Sympathy For The Devils

A couple of things I noticed in the past few days, which seem related.

Minnesota attempted to avoid the deportation of a immigrant from Laos who had been convicted of raping, on multiple occasions, a 10-year old girl, and had lost his legal status as a result of the conviction.  In a final desperate attempt to thwart deportation, the state's Board of Pardons, consisting of Governor Tim Walz, AG Keith Ellison, and Chief Justice Hudson voted to pardon the rapist.  Despite this, Secretary of State Rubio properly ordered his deportation.  

Commenting on Rubio's decision, Governor Walz protested that "we can't all be judged on our worst day".  Since there were multiple rapes it's too bad no one asked Walz which was the  rapist's "worst day".  Probably were some pretty bad days for the victim also.

Just another example of the privileged status of those here illegally and of the moral obtuseness of their defenders.  For more, see Footnote 1 in The Death of Compromise. 

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From Jeff Giesa, with the legend "This is what the panel that sends you to the gulag will look like."  In the Gulag, the "professional" violent criminals, called Urki or Blatyne, were used by those running the camps as enforcers against the political prisoners (called Zeks).

 In preparation for this future, SS (Smarmy Smile) Zohran Mamdani went to Rikers Prison to build some loyalty to him by watching the World Cup semifinals with inmates  While enjoying the match Mamdani sat next to an inmate who had strangled his wife to death.  I'm pretty confident the mayor didn't waste any time thinking about the woman. 

The Death Of Compromise

Legislation involves compromise and compromise requires trust between the parties and institutional parity and safeguards.  That is not present at the federal level for most issues.

Take immigration.  My compromise is:

1. Deportation for all those who arrived illegally during the Biden Open Borders Party.

2. Deportation for the estimated 1 to 1.5 million illegals with final deportation orders.

3. Deportation for illegals with criminal records (beyond just the initial illegal entry).

- There will be some overlap between these three categories. 

4. An end to sanctuary states and cities which privilege criminal illegals over law abiding citizens (including legal immigrants and those residing here legally).(1) 

5. Anyone who arrived illegally before January 20, 2021 and (1) does not have a criminal record and (2) is not on public support, should be allowed to stay in the U.S.

However, I would oppose any legislation embodying this compromise because of a structural imbalance within the legislation and between the branches of government.  Such legislation if enacted would not operate to effect the compromise.  If Republicans agreed to such a compromise, they would look like fools the next time Democrats control the executive branch, because they would have already allowed the presence of millions of illegals, while the Democrats effectively neutered their side of the bargain.

My assessment is based on what has become clear with Democratic opposition to immigration enforcement under the Trump administration.  Democrats are opposed to removal of any illegals under any conditions and support an open borders policy.  When questioned many Democrats mumble about supporting "common sense" immigration reform but when pressed on details fail to provide any evidence of supporting practical steps to control the borders and deal with illegals currently in the country.  Their vision is of the U.S. as a bus terminal not a real country.

If legislation is enacted containing the elements I outlined above, this is how it would work in the real world.

The legislation would specifically contain Point 5, allowing millions here illegally to stay in the U.S.  If a subsequent administration tried to renege on that deal, their actions would be immediately (and properly) struck down by the courts (regardless of who appointed the judges) because of clear statutory language.

However, implementation of Points 1,2, and 3 reside with the executive branch.  If a Democratic administration decided to use its enforcement discretion to "slow walk" deportations, no court is going to order the executive branch to change its process.  The executive will be able to effectively undermine the compromise.   We have proof on this topic.  In 2024, we were told that an immigration reform bill was needed to control the border.  That was phony, because the Biden administration decided to ignore most of its statutory authority to control the border, while in 2025 the Trump administration showed it could effectively control the border using the same existing laws.  For more on the fake reform bill read No, No, No.

Although the Biden administration killed prospects for immigration reform with its open borders policy, it was President Obama who paved the way in undermining prospects for compromise with his DACA Executive Order.  I wrote about it back in 2014 and also noted the Washington Post's editorial opposition to Obama's action.  In a 2016 post, More Mush From The NY Times, I explained the damage to prospects for compromise on immigration.

