Verbosities

Hugh Hewitt

This may seem odd, but I believe the employer penalties for record-keeping violations should be struck from the bill. The burden-shifting to business of enforcing the immigration laws is going to be large in any event, but to impose on businesses the absurd paperwork completion and storage requirements --backed by a $1,000 per incident fine-- empowers bureaucrats to punish any employer they take a disliking to. Keep Mike Nifong in mind when you consider how abusive such a requirement could be made to be even for employers who cannot be shown to have employed a single illegal alien.

Wait, so it is possible for an attorney tasked to prosecute the laws of the land to have a political agenda that could result in abusive and retaliatory prosecutions against those who may not have broken the law? Quelle fromage!

I kid, I kid. Actually, I tend to agree that shifting the burden to the employer can result in some unintended consequences, including what Hugh's getting at above.

He's got some interesting thoughts on the immigration bill in this post, although this attraction to building walls and fences from the right has become almost white noise at this point for as often as I'm reading about it. Fences don't solve problems. Lawless posses of vigilante Texans solve problems Economic reform solves problems, but since we're unwilling and likely not dumb enough to go there, this current shrieking that "something has to be done about this!" has wrought what it is that we're seeing under debate now.

Here's a couple of his proposals for amendments (as if Hugh Hewitt can propose amendments):

An amendment to establish a special category of illegal aliens which includes all males between the ages of 18 and 30 from countries with significant jihadist networks, with that list of countries to be determined by the DoD, the CIA and State. No probationary Z visas under Section 601(h) would issue to such illegals.

I've been on the fence for awhile regarding profiling, mainly because I don't like the fact that it'll be politicians responsible for its legislation. While the whole lefty ideal of "multiculturalism" seems to be a noble cause on its face, it's also responsible for our society's tepid response to the encroachment of intolerant religiosity in our culture.

I tend to almost agree with an article (which I've linked previously) from Positive Liberty called "While Europe Slept," which argued that the founding fathers didn't have a vested interest in one religion over another, but instead managed to weave Enlightenment principles of equality into their invocations of religion in order to promote and support the reasonable, tolerant and respectful free exercise of religion for all.

In other words, they knew that freedom meant the government must not endorse such views as the pious and hardline writings of John Calvin who preached heresy for those who might deny the Trinity. Their interest was in the freedom for all to worship in their preferred style, free from governmental coercion.

The last three paragraphs are essentially my way of pussyfooting around what to some is an obvious truth - that Muslim hardliners who immigrate, yet refuse to adapt to and adopt Western culture as their own will likely push a wedge between their descendents and ours as the years progress. We're seeing this in Europe now, and it has been brewing in the States for awhile too.

Let's be clear that so long as moderate Muslims refuse to marginalize their fringes, these fringes will continue to benefit from what is ostensibly begrudging approval from the centrists in their culture. I could say the same thing about Christians as well, who are by no means off the hook for Falwell and Robertson, Rushdoony and Dobson. So long as an appreciation of multiculturalism appears to be a value in this culture, and so long as centrist Muslims do not realize the consequences of refusing to take the political and economic control away from those that appeal to their fringes, there's no chance radical Islam is relegated to the dustbin of history.

My answer is clearly anti-multicultural, and nearly impossible. We must, as a people, decide to shed the yoke of irrational belief, and marginalize, disenfranchise, and otherwise dismiss all who would purport to be a vessel of an imaginary creator*. Since this ain't happening in anyone's lifetime, we're basically left with one chance to get it right on immigrants up front, and that's probably going to be done via profiling.

Makes a hell of a lot more sense to carefully vet the Kurds, Pakistanis and Bosnians than it does to pretend Jose from Juarez wants to do more than take a bus to Washington to pick some apples.

*You heard me. We'd be a better people if we were all rational atheists. Give me two or three Manhattans and an hour or two of your time over some hot wings (your treat) if you want to know more, because this isn't one of those things you're going to catch me writing about at any length.

Construction of at least half of the double-fencing prior to the issuance of a single probationary visa, and completion of all 800+ miles of the double fencing prior to the issuance of any 4 year Z visa or any Y visa.

What is it with you people and your fencing?

A detailed statement of how and by whom the millions of background checks and interviews called for by the act are to be done, with funding authorized and allocated to support such obligations. This should also be a trigger.

Let's do the math... There's 12 million illegals, allegedly. Assume 33% apply for their Z visa. That's four million background checks and interviews. Which government agency is going to process four million checks and interviews? Even if that's only 15 minutes spent per application (and you know sure as hell it's going to take more than that to handle this), that's ONE MILLION BUREAUCRATIC MAN HOURS dedicated to just this task. Assume that we hire a dedicated staff at a $30,000 salary to handle these ONE MILLION BUREAUCRATIC MAN HOURS, and assume they work forty hour weeks for the whole of the 52 week year without vacation. That's 481 people working non-stop, doing nothing but this for one full year at a cost of $14.43 million dollars.

Now consider the efficiency of the governmental bureaucracy, and multiply the cost, personnel and man hours necessary by a factor of whatever-the-hell-you-think-is-egregious. I'm totally down with Hugh on this one. I'd like to know how they're going to do this with the intention of having a rigorous check on backgrounds and criminal records.

The elimination of social security credits for years worked as an illegal, and the payment --perhaps over a term of years-- of at least 50% of unpaid back taxes

I'm on board with the first part. I don't care if their paychecks already had that Social Security money factored out. If they can't prove they paid taxes, they don't get the future benefits that period of work would ostensibly provide. Now, if they can prove that their migrant labor job paid so little that they weren't going to be on the hook for taxes anyway, then they can positively apply to have those benefits carry forward.

The back taxes thing seems like an unfair burden, although one on which I can see both sides. On one hand, after jumping through bureaucratic hoops and paying your $5,000 fine for visa/citizenship application (I think that's what it is), you're now stuck with fifty percent of eight years of back taxes to pay? Isn't the $5k enough of a penalty? On the other hand, paying taxes fucking sucks, but is a necessary evil. They are our membership fees for taking part in the services provided by this country. I have to pay them, so why don't you?

Back to the topic of background checks and interviews, one more place Hewitt nails it:

If we put the right people in charge of the regularization process and empower them to make decisions on the spot, during the top level analysis of the vast majority of Z visa applications, a sizeable portion of the initial workload would vanish. It simply does not take much deliberation, for example, to decide to give a Z visa to a long term employee of a reputable company who is a 49 year old Mexican who is married and has three children born in this country. If the first round of determinations simply sorted the Z visa applicants into "approved" and "further study " piles, we might get to a manageable number.

Who could be trusted to make such decisions? Let me introduce you to the thousands of retired field officers in this country. A two to three year program employing them for their leadership and judgment skills to conduct the regularization program wopuld make enormous sense and give the program at least a decent shot of succeeding, and do so without overwhelming our law enforcement agencies with the nuts and bolts of regularization.

Here here. Hugh's suggesting profiling, and framing it as positive profiling (you look okay, go on by), but as I said above, I tend to agree with him on the point. Plus, I have a couple of retired field officers in the extended family, and these guys are some of the best men I know. Every state has a brigade of such guys who'd likely be thrilled to come off the bench to push paper around for a couple years to make sure things get done right. If we can deputize the forces and allow them to positively profile the easy cases, kicking the more difficult and questionable ones up the line for review, this likely won't be a big strain on the bureaucracy at all.

(Sheesh, look at me agreeing with a conservative talk show host...)

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