David Frum is a former special assistant to George W. Bush and a frequent political commentator who maintains a popular online community, FrumForum. In a recent CNN column, he weighs in on the heated immigration debate, siding with Mitt Romney in opposing Newt Gingrich’s recent assertion that some form of a legalization program must be coupled with continuing enforcement. The following is my reply.
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I believe Gingrich is more right and Romney (and Frum) are more wrong here. There will have to be compromise in this legislation. There are very few absolutes in U.S. immigration.
Gingrich doesn’t deny that enforcement is a two-pronged approach, part securing the border, part employer sanctions.
The guest worker issue likewise requires a duality of approach that doesn’t cater to absolutist socioeconomic principles. We must address low-skilled workers, the poor tired huddled masses (as it were – now more like the guys hanging around Home Depot) as well as the engineers and scientists so valued by the business community and research institutions.
Current low-skilled guest worker visa programs that are tied to seasonal or agricultural employment are not the problem. Existing J and H categories (exclusive of H-1B) will have to become part of the solution, tweaked, bifurcated and expanded somehow to provide a semi-orderly transition from the past to the future for working illegals who would otherwise have no basis to qualify for a legalization program. Frum and Romney apparently dismiss this technocratic approach entirely, until the border is secure, and they’re wrong. First build the roads, then build the towns. Colonials had the luxury of vice versa; we no longer do.
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Not a Puzzle, a Maze: A Reply to Jeb Bush and Clint Bolick
The Wall Street Journal publishes an excerpt from a forthcoming book by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and co-author Clint Bolick, a constitutional lawyer, entitled ‘Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution.’ The article is titled ‘Solving the Immigration Puzzle.’ Immigration is not static, nor can it be ‘solved’ in a temporal sense. It should have been titled ‘Designing a Better Maze.’ My reply in the WSJ readers forum:
~ Agree, nothing ground-breaking here, limited prescriptive value to this article. I disagree with Gov. Bush’s assertion that we need to “start from scratch.” Much of the non-immigrant visa system works at it is largely designed to, classifying and controlling channels of temporary foreign visitors to the U.S., then providing avenues for meritorious promotion vis-a-vis a system of advancement to permanent residence through targeted employment or investment. Family-based adjustment of status to residence based on qualifying immediate relative relationships – the old marriage certificate shortcut – in principle, can’t change much either fundamentally.
There is, however, merit to the idea that the family chain needn’t be so constant. For instance, those who may qualify for some form of future ‘amnesty,’ if originally EWI (entry without inspection) or a long-term visa overstay, should be denied if not citizenship, than at least the ability to become a pulling link in the chain, i.e., to sponsor another family member to immigrate. And denied that right if not forever, then at least for a very long time, as the price one pays – and will continue to pay – for breaking the law as a first act in America.
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