The Times article fails to explore the real problem with the President's unilateral actions, and the approval it has generated from Progressive, leading Hillary Clinton to promise she will be even more aggressive in this respect - the undermining of prospects for compromise on any issue, which is ironic given President Obama's consistent invoking of the need for less partisanship.  Or perhaps, more accurately, the President's reference to nonpartisanship is a reflection of Obama's cynicism, as it has become apparent over time he's our most cynical President since Richard Nixon.

Here's an example of how President Obama's approach discourages compromise. I'm in favor of immigration reform that would both provide some increase in legal immigration and improve border security.  But, if he were in Congress today, I would never vote for such a bill or even negotiate with Democrats on it.  The reason is that the essence of compromise, is the each side has to give up something to get something.  In a world where President's push executive orders, informal rulemaking and arbitrary changing of statutory language, there is no assurance that a legislator would get the value of the deal they thought they made.  If a Progressive President has provisions in a compromise immigration reform bill they do not like, they can simply order the agency not to enforce it, or issue an executive order directly overriding the bill, or arbitrarily have the enforcing agency issue an informal notice changing deadlines and announcing a regulatory interpretation that leads to the opposite result intended in the legislation.  When Progressives control the Executive Branch, it means they can implement the sections they like and ignore or override what they don't like, leaving the other side feeling like chumps from Palookaville.  

 Under these conditions, the best course is to not change or reform immigration law.

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(1)  It is not an exaggeration to state that sanctuary jurisdictions privilege illegals over law abiding citizens.  Every such jurisdiction has established at either the state attorney general or local district attorney level guidelines requiring prosecutors to take into account the risks to immigration status (that is, deportation) in charging decisions and plea deals.  In other words, to favor decisions declining prosecution or making terms easier on plea deals in order to minimize chances of intervention by federal immigration enforcement.  California (no surprise!) has actually enacted a statute requiring prosecutors to consider these factors in making charging and settlement decisions. The result is that an American citizen who has committed a crime will likely be prosecuted more harshly and face more several sentencing than an illegal committing the same crime.

If you want to know how insane sanctuary enforcement is, look no further than the despicable Soros-backed DA of Fairfax County, Virginia - Steven Descano.  Descano's campaign pledge:

Wherever possible, Steve will make charging and plea decisions that limit or avoid immigration consequences.  Following such a policy will keep our communities united and strong and demonstrate our Country's commitment to equal justice for all. If two people commit the same crime, but only one's punishment includes deportation, that's a perversion of justice and not a reflection of the values of Fairfax County. 

It could not be any clearer.  It ignores that the illegal has committed two crimes, one being entry into the U.S., and allows an American citizen to be prosecuted more harshly.  This is not justice, it is privilege for criminals here illegally. 

This wasn't just a campaign pledge by Descano.  He's followed it in practice, releasing several violent illegals, and is now mired in controversy, as those released have committed further violent acts, including murder.  Descano gives no indication of caring about the consequences of his actions for law abiding Americans.  His sole concern is protecting those who have illegally entered this country. 

This also points to another problem in arguments about illegal immigration; discussions about how to measure criminality of illegals and whether it is a problem.  After looking at a number of these analyses it is evident there is a major methodological problem.  Some studies combine legal and illegal immigrants in the analysis.  Most do not distinguish among the origin countries for illegals, despite evidence that crime rates significantly differ depending on country of origin.  There is also the data source problem because a careful review reveals that in many instances the data used in the analysis is not uniform, or missing key jurisdictions.  Finally, the sanctuary jurisdictions preference for no charging, or reducing charges, and allowing pleas to lesser offenses, brings into question any analysis on this subject.  The truth is we simply don't know about comparative crime rates between illegals and citizens and others lawfully residing here.

But that isn't the biggest problem.  Looking at comparative rates is the wrong metric in this situation.  There certainly are instances where comparative rates are the right metric, but in the case of illegal immigration every crime is one that would not have occurred but for the illegal entry.  It is the additive absolute number, not comparative rate, that is relevant.  For instance, there are about 20,000 homicides in the U.S. annually.  There are a few jurisdictions that report crimes committed by illegals by category.  A reasonable extrapolation of that data leads to the conclusion that somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 homicides in the U.S. are committed annually by illegals.  The illegal homicide rate is simply irrelevant, if you have any interest at all in preventing homicides by illegals.

