The GOP's Immigration Opportunity

National Review Online: Candidates Should Be Bold In Addressing Borders, Illegal Aliens

(National Review Online)  This column was written by the editors of National Review Online.

---

Republicans have an opportunity on immigration, if only they will seize it. The Democrats are positioning themselves to the left of public opinion. Howard Dean denounces Republicans for using “outrageous phrases like ‘illegal aliens.’” Hillary Clinton ties herself in knots for days over granting drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, almost everyone in public life favors - or, at any rate, feels compelled to claim to favor - tougher enforcement measures.

Yet Republicans are blowing the opportunity. They are engaged in petty backbiting over one another’s records. Since very few politicians have good ones on this issue, that’s a strategy of mutual assured destruction. It also obscures the choices we face now. Worse, the Republicans are picking on secondary or even tertiary issues. Gov. Mike Huckabee has taken a lot of criticism from the other presidential candidates, for example, for allowing the high-achieving children of illegal immigrants to receive favorable tuition rates at colleges and universities. It is the sort of question that would not even arise in a country that was serious about controlling its borders. A politician’s position on the narrow question is important only insofar as it bears on what he or she would do about the broader one.

Even more beside the point has been the spectacle of Mitt Romney’s attacking Rudy Giuliani for letting illegal immigrants in New York City talk to police without fear of being deported, or Giuliani’s counterattack on Romney for employing a lawn-care company that hired illegals. A sensible federal policy would not place cities in the position of choosing between solving murders and turning a blind eye to illegality. It would also not place the onus of law enforcement on individual consumers.

The important divide concerns what we should do now. John McCain and Giuliani would step up enforcement, create a guest-worker program to meet employers’ desire for immigrant labor, and allow illegal immigrants already here to become citizens if they meet certain conditions (such as learning English). We think that policy mix is a mistake. There is no pressing national need to bring illegal immigrants “out of the shadows,” and the possibility that we will do so will only serve as a magnet for more illegal immigration. Moreover, immigrants would succeed, and assimilate, faster, with less friction from the native-born, if we took in fewer immigrants each year. Neither candidate takes any notice of this point.

Huckabee’s campaign has outlined a pretty strong proposal - taken largely from the pages of National Review - to enforce the immigration laws, but the candidate himself has seemed ambivalent about it in public forums. Romney has said he opposes amnesty and favors increased enforcement, but has not been forthcoming about his overall approach to immigration policy. Fred Thompson, finally, has argued that we should follow a policy of attrition: If we step up enforcement, we can shrink the illegal population over time without having to deport millions of people all at once.

We would like to see more of the candidates pick up Thompson’s banner, and wave it about with a bit more vigor than he has done. They should also explain that they will make it a priority to deport illegal immigrants who commit violent felonies. (Most people will be outraged to hear that we have not made it a priority already.)

Republicans should by all means remain open to immigrants of every hue. It would not be untoward for them even to express sympathy for people trapped in kleptocracies that crush their dreams and drive them to seek a better life elsewhere. But they should make no apologies for wanting a successful and sustainable immigration policy, and that requires both setting and enforcing limits. It requires that we keep up the pressure on Congress to build a fence at our southern border, and on the administration to penalize scofflaw employers.

And it requires one more thing, which may be the hardest of all to find: Republicans who are smart enough to see an opportunity and bold enough to take it.

[pensacola88]

The add about proecting our borders is totally infuriating! We are not a country of walls. There are people of this country, such as the evangelical conservative hardliners, who routinely build walls around theirselves and their followers. How many can remember Ronald Reagan''s words when he said "Mr. Gorbachev...please tear down this wall!" Those words made history. I can''t believe that today, we have people who really want to build a wall around this country. A wall is a bad thing to be known for.

Most aliens got here legally. They were given permission to stay along with an I-94 as a record of entry. They were supposed to return it to the immigration department upon leaving or pay $40 if they lost it. When the immigration department doesn''t get their I-94 back, the counter increments one click for illegal immigration. This number is inflated and not accurate, because many aliens actually lost their I-94 and didn''t want to pay $40 upon leaving.

We do have some illegal aliens here, but they have have certain unalienable rights guaranteed by our Federal Constitution. We can''t take them away, and no wall will help the situation. Oppressive nations will do that, and we are not one of them.

Some of you need some education to exercise that demon in your heart that says building walls is good and lynching aliens should be legal. Only KKK mentality would advocate that.

[drivelphobe]

Both parties ignore what the "We the People" have to say. Apparently, politicians fear losing their jobs, prestige and power, less than they fear going against the "open border" agenda.

This will be absolutely the ruin of this country if these illegals aren''t deported, employers fined and jailed, and the borders closed and secured.

Something is very wrong in this country when both parties arrogantly team up against common sense and the will of the American citizenry, while obsessively supporting a common, flawed policy. Disgusting.

The GOP good take control of this country, but open borders is apparently more important.

fedupwithit1 is right on. We Americans don''t want illegals in this country and we are sick and tired of the BS.

[runningralph]

pensacola88,
Once again I disagree. The Berlin wall was a wall dividing one part of a city from the other part of a city. Both parts of the city were in the same country. You may be correct about the number of illegals being inflated and innaccurate, but your high faluting rhetoric about the US not being a nation of walls is just silly as you point out in the next sentence - there are many walls in the US.
Whatever rights foreingners may have under the Constitution is debatable. Foreigners rights are not mentioned in the Constitution. One thing not debatable is that the US has a right to turn away invaders at the border. And no one has said that lynching should be legal. All we are saying is that immigration should be through legal channels.

[tucano2]

The winner will be the candidate making the most convincing believeable arguement to kick the Illegal Aliens out of the USA and jail managers and owners of firms employing these criminals. It is inexcuseable not having in place already a triple fence from Brownsville to San Diego backed up by heavily armed enforcement authorized and encouraged to kill trespassers who somehow make it through the fence - a real fence, not a phoney baloney electronic one costing billions of dollars in electricity/middleeast oil to maintain appearances - electronic/virtual fences have no barbs.

[downsteamjim]

Howard Dean thinks that ''illegal aliens'' is an outrageous statement. I guess in his politically correct mind a rapist should be called an ''uninvited *** partner.''