http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dw...n1.436cf5b.html
Janet Napolitano: Staying with the system we have now is silent amnesty
09:28 AM CDT on Monday, June 18, 2007
On the subject of immigration, my plea to Congress is loud and clear: Our current system is a disaster. I implore lawmakers to give us an immigration system that is enforceable and the resources to enforce it.
Opponents of the Senate immigration bill – those who really want to do nothing – merely yelled "amnesty" in place of reasoned opposition. They were – and are – just plain wrong.
No one favors illegal immigration. But there are upwards of 12 million people illegally in this country – people who work, who have settled their families and who have raised their children here. For 20 years our country has done basically nothing to enforce the 1986 legislation against either the employers who hired illegal immigrants or those who crossed our borders illegally to work for them. Accordingly, our current system is, effectively, silent amnesty.
If we have no comprehensive immigration reform this year, silent amnesty will continue. As a border-state governor who has dealt with immigration issues more than any other governor I know, I am certain that continued inaction – silent amnesty – is the worst of all worlds.
Consider what happens when we have an immigration system that is unenforced and unenforceable. To look "tough," what little enforcement we have ends up being arbitrary and unfair. For example:
•A man who was in the U.S. illegally was charged with driving under the influence in Phoenix. Immigration officers arrested him, his wife and their 19-year-old son. An aunt says their 12-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen, cries every day for the family who had to leave her behind.
•Immigration Customs and Enforcement has sent several top-ranking students from Arizona State University to await deportation to countries they have never lived in. The students have earned top marks, have never been in serious legal trouble, and are primed to become productive members of our economy.
•A team from an Arizona high school went to New York in 2002 to compete in a science fair. After winning the top prize, the students crossed into Canada to see Niagara Falls – and were stopped at the border when they tried to return. They were allowed back into the U.S., but a years-long legal battle ensued, spending precious law enforcement resources on students rather than on combating putative terrorist threats.
Don't label me soft on illegal immigration. As a U.S. attorney, I supervised the prosecution of more than 6,000 immigration felonies. I govern a state where, in 2005, there were 550,000 apprehensions of illegal immigrants. I declared a state of emergency at our border that year, and I was the first governor in the nation to call for assistance from the National Guard. I have also established task forces on vehicle theft and the manufacture of fraudulent IDs to complement federal law enforcement efforts.
State measures, however, will never substitute for federal legislation that addresses all aspects of immigration, from border security to employer sanctions to pathways to citizenship. It is unfair and unrealistic to suggest that our system remain as it is and ignore the 12 million who ran the gantlet at the border and managed to find work in our country.
It is not "amnesty" to require these individuals to earn the privilege of citizenship, as have the millions of immigrants who came before them. While illegal immigration is a crime, "amnesty" is a bumper sticker – not a solution.
We need comprehensive reform, and we need it this year. America deserves nothing less.
Democrat Janet Napolitano is governor of Arizona. This essay originally appeared in The Washington Post.
She is right...the status quo is silent amnesty...
At least with amnesty you can provide workers with the right to demand rights...which is why the unions endorsed amnesty...
At least with amnesty you can provide workers with the right to demand rights...which is why the unions endorsed amnesty...
taz- this was posted in June 2007 by fellowdem
Again, we're left with the remnants of Bill Clinton's Don't Ask, Don't Tell thinking which was further operationalized by GWB by talking about a comprehensive program and doing nothing. If new legislation has strong sanctions against employers who hire non-documented workers, I'll take whatever else is needed to get that...
QUOTE(graham4anything @ Apr 28 2009, 10:46 AM) 
taz- this was posted in June 2007 by fellowdem
I know - calll me a slow reader....
QUOTE(rla @ Apr 28 2009, 10:50 AM)
Again, we're left with the remnants of Bill Clinton's Don't Ask, Don't Tell thinking which was further operationalized by GWB by talking about a comprehensive program and doing nothing. If new legislation has strong sanctions against employers who hire non-documented workers, I'll take whatever else is needed to get that...
Even if it means amnesty?
If that is the case, it sounds like you are endorsing my approach noted in the other thread which calls for much more severe penalties against employers...in response for one last grant of amnesty....
QUOTE(graham4anything @ Apr 28 2009, 10:46 AM)
taz- this was posted in June 2007 by fellowdem
Actually, I knew it was from 2007, but I had not read it and I think that the statements that Napolitano made then are just as relevant today...IMHO...