No, No, No

. . . on the proposed foreign aid/immigration bill (which now seems dead).  Before getting to why, let's take a minute to set the context.

The current border chaos is a result of the Biden's administration deliberate choices on enforcement and funding, made at the beginning of the president's term.  He has the authority to reduce the chaos, and has chosen not to do so.  The degree of chaos and inability of the United States to control its own borders is evident if you follow those correspondents who spend time on the border or if you live in a border state, as I do, and see it yourself. 

The reason the administration has gone from three years of insisting the border is under control to admitting there is a problem is because of Ron DeSantis.  It was DeSantis who started it all with the brilliant move of sending illegal migrants to Martha's Vineyard, a tactic then adopted by other like Governor Abbott in Texas.  Now that all those Democratic governed sanctuary jurisdictions are being flooded with illegals, it has become a crisis!  It's also heightened the profile of the entire problem in an election year, not a good look for the Democrats.

From the Democrats perspective the issue became how to appear to be doing something meaningful, while not really impacting the general trajectory of encouraging illegals.  Or, if they fail, how to blame Republicans.  The answer; lure into negotiations some GOP senators who really, really want aid to go to Ukraine and Israel, while the Chamber of Commerce wing of the GOP can support them in making minimal cosmetic changes.

I'm in favor of additional aid to Ukraine and Israel, but I think it fair for American citizens to ask, "why should we care more about the borders of foreign countries than we do about our own?".

One of the Democratic negotiators of the bill, Senator Chris Murphy, the callow youth whose only life experience is working on campaigns or running for office, has been tweeting and going on news shows emphasizing to his progressive supporters that the only thing this bill really does is smooth out the flow of illegals into the U.S., making the process more manageable over the long term.  His version of "reducing chaos" is to allow the same numbers in but just over a bit long period.  He's also emphasizing that this is just a three-year deal and that Biden can always declare a national emergency and get around the bill's provisions.  Some excerpts from Murphy's tweets:

"A requirement the President to funnel asylum claims to the land ports of entry when more than 5,000 people cross in a day.  The border never closes [emphasis added by THC], but claims must be processed at the ports.  This allows for a more a more orderly, humane asylum processing system."

"But . . . important checks on that power.  It can only be used for a limited number of days per year.  It sunsets in 3 years..  Emergency cases that show up in between the ports still need to be accepted.  The ports must process a minimum of 1400 claims a day."

"You can't reduce arrivals at the border without allowing for more legal immigration.  So, more visas! [Exclamation point by Murphy, not THC]. 50,000 extra employment and family reunification visas each year for the next 5 years.  And a brand new visa category to allow non-citizens to visit family in the U.S."

"A brand new right to legal representation for all immigrants. . .  And . . . the first ever government paid-for lawyers to young unaccompanied minors."

"A quicker, fairer asylum process.  No more 10 yr wait.  Claims processed in a non-detained [emphasis added by THC], non-adversarial way in 6 months.  Also, no more waiting for work permits.  Most asylum seekers can work immediately."

Yeah, that's the ticket!

There was a lot more wrong with the proposal, but fundamentally, while the border was not controlled under Trump, it was better controlled, so the simplest thing for Biden to do would be to undo all his measures reversing Trump's policy, which he could do without legislation.(1)

The bigger problem:

The GOP does not know how to negotiate.  The Democrats, and many in the GOP, wanted to authorize additional aid for Ukraine and Israel.  The GOP wanted to regain control of our borders and, at least for purposes of the 2024 campaign, the Biden administration wanted to be seen as doing something.

The problem is that the GOP negotiators seem to have started from the position of what is the minimum we can do to satisfy our supporters that will also allow us to get the aid to Ukraine and Israel.  The result is they were negotiating within the context of immigration policy and law.  What they needed to start from was "you" (Democrats) want aid, "we" (GOP) want border security, and here is what you need to give us on the border in order for us to support the aid.  Such a strategy would set up an initially stronger bargaining position, and force Democrats to reveal their preferences and priorities.  Instead the GOP started negotiations on their back feet.

