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Immigration Idiots and Amnesty Maniacs
Comedian George Carlin asked, “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot … and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” Something similar is going on in the GOP’s immigration debate.
After a decade of failed — and often deceptive — Republican and Democratic efforts to enact comprehensive immigration reform, nearly everyone distrusts everyone else on the issue. A divide between the parties is expected, but more damaging is the intraparty battle within the GOP. Once President George W. Bush went all-in for an immigration package that proposed amnesty that wasn’t called amnesty and a fence that wasn’t actually a fence, conservatives understandably no longer assumed good faith in their party leaders.
Immigration and border enforcement have long been divisive issues, but there are a few areas of common ground. Nearly all voters believe we should expedite the processing of passports, and most believe that, say, a successful, America-loving businessman from Manila shouldn’t have to wait two decades to become a US citizen. But popular reforms like these have been consistently buried within 1,000-page omnibus bills that overhaul border security, the H1B visa program, and college financing for children of illegal immigrants.
Even the most conservative Republican lawmakers act like immigration hawks at election time and cave shortly after stepping into their limos at Reagan National. At the last GOP debate, Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly played video clips of Sen. Marco Rubio’s and Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2013 statements about the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill and compared them to their rhetoric today.
“Within two years of getting elected, you were cosponsoring legislation to create a path to citizenship — in your words, amnesty,” Kelly said. “Haven’t you already proven that you cannot be trusted on this issue?”
“I do not support blanket amnesty. I do not support amnesty,” Rubio said.
“You said more than that, sir,” Kelly said.
“No, I do not support blanket legalization,” Rubio said, shaking his head.
As Rubio supporters wondered if their candidate’s answer was convincing enough for primary voters, Kelly turned to Cruz’s 2013 amendment that he had claimed would provide a path to citizenship.
“Was that all an act? It was pretty convincing,” Kelly said after playing clips of Cruz saying that he “didn’t want immigration reform to pass.”
“The amendment I proposed is 38 words. It’s about one sentence, anyone can go on my website, tedcruz.org and read exactly what it said,” Cruz said, grinning slightly. “It didn’t say a word about legalization.”
“Ask people like Jeff Sessions and Steve King and Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin,” Cruz continued, “all of whom say — as Jeff Sessions said, responding to these false attacks just recently in Alabama — he said if it wasn’t for Ted Cruz, the Gang of Eight Rubio/Schumer bill would have passed. But because Ted stood up and helped lead the effort, millions rose up to kill it.”
Rubio wasn’t having it and called Cruz a fake conservative.
“This is the lie that Ted’s campaign is built on and Rand [Paul] touched upon it—that he’s the most conservative guy and everyone else is, you know, everyone else is a RINO [Republican in Name Only],” Rubio said.
“The truth is, Ted, throughout this campaign you’ve been willing to do or say anything to get votes. You worked for George Bush’s campaign. You helped design George W. Bush’s immigration policy. When you got to the Senate, you did an interview with CBS News … you said on the issue of people here illegally, ‘We can reach a compromise.’”
You can see why Trump ducked the debate, since he has been … less than consistent on the issue. Seven months ago he told CNN’s Dana Bash, “I would get people out and then have an expedited way of getting them back into the country so they can be legal…. A lot of these people are helping us … and sometimes it’s jobs a citizen of the United States doesn’t want to do. I want to move ’em out, and we’re going to move ’em back in and let them be legal.”
Trump added, “I actually have a big heart.… I mean, a lot of people don’t understand that, but the DREAMers, it’s a tough situation, we’re going to do something, and one of the things we’re going to do is expedite — when somebody’s terrific, we want them back here, but they have to be legally.”
One reason the GOP’s immigration debate has grown so toxic is because conservatives no longer agree on the definitions of the terms used. Younger illegal aliens are euphemized as DREAMers, those opposing illegal immigration are called anti-immigrant, and talking heads debate whether an American child born abroad even counts as a naturalized citizen.
But what supporters of any candidate rarely admit is that their preferred nominee falls somewhere on a continuum. On the far right end of the line are a handful of voters who want no visas issued and the ending of all immigration; these are actual nativists. On the far left end of the continuum are the handful of voters who want all to abolish all borders between nations; this is the actual “open borders crowd.” The other 95 percent of Americans — which includes Trump, Rubio, and Cruz — fall somewhere between these two extremes.
Frankly, the difference between Rubio, Cruz, and Trump’s positions are relatively minor. All three would bunch tightly together on that continuum if you tracked their statements today or over the past few years. Sure, they have unique styles in speaking about the issue, but that’s mostly a matter of branding not policy. The marketing teams at Coke and Pepsi are at each other’s throats because they are selling nearly identical products. Pepsi doesn’t need to bash Toyota — the two aren’t vying for the same customers.
The bitter history of the immigration debate has magnified these small differences into chasms. If one Republican wants to let in 10,000 legal immigrants a year, he’ll call the guy who only wants 5,000 a hateful racist and nativist. But that lady who’s arguing for 20,000 is a shamnesty-loving, open borders zealot.
Much like Carlin pointed out in his freeway routine, those wanting to pursue immigration at slightly slower or faster rates are neither idiots nor maniacs; they are conservatives who want to arrive at the best solution for the country they love.
Published in Immigration
That is a huge concern.
I do not think we can come up with a sane and practical new and revised immigration policy unless we come to terms with the illegal immigrant issue. We need reforms throughout the system, especially the work visa system. But we never get to discuss those because every time the subject comes up, we go off on the tangent of illegal immigration. Meanwhile, there is tremendous pressure for us to to take in more refugees, both from Central and South America and the Middle East and North Africa.
What I am looking for is a means of removing the pressure on us–to say to the world, “Okay, this is our humanitarian work. We have our 12 million. We cannot and will not take any more for a few years.”
This would create the moratorium I believe we need to consider all aspects of our immigration policies, particularly as they pertain to immigrants filling jobs that Americans are qualified and able to do.
I keep thinking that the unemployment offices throughout the country are not working together. I have a feeling that the jobs that are going unfilled in some places in the Dakotas could be filled by a few guys from Massachusetts. We should be moving people around inside the country first, rather than bringing in more immigrants.
We need some sensible goals and objectives.
What I’m trying to say about our 12 million illegal immigrants is that if we expel them en masse, we will be creating a river of refugees heading into countries that do not want them, and that river of refugees will look to the rest of the world and to Americans exactly like the river of 12 million refugees moving into western Europe right now. The world will condemn us, and I think Americans will condemn the action too.
That’s just my prediction.
I don’t think that’s the best way to handle this problem. And I think the American people would accept an alternative solution if the American people believed that the problem was not going to keep worsening. In other words, we will stop the bleeding and start fixing the problem and create a new way to deal with immigration going forward.
I just think that’s the only way we can solve this problem of the 50 percent of the American people wanting the 12 million people expelled and the 50 percent who do not.
I am for a cease of all immigration for 5 years or so, legal and illegal.