McCain criticizes `silent amnesty'
June 05, 2007
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jun/05/nation/na-mccain5
GOP presidential contender John McCain on Monday challenged his campaign rivals in the party to either get behind the pending Senate immigration bill or come up with an alternative.
The Arizona senator also accused fellow Republican candidates of "pandering for votes" by contesting the proposal. Although he didn't mention names, the charge was seen as a jab at his chief rivals, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
"There is one premise most of us agree on: The status quo is unacceptable," said McCain, speaking before the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce in Coral Gables. "No critic of our bill has offered a serious proposal to round up all these millions. Our economy needs them. Ask any orange grower, restaurant manager or hotel owner in Florida.
"Pandering for votes on this issue, while offering no solution to the problem, amounts to doing nothing, and doing nothing is silent amnesty," he said. "The choice is between doing something imperfect but effective and achievable and doing nothing."
McCain, who helped craft the controversial Senate bill, faces increased hostility in his own party for supporting it.
Besides granting "Z" visas to most illegal immigrants, the bill would start a two-year guest worker program and reduce family-sponsored visa petitions in favor of a merit system. It also would require employers to conduct more checks on workers' immigration status.
Democrats largely have lined up behind the plan, but several conservative politicians have blasted the legalization provision as "amnesty."
McCain argued the bill was not an amnesty because it levied heavy penalties on illegal immigrants, requiring them to pay taxes and pass background checks.
Seems like everyone is one the same page with this is AZ....
Status quo equals immigration woe
The US population will soar from 300 million later this year to 400 million by 2050.</H2>By David R. Francis
Knock, knock. Who's there? Migrants. Millions upon millions of them, who would like to enter the United States in search of a better life. No public opinion poll in the past 50 years has found a majority of Americans favoring increased immigration. Nonetheless, the total number of legal and illegal immigrants keeps growing, and the prospects of Congress acting to shrink the inflow are dim.
Is there a solution?
Over the long, long run, pressures to migrate to rich nations will ease as prosperity abroad spreads. Also, birth rates in poor nations - including Latin America - have been declining precipitously. Yet the world as a whole still adds 76 million people a year, mostly in the Far East and Africa, to today's 6.5 billion.
Since Mexico is the largest source of immigrants to the US, its population picture is the most relevant to citizens here. Each Mexican woman had an average of seven children in 1955, five children in 1980. Today, that number is 2.4. Within five years, as urbanization continues, Mexico's fertility rate should drop to 2.2. Soon thereafter, it could decline to 2.1, the "replacement rate," at which time Mexico's population will cease to grow - once the baby bulge has worked its way through the demographic situation.
By mid-century, though, Mexico will have about 139 million people, up from 107 million today. Unless there is a major improvement in the Mexican economy, the US will remain a big pot of gold to many Mexicans.
For decades, the supply of immigrants from many nations will be a large multiple of the US demand for new workers, notes Joseph Chamie, research director of the Center for Migration Studies, a New York think tank. The US must eventually put the brakes on illegal immigration, says Mr. Chamie, who was formerly head of the UN's Population Division.
If the status quo continues, the US population will soar from 300 million later this year to 400 million by 2050. The average age of Mexicans is 25, compared with 36 for Americans. So young Mexican immigrants on average will have far more children than American citizens will.
Without new immigrants, the US population will grow only to 320 million. But keeping the status quo in the US, including porous borders and not enforcing existing laws against hiring illegal aliens, is "politically advantageous," notes Chamie.
"It postpones making important - possibly painful - decisions, thereby avoiding alienating voters and important special-interest groups in an election year," he told the Population Association of America. Elected officials get "bulletproof" political cover by speaking of a "complex and difficult" issue, but not acting.
Despite the massive parades of mostly Hispanic immigrants in recent days; despite the congressional disputes over a host of immigration-related bills; despite the expressed compassion of many religious leaders for immigrant families, illegal and legal; despite the widespread use of euphemisms for the harsh-sounding but accurate word "illegal" ("undocumented," "overstayers," "irregular status") and political appeals for the Hispanic vote, the long-term impact of rapid population growth in the US gets short shrift in the national debate.
Some economists worry about what a continued inflow of immigrants will do to commuting times to work, urban sprawl, wear and tear on the environment (including national parks), the nation's religious balance, American culture, and the cost of public services.