A secondary problem is the lack of expertise and skill in the substance of the legislative language and the interplay of the various provisions in the bill.  GOP staffers are simply not as good as Democrat staffers when it comes to the details, and it is details that count in drafting legislation.  You can have all the nice concepts you want but one innocent sounding clause in the bill can undercut any concept.  This is a long-standing problem but has gotten worse in recent years as so many GOP lawmakers and their staff seem more interested in performance art on Twitter and elsewhere to please their base.

Incoherent GOP strategy.  What the House GOP should have done is bring up the Senate bill, or its version of the bill, proposed extensive amendments to strengthen it, and force the Democrats to vote on each amendment.  It would be easy enough to expose the game being played by the Democrats, but that's not going to happen.

The biggest problem:

The death of compromise.  I don't know if there is a way, regardless of legislative language, to fix this.  The Senate proposal would have allowed Biden to declare a national emergency and override its provisions.  Given this administration's disregard of the law - see the rent moratorium and student loans for example - it is likely that if Biden were to win reelection, he'd simply declare the law inoperative.  Even if he didn't he still controls the administrative bureaucracy, a bureaucracy ruled by Democrats, and could easily undermine the provisions he doesn't like.

I pointed out, in posts in 2014 and 2016 (read the last part of this post), how President Obama's arbitrary and lawless modifications to the Affordable Care Act and immigration law with DACA, undercut the ability of the political parties to reach legislative compromise.  Compromise means each side gets some things it wants in exchange for giving up some other things.  But the Democratic approach to executive power, which has accelerated under Biden, means that even if codified in legislative language, the GOP is likely not to get all the things it thought it got in any bill.  The situation is so dire, if I were in Congress I don't know if I would support any bill, regardless of the language, if we had to rely on a Democratic administration and bureaucracy to implement it.  To do otherwise would make me, as I wrote in the 2016 post linked above, a chump from Palookaville.

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(1) I have not read the full text of the bill, nor, I suspect, have most of the Senators doing the negotiating.  This leaves me relying on the analysis of the few sources I have come to trust over the past few years.  None of these are newpapers, TV, cable, or websites.  It's a difficult situation if you don't have the time to read original documents yourself.  When you do, the details often reveal a very different picture than what is portrayed in the media across the political spectrum.  For instance, in 2015 I read the full text of the Iran Deal to discover the gap between how the media and White House described a key element of the deal and how this would work out in the real world when you read the specific language (see The Iran Deal: It Was Never About Nuclear Weapons).

At The Border

It's worth listening to this entire press conference in Nogales AZ by Senators Sinema (I-AZ) and Lankford (R-OK) regarding their recent border visit. Sinema is chair of the Senate subcommittee on the Border, while Lankford is the ranking minority members.  They have made several prior visits, and Sinema has been very vocal about the need for better border control.

Sinema, Lankford Hold Press Conference at Arizona/Mexico Border https://t.co/OGVLwz5axY

— Sen. James Lankford (@SenatorLankford) May 24, 2023

 A few things that jumped out at me:

The composition of border crossers has changed dramatically with Spanish-speakers no longer in the majority.  More and more illegals are coming from Central and South Asia, Russia, Africa, and China.

Unlike with Mexico and some other Spanish speaking countries, where we have agreements allowing us to access criminal records, we have no way of knowing if these illegals from other regions are criminals.

The Mexican cartels control the flow of illegals, determining when and how many are coming on any given day.

Border Patrol personnel are bogged down processing asylum requests at Ports of Entry and unable to adequately police the rest of the border.

Only about 10% of asylum requests are legit.

Notwithstanding the above, once the asylum requests are made the applicants are released within the United States and it usually takes years before they have a hearing, which they often don't show up for.

Not stated directly by the senators, but evident to anyone knowledgeable, is the Biden administration's game playing with the process and with public reporting of illegal entry to the United States.  They know the public is unhappy with the collapse of border security so they want to appear to be doing something, but they also want to keep the flow of illegals coming.

I applaud the effort by both senators to come up with a bipartisan legislative proposal, but doubt they will be successful.  The dominant Progressive wing of the Democrats is opposed to anything that would stop the border flow (and they hate Sinema) and a number of Republicans are opposed to any compromise and would rather keep the border as an open political issue.

The bigger problem is that President Obama, and now President Biden, have sent the message the compromise is not possible legislatively and any Republican supporting a compromise would be a chump.

