AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION POLICY THAT MIGHT WORK

And be acceptable politically

Border Patrol agents I spoke with were reluctant to be quoted on the record, but all agreed that a comprehensive solution that combines more and better border enforcement with a well-designed guest-worker program is necessary if real progress is going to be made. "We need to enforce employer sanctions at the same time we give employers a legal path to fill the jobs they must have workers for," one agent told me. A retired agent points to the Bracero ("strong arms" in Spanish) guest-worker visa program, which until 1964 brought millions of Mexican workers north to work in the agriculture, construction and service industries.

The Bracero program was a response to an immigration crisis that peaked in 1954 when arrests of illegal aliens topped the one million mark. Uner the Bracero program, some 300,000 Mexican workers entered the U.S. legally every year. The results were dramatic. By 1959 arrests of illegal aliens had fallen to 45,000 a year; they remained under 100,000 until 1964.

But the Bracero program fell victim to opposition from labor union leaders who viewed the program as competition for their members. In 1964 they convinced President Lyndon Johnson to end the program. With its demise the problem of illegal immigration returned. By 1976, apprehensions were up to 876,000. They have increased most years since then, reaching the current level of 1.2 million annual arrests.

Border agents tell me they could most effectively do their job and contain the spreading corruption within their ranks is if they didn't have to chase down people coming here to work and instead could focus their resources on catching gang members and terrorists. Support is building for a rational middle ground on immigration proposed by Rep. Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Study Committee. It would have the U.S. government contract with private employment agencies such as Kelly Services to establish offices called Ellis Island Centers in countries that today supply the most illegal alien labor.

"It would encourage illegal aliens to self-deport and come back legally as guest workers," says Mr. Pence. "They would benefit from no longer living in fear or in the shadows of life and they could return home for visits. And since employers who hired anyone without such a visa would face stiff fines, it would make it increasingly difficult over time for those who weren't legal guest workers to get jobs." A lot of complications need to be worked out, but the Pence approach recognizes the reality that border enforcement can work only if the pressure is reduced by providing a legal path for workers that recognizes the demands of our economy. It worked a half century ago with the Bracero program. Despite a tripling of resources and personnel on the border over the last decade, advocates of enforcement-only have yet to show that their approach can work in the real world.

More here

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Brookes News Update

US economy: Why Wall Street keeps getting it wrong: Whenever the economy slows slowdown or contracts Wall Street immediately targets consumer spending as the culprit. When the US economy booms, consumer spending is applauded as the saviour. The result is that eyeing consumer spending means that other trends are either misunderstood or largely ignored
Oil prices and Anatole Kaletsky's absurd Keynesian fallacies: Like all Keynesians - vulgar or otherwise - Anatole Kaletsky associates recessions with demand deficiency, i.e., lack of consumer purchasing power
The horror of Saddam's mass graves: A staggering 5 million people were murdered during the Baath era alone. Those murdered by the Saddam regime were brutally killed because they stood for an agenda, an agenda to have peace and exercise their right to freedom of religion. And who did the freedom-loving left support? Saddam, of course
New York Times is sponsoring US defeat in War on Terror: The US is in the middle of a war on terror or more appropriately described as a War between Islam and the Free World. And what do we get from paper of record, the New York Times? Treason
US economy and recession: theory and counter theory: When manufacturing was sinking 2000 and the US economy along with it the causes of the oncoming recession were still being hotly debated in some quarters, with very few focusing their attention on monetary factors

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ELSEWHERE

An interesting email from a reader: "I am a Harvard University student. I just thought you might be interested in the fact that Harvard University allows a "same-sex domestic partner" to be added as a dependent to a student's health insurance policy while a heterosexual domestic partner may not be. Many people's first reaction is that this is only fair since heterosexual married couples are entitled to the same benefits . . . But they forget, MA was the first state to legalize same-sex marriagesl; so a special clause for unmarried same-sex domestic partners should be unncessary. In a word, homosexuals may add their partner to their policy whether they are married or not . . . a blatantly discriminatory policy. Now, I personally do not believe that unmarried heterosexual partners should be eligible either, but this pro-homosexual discrepancy really irks me. The document that lays out the rules for adding dependents can be accessed online here (PDF). The main site can be found here"

It's rather terrifying how brainless U.S. Presidential candidates can be. Taranto notes how former Democrat candidate Dukakis says in the NYT (where else?) that America should raise the legal minimum wage as a way of stopping illegal immigration. As Taranto points out, that would have the opposite effect to what Dukakis apparently intends. It would push even MORE Americans out of jobs and give those jobs to illegals. That making some rates of pay illegal gives the jobs concerned to illegals is apparently too deep for Dukakis to grasp.

U.K. Immigration controls: Their hearts are not in it: "Full passport checks on the millions of people entering and leaving Britain each year will not be in place for at least eight years, the Government announced yesterday. The reimposition of passport checks on people leaving Britain is a key part of John Reid’s strategy, announced yesterday, to restore confidence in migration policy. The checks are key to knowing how many failed asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants are in the country. Initially, checks will be done on high-risk routes before being extended gradually to include all travellers entering and leaving the country. Mr Reid said: “We will extend exit controls in stages based on risk, identify who overstays and count everyone in and out, while avoiding delays to travellers, by 2014".

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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