All or Nothing is Not a Compromise

Faced with the House Bill or the Senate Bill or something in between open border advocates prefer the status quo. Anything short of total amnesty, no wall, and less border security would from their point of view be a step backward and set a bad precedent. They know demographic trends are in their favor. They can afford to wait.

Left out of the discussion is any option for those who want the border secured and no amnesty. Isn't that the obvious compromise position? On the one extreme are Nazi/KKK types who would gather illegals and gas them, and on the other are open borders types who want to give it all away. A wall and free repatriation sounds like reasonable middle ground. Senate bill supporters get their fence and enforcement, but not amnesty or guest workers. Open border advocates don't get an open border but do get compassionate (and speedy) extradition. This is not a joke. They don't like the suffering at the border, or the stigma of being undocumented, or the fear of being deported. We can fix all of that by stopping illegal traffic across the border.

As for free repatriation, we can figure out what the average illegal immigrant costs our economy per year and offer them that much money to leave. It's win-win. We save in the long run, assuming the border is secured. We need to know the full economic impact of illegal immigration, not just how great a deal it is for the illegal alien, the business that exploits him, or the US government that taxes them, but also how much it costs everybody else who pays for health care when the alien or his dependents make their free trips to the emergency room. Who pays for their education? Who entertains the English speaking native students when the teachers are catering to non-English speaking students? Who pays for their 6.4% of our prison space? Who pays when parts of the US start to look more and more like Tijuana?

When we get an honest assessment of these costs then we can discuss how much it will cost to build a wall and weigh it fairly against the cost of not building one. Until then we should err on the side of caution and start building.

CA-50 was a referrendum on immigration, and the president's low poll numbers have as much to do with immigration as they do with Iraq. For years elected officials of both parties have looked the other way while US immigration law was violated. Now they openly tell us they will send the National Guard to the border, but only temporarily. They can't track over-stayed visas, how can anyone believe they'll do better tracking Guest Workers?

Arguments for a "comprehensive" law are disingenuous. It makes no sense to discuss unclogging the drain, mopping the floor, and getting a new sink with bigger pipes hooked up when water is overflowing out of the sink you have right now all over the floor. The only reasonable answer to the dominant opinion on illegal immigration is to turn off the faucet. But that's the last thing anyone arguing "comprehensive" wants. They mouth support for "enforcement" but only as a small part of the whole "comprehensive" thing. They know they can do what they want if they can just bore the public into moving on. So like the open borders advocates the "comprehensives" will be happy to negotiate us into Nothing for now, and they'll just try another less scrutinized swing at All next year.