Compromise means both parties don't get everything they want.  Sometimes it means compromising in the middle, sometimes it means I get this provision and you get that provision.  Any Republican participation in a compromise will require increased border security and enforcement.

With his DACA Executive Order, President Obama demonstrated that, with the stroke of his pen, he could undo a legislative compromise and there was nothing his opponents could do about it.  And President Biden has demonstrated that with Democratic control of the federal bureaucracy, he can make any statutory language meaningless by manipulating the budget and enforcement process.

It's hard to see how any Republican legislator could support compromise legislation, no matter how good the wording is, because any Democratic administration will simply gut the enforcement provisions via the bureaucracy.

The 'burbs

The essayist at Sippican Cottage reflected recently about growing up in the suburbs and diversity.  Some excerpts:

It was a polyglot place, no matter what you've heard from people who live in concrete dovecotes and write for the Gnew Yourk Toimes. In our neighborhood, Irishmen lived right next door to Englishmen. One side skipped car bombing his neighbor, his counterpart  eschewed channeling the Earl of Essex. There was a French family right next door, too. I can picture their little doe-eyed girl named Suzanne, still, forever frozen in my mind's amber, immortal and fey and unchanging.Unlike on the continent, they required only a privet hedge instead of a foggy channel to keep from falling on each other with misericordes and getting busy.

There were Germans living next to Poles. The crabgrass invaded the neighbor's yard looking for lebensraum, but that was about it. There were Scots living next to people I thought were sorta German, but were really Swiss, I think. If they didn't care enough to explain to me what they were, why should I bother to figure it out?

The whole town was lousy with Italians. Italian is a funny word to an Italian. A lot of Eyetalians got unshod of the boot with firsthand memories of the Risorgimento. It wasn't smart to assume they were all the same. A Calabrian had no use for an Abrusseze; a Venetian had no use for a Neapolitan. No one had any use for Sicilians, and still don't.

A block away from me, a Lebanese dad pulled his Ford into his carport, waved to a French-Canadian family on one side, a Portuguese guy on the other, and a neighbor with a name out of Charles Dickens across the street. The Lebanese family had a girl that broke several thousand hearts, no doubt, besides mine, without uttering a sound. She had eyes like dishes of used motor oil, skin like two days at the beach, and a head of hair like a mink.

. . . and concludes with this admonition:

Anyway, for a couple of decades, I've watched a continent full of fools and knaves trying to ram themselves into a political, social, and monetary union while they royally screwed the pooch nine ways from Sunday in the attempt. I suppose it would be unkind of me to point out that we managed it, all on our own, completely by accident, back before disco, simply because there was no corrupt, contemptible government trying to make us do it. 

It reminded me of the movie Brooklyn, which we saw early last year.  I never got around to writing a review of the film, set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s, starring the luminous Saoirse Ronan, and which I quite enjoyed.  It tells the tale of an young Irish emigrant to America, the difficulty of her adjustment to a very different, and much more dynamic, culture, and her relationship with a young Italian guy who has already assimilated to America's ways.   It also makes reference to the new post-war suburban boom, portraying it as the path to an optimistic future for all Americans.

In today's parlance we would not think of them as "diverse"; both white, European and of the same religion, but that is not how they, and those around them, would have seen it.  For those of us who grew up in the 50s and 60s, the suburbs were full of ethnic and religious diversity, something very different from the neighborhoods our immigrant parents, grandparents and great grandparents experienced.  We were aware of the differences.  It was also our neighborhood.  To miss that aspect of the suburbs is to miss an important part of what makes America, America.

Legal Immigration

Some data that may give context to current discussions regarding immigration reform.

Top Ten Year Periods for Legal Immigration in American History

2003-12:   10,473,000
1905-14:   10,120,000

THC had not realized the 21st century figures were so high.

Source:  Downloadable Data Table, Legal Immigration to the United States, 1820 - Present

Landslide

IowaHawk on the President's immigration Executive Order speech.

President Obama Versus Senator Obama

Tomorrow President Obama will announce a unilateral Executive Order of unprecedented scope on immigration because, in his view, Congress has not arrived at a bipartisan solution (by which he means a solution embracing his proposal).  The President's rationale is particularly noteworthy since in 2007 Senator Barack Obama played a key role in torpedoing a bipartisan immigration bill endorsed by President George W Bush at a time when the Democrats controlled both the Senate and House.

