even negative. Think about that: We’re losing people to Mexico, where they’ve lost 25,000 people in the Drugs Wars. It doesn’t matter if we make things easier for the best people to come here, if we don’t give them reason to come.
Points Three and Four look like museum-grade bureaucratic nightmares, and won’t do anything to help alleviate the problems discussed in the paragraph above. The GOP has got to make itself appealing to Hispanic voters, and this plan might just do that — but only on the surface.
Superficial wins elections however, as we painfully re-discovered last November.
Hmmm … I wonder if “fescue harvesting machine operator” could be considered an agricultural position?
Only if “appealing” means “pandering,” which the Democrats have been doing better for longer and will simply take credit for anything the GOP does.
Point 1 was what we were promised back in the Reagan days. Just like promises to cut spending in exchange for tax increases, it depends on enough people not remembering the previous times when the same lie was told.
Re: point 2.
I call this the Friedman Fallacy.
The reason so many people awarded advanced tech degrees (MS and PhD) are non-citizens is because if all they have is a brand new BS, their job skills aren’t unique enough to get them a work visa. So they stay in college longer because of a perverse incentive.
If they can get green cards with a BS, they’ll do it. That will have the effect of lowering wages for Americans with BS degrees, while reducing the number (or quality) of MS/PhD holders.
So does good, old fashioned cheating and voter fraud, which we are simply ignoring, just like we have for the last 200 years.
Why didn’t the House shift, if it was such a landslide?
Districts.
The white ones are honest and vote Republican.
The minority ones don’t. With 110% turnout with not ONE vote for Romney,not even a mistake, I will never believe that this crooked bunch of Chicago crooks ever plays on the square. If you do, you’re just stupid.
And all these new voting machiines are computer run, which means you’ll never know who you really voted for.
If we don’t make this a big issue, it’s all over. Convincing voters is not the problem. Stopping illegal voting IS the problem.
Gerrymandering — it’s only bad when the other side does it — is almost entirely to blame (thank!) for the GOP holding on in the House.
If this cluster must move forward, let’s get something out of it.
Green cards are for the good actors who follow the rules. No changes.
Yellow cards for the ‘Dreamers’, they got dragged in as kids and raised here, they are probably as American as any of the rest of the whiners we’ve raised in the last 30 years or so. Path to citizenship by serving in the military.
Red Cards for the gate crashers. They’re here, supposedly working. Tax them, no SS payouts if they retire non-citizen, no welfare NOW. Make the path to citizenship tough,unappealing and at the back of the line from any Green card applicants at the date the red card is issued.
Everyone gets a drivers license. Green Stripe, Yellow Stripe, Red Stripe, RED WHITE AND BLUE Stripe. Voters must show license with RED, WHITE AND BLUE Stripe to vote. Get busted for a felony with Red stripe, Deportation. Now. Preferably with a chip implanted so we can track them if they come back.