One proposed remedy is a fence on the 1,800-mile border with Mexico. India has such a wall along parts of its border to the east to keep out poverty-stricken Bangladeshis and to the west to stop poorer Pakistanis, notes Chamie (who offered the "Knock, knock" riddle.)
A wall, however, would be expensive. Israel has been paying $2 million a mile for its wall blocking off the West Bank. At that rate, a Mexican wall would cost at least $3.6 billion, and probably more.
Steven Camarota, an economist at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, figures a fence combined with more border patrol agents could help reduce the inflow of illegal immigrants.
Further, he advocates "attrition" of the approximately 12 million illegals in the US - not mass deportation - through enforcement of existing laws. It took "25 year of neglect" to get to the immigrant situation of today, he says. It will take "a lot of years to get out of it."
Some 170,000 to 200,000 illegals leave voluntarily for home each year. A fence would make it harder for them to return to the US. Mr. Camarota suggests other obstacles: Make it difficult to get a driver's license, open a bank account, get public benefits, or use bogus Social Security numbers to get a job. Employers hiring illegal immigrants should receive serious fines, he says. State and local police should actively enforce existing immigration laws.
It may just be wishful thinking from a think tank advocating reduced immigration - though not an end to immigration.
Camarota's latest research finds that the surging inflow of low-skilled workers has been driving low-skilled native workers out of the labor force. They retire, live with relatives, or just drop out.
Between March 2000 and 2005, unemployment among less-educated adult citizens rose nearly 1 million. Another 1.5 million left the workforce altogether. In the same time frame, 1.6 million adult immigrants with high school or less education were added to the labor force. Immigration hits those at the bottom of the income ladder hardest.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0417/p17s01-cogn.html
I think one thing that we can all agree on is that the status quo with regard to illegal and legal immigration is unacceptable...
I think another thing that we can agree on is that employers need to bear responsibility for breaking the laws by hiring illegal immigrants...
Others of us believe that the border needs to be better secured...though total border security is not likely a practical result...
So, I think we have the basis for common ground on some immigration points...to start with...
The next are more complicated...
What is the best way to deal with the 12 million illegal immigrants in this country...which is actually closer to 16 million if you include the 4 million children that they have had who by birth in the US became American citizens?
I believe is amnesty plus...
That a manageable program is established to provide legal immigrant status to these persons with a manageable road map for eventual citizenship...in 5 to 10 years...
I also believe that the penalties for employers have to be increased to a level where if you are caught employing an illegal immigrant you are almost put out of business... really severe penalties...
Now, more controversial has been my suggestion that employers be granted amnesty if they come clean, admit their past violations, and sponsor employees...
Also, controversial, though I really do not know why...is my suggestion that the legal immigration bureaucracy needs to be reformed to make the legal immigration process more streamlined and less onerous...which I strongly believe helps promote illegal immigration and puts legal immigrants in a bureaucratic limbo...
Finally, I believe that any immigration reform needs to focus also on our immigrant detention centers...which are quite inhumane...and our policies which send illegal immigrants to jail prior to deporting them...
The US population will soar from 300 million later this year to 400 million by 2050.</H2>By David R. Francis
Knock, knock. Who's there? Migrants. Millions upon millions of them, who would like to enter the United States in search of a better life. No public opinion poll in the past 50 years has found a majority of Americans favoring increased immigration. Nonetheless, the total number of legal and illegal immigrants keeps growing, and the prospects of Congress acting to shrink the inflow are dim.
Is there a solution?Over the long, long run, pressures to migrate to rich nations will ease as prosperity abroad spreads. Also, birth rates in poor nations - including Latin America - have been declining precipitously. Yet the world as a whole still adds 76 million people a year, mostly in the Far East and Africa, to today's 6.5 billion.
Since Mexico is the largest source of immigrants to the US, its population picture is the most relevant to citizens here. Each Mexican woman had an average of seven children in 1955, five children in 1980. Today, that number is 2.4. Within five years, as urbanization continues, Mexico's fertility rate should drop to 2.2. Soon thereafter, it could decline to 2.1, the "replacement rate," at which time Mexico's population will cease to grow - once the baby bulge has worked its way through the demographic situation.
By mid-century, though, Mexico will have about 139 million people, up from 107 million today. Unless there is a major improvement in the Mexican economy, the US will remain a big pot of gold to many Mexicans.
For decades, the supply of immigrants from many nations will be a large multiple of the US demand for new workers, notes Joseph Chamie, research director of the Center for Migration Studies, a New York think tank. The US must eventually put the brakes on illegal immigration, says Mr. Chamie, who was formerly head of the UN's Population Division.