What happened is that then-Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) was able to insert a "poison pill" amendment into the bill by a vote of 49-48, an amendment which undid the delicate compromise negotiated by a group of Republican and Democratic senators including John McCain and Ted Kennedy.  Dorgan's amendment was made at the request of organized labor which, despite its rhetoric, has a more ambivalent position on immigration reform than it publicly acknowledges.  The bipartisan group was stunned and outraged when Senator Obama joined Dorgan in supporting the amendment which passed by one vote.  They were stunned because Obama sat in on one of the meetings of the bipartisan group and, at his insistence, they had included a provision he insisted on.  The group hammered out a compromise under which they agreed to support the proposed bill without further amendment.

So why did Senator Obama kill the compromise?  It was all because of a higher priority; getting the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008 and the support of organized labor would be critical in reaching his goal.  Just keep that in mind as you assess the President's actions.  For more on the 2007 vote you can read this.

The anticipated action by the President is about much more than immigration; in fact, regardless of what one thinks about immigration reform his planned action will damage America.  It strikes at the heart of our Constitutional system and has the potential to wreak long-term havoc on our political system, as the Washington Post points out in its editorial opposing the President's plan.  Ross Douthat made the same points in an eloquent op-ed in the New York Times:

The reality is there is no agreed-upon limit to the scope of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law because no president has attempted anything remotely like what Obama is contemplating. In past cases, presidents used the powers he’s invoking to grant work permits to modest, clearly defined populations facing some obvious impediment (war, persecution, natural disaster) to returning home. None of those moves even approached this plan’s scale, none attempted to transform a major public policy debate, and none were deployed as blackmail against a Congress unwilling to work the president’s will.

No defender of Obama’s proposed move has successfully explained why it wouldn’t be a model for a future president interested in unilateral rewrites of other areas of public policy (the tax code, for instance) where sweeping applications of “discretion” could achieve partisan victories by fiat. No liberal has persuasively explained how, after spending the last Republican administration complaining about presidential “signing statements,” it makes sense for the left to begin applying Cheneyite theories of executive power on domestic policy debates.

Especially debates in which the executive branch is effectively acting in direct defiance of the electoral process. This is where the administration has entered extraordinarily brazen territory, since part of its original case for taking these steps was that they supposedly serve the public will, which only yahoos and congressional Republicans oppose.

This argument was specious before; now it looks ridiculous. The election just past was not, of course, a formal referendum on the president’s proposed amnesty, but it was conducted with the promise of unilateral action in the background, and with immigration as one of the more hotly debated issues. The result was a devastating defeat for Obama and his party, and most polling on unilateral action is pretty terrible for the president.

So there is no public will at work here. There is only the will to power of this White House.

. . .

And make no mistake, the president is free to choose. No immediate crisis forces his hand; no doom awaits the country if he waits. He once campaigned on constitutionalism and executive restraint; he once abjured exactly this power. There is still time for him to respect the limits of his office, the lines of authority established by the Constitution, the outcome of the last election.

Or he can choose the power grab, and the accompanying disgrace.

If the President proceeds with his planned action he will be demonstrating his contempt for the American voter and our Constitution.

President Lays Out Justification For Executive Order On Immigration

President Barack Obama responds to critics, including Barack Obama along with the other Barack Obama, who claim that he does not have the legal authority to issue a planned sweeping Executive Order on immigation.
Oops . . . my mistake, wrong President.  THC seems to be making a lot of mistakes lately.

Immigrant Song

 UPDATED: July 8, evening

Valhalla, I am coming!

THC can understand why the Immigration bill currently in Congress is supported by Silicon Valley, Wall Street and big business.  After all, it's a two-fer for them.  At the high-end they get more visas to bring in folks to work for their companies.  At the low-end it guarantees them an endless supply of low-cost housekeepers and gardeners for their homes.

The question THC has is why would anyone else support it?

The most significant issue raised by the proposal(1) is not border security or the status of the illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. (and no, we are not going to (nor should we attempt to) forcibly deport the 10+ illegals in the U.S. today), which get most of the news coverage; it's the additional 30-50 million immigrants (depending on who is doing the estimating) who will enter the country legally over the next couple of decades under this proposal. Most of these folks will be poorly educated and relatively unskilled.  In the 19th and early 20th century we could absorb these immigrants in a growing economy heavily based on agriculture and unskilled industrial labor and THC is certainly happy about that as it's how his grandparents got here. But today, in a time when many are concerned about stagnant wages for lower-wage Americans is bringing in more competition the right policy?  Our economy faces two challenges.  The first is (hopefully) short-term; recovering from the deep recession of 2008-9 (though this seems to be taking much longer than it should), while the second is longer-term; the transition to a different economy with fewer lower-skilled jobs, a trend seen across the industrial world and similar to that of the first half of the 20th century when our workplace in 1900 was more than 50% agricultural and then went through the growth of an industrial manufacturing economy.  Both challenges pose problems for those less well-off in our society.

THC would like to see the number of legal immigrants increased but this proposal is a misguided way to go about it.


UPDATE:
After posting this THC ran across a talk by Mickey Kaus, making the same argument in a more eloquent way and from a different perspective. Kaus is an unconventional Democrat who ran a quixotic campaign against Barbara Boxer for the party's Senate nomination in 2010.  He's been covering the immigration proposal on his blog Kausfiles.  An excerpt from a recent speech by Mickey is below but it is really worth reading the whole thing linked here - you'll need to scroll down a bit to get to his speech.

"So the dream of the unending flow is still alive. Why should anyone give it up? This current amnesty will be followed by demands for a succeeding amnesty and a succeeding amnesty, each of them attracting another wave of illegal immigration. By this bill we’re locking ourselves into a cycle of amnesty after amnesty. It was one thing to do it once. It’s another thing to do it twice. 

So that’s why I get so excited. Schumer-Rubio is not like a tax law or even a welfare reform law that can be repealed or, in Obama’s case, waived. It promises to change America irrevocably and for the worse. It promises to make America an uglier place. We stand to lose what has made us Americans; namely our sense of social equality. In exchange we get a higher gross national product, more servants for the affluent, more transfer payments, and more Democrats. That’s not a good bargain and I hope it goes the way of the guaranteed annual income."

(1) My comments are based on what THC can figure out about the proposal.  Unfortunately, the bill is yet another example of runaway "comprehensive" legislation of behemoth length which is virtually impossible for anyone to understand "comprehensively", even those who must vote on it.  The accounts of what is in, or not in, the proposal are often contradictory because in a 1,000+ page bill the cross-referencing and cryptic legislative language are designed to obscure easy understanding (by the way, the original Social Security legislation of the 1930s was only 12 pages) and many of the key decisions are delegated to the executive branch agencies so it is impossible to predict what will actually happen.

Let's look at the last two "comprehensive" pieces of legislation.  With Dodd-Frank (see Surely, You Must Be Joking) we had a bill that states it is intended to end "too big to fail" but actually ensures it will continue and gives the biggest banks a competitive edge.  Plus, it created another huge bureaucracy, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), to address a fabricated need that had nothing to do with the 2008 financial crisis.  On the other hand, the good news is that the CFPB is building a huge database containing personal information on mortgage applications, credit cards and bank accounts, sort of like a domestic version of the NSA!

And then we have the Affordable Care Act. It turns out Speaker Pelosi was absolutely correct when she said we needed to pass it to find out what was in it (although after telling her constituents that if they wanted to pursue careers as artists and writers that they would now have coverage she managed to ensure that 20% of the first round of waivers from the law's requirements went to high-end restaurants and entertainment venues in her own district!).  The Administration just postponed the employer mandate, one of the cornerstones of the legislation, and HHS officials have announced that their goal for the new individual exchanges scheduled to open later this year has been modified from being a "world class experience" to "avoiding a third-world experience" (the good news, for some, is that on July 3 the Administration also announced they will not verify eligibility for the individual exchanges and subsidies so it's now taxpayer beware). Senator Baucus, one of the main authors of the bill, admitted in 2010 that he never read it, now calls its implementation a "train wreck" and is retiring so he doesn't have to face the consequences and it also turns out that despite the President's assurances we will not see our premiums go down by $2500 and not everyone will be able to keep their current coverage "if they like it".

Today's version of policymaking is something the ancient Greeks had a better word for: hubris