If the status quo continues, the US population will soar from 300 million later this year to 400 million by 2050. The average age of Mexicans is 25, compared with 36 for Americans. So young Mexican immigrants on average will have far more children than American citizens will.
Without new immigrants, the US population will grow only to 320 million. But keeping the status quo in the US, including porous borders and not enforcing existing laws against hiring illegal aliens, is "politically advantageous," notes Chamie.
"It postpones making important - possibly painful - decisions, thereby avoiding alienating voters and important special-interest groups in an election year," he told the Population Association of America. Elected officials get "bulletproof" political cover by speaking of a "complex and difficult" issue, but not acting.
Despite the massive parades of mostly Hispanic immigrants in recent days; despite the congressional disputes over a host of immigration-related bills; despite the expressed compassion of many religious leaders for immigrant families, illegal and legal; despite the widespread use of euphemisms for the harsh-sounding but accurate word "illegal" ("undocumented," "overstayers," "irregular status") and political appeals for the Hispanic vote, the long-term impact of rapid population growth in the US gets short shrift in the national debate.
Some economists worry about what a continued inflow of immigrants will do to commuting times to work, urban sprawl, wear and tear on the environment (including national parks), the nation's religious balance, American culture, and the cost of public services.
One proposed remedy is a fence on the 1,800-mile border with Mexico. India has such a wall along parts of its border to the east to keep out poverty-stricken Bangladeshis and to the west to stop poorer Pakistanis, notes Chamie (who offered the "Knock, knock" riddle.)
A wall, however, would be expensive. Israel has been paying $2 million a mile for its wall blocking off the West Bank. At that rate, a Mexican wall would cost at least $3.6 billion, and probably more.
Steven Camarota, an economist at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, figures a fence combined with more border patrol agents could help reduce the inflow of illegal immigrants.
Further, he advocates "attrition" of the approximately 12 million illegals in the US - not mass deportation - through enforcement of existing laws. It took "25 year of neglect" to get to the immigrant situation of today, he says. It will take "a lot of years to get out of it."
Some 170,000 to 200,000 illegals leave voluntarily for home each year. A fence would make it harder for them to return to the US. Mr. Camarota suggests other obstacles: Make it difficult to get a driver's license, open a bank account, get public benefits, or use bogus Social Security numbers to get a job. Employers hiring illegal immigrants should receive serious fines, he says. State and local police should actively enforce existing immigration laws.
It may just be wishful thinking from a think tank advocating reduced immigration - though not an end to immigration.
Camarota's latest research finds that the surging inflow of low-skilled workers has been driving low-skilled native workers out of the labor force. They retire, live with relatives, or just drop out.
Between March 2000 and 2005, unemployment among less-educated adult citizens rose nearly 1 million. Another 1.5 million left the workforce altogether. In the same time frame, 1.6 million adult immigrants with high school or less education were added to the labor force. Immigration hits those at the bottom of the income ladder hardest.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0417/p17s01-cogn.html
I think one thing that we can all agree on is that the status quo with regard to illegal and legal immigration is unacceptable...
I think another thing that we can agree on is that employers need to bear responsibility for breaking the laws by hiring illegal immigrants...
Others of us believe that the border needs to be better secured...though total border security is not likely a practical result...
So, I think we have the basis for common ground on some immigration points...to start with...
The next are more complicated...
What is the best way to deal with the 12 million illegal immigrants in this country...which is actually closer to 16 million if you include the 4 million children that they have had who by birth in the US became American citizens?
I believe is amnesty plus...
That a manageable program is established to provide legal immigrant status to these persons with a manageable road map for eventual citizenship...in 5 to 10 years...
I also believe that the penalties for employers have to be increased to a level where if you are caught employing an illegal immigrant you are almost put out of business... really severe penalties...
Now, more controversial has been my suggestion that employers be granted amnesty if they come clean, admit their past violations, and sponsor employees...
Also, controversial, though I really do not know why...is my suggestion that the legal immigration bureaucracy needs to be reformed to make the legal immigration process more streamlined and less onerous...which I strongly believe helps promote illegal immigration and puts legal immigrants in a bureaucratic limbo...
Finally, I believe that any immigration reform needs to focus also on our immigrant detention centers...which are quite inhumane...and our policies which send illegal immigrants to jail prior to deporting them...
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