Category: Immigration

As backers of the compromise immigration bill move to resuscitate it on the Senate floor, the American voter remains overwhelmingly opposed to it. In the latest Rasmussen poll conducted this weekend, only 22% of likely voters supported the bill, and a majority outright opposed it:

As the Senate prepares to resume debate the “comprehensive” immigration reform bill, the legislation continues to face broad public opposition. In fact, despite a massive White House effort, public opinion has barely moved since the public uproar stalled the bill just over two weeks ago.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 22% of American voters currently favor the legislation. That’s down a point from 23% a couple of weeks ago and down from 26% when the debate in the Senate began. Fifty percent (50%) oppose the Senate bill while 28% are not sure.

It’s bad news all the way around. A majority in both parties oppose the bill, and 48% of independents as well. Self-described liberals oppose it, 54%-32%. A plurality believe that no bill would be better than the current proposal, 45%-32%. A strong majority mistrusts the security triggers in the bill, with 71% of voters believing that it will require more legislation to secure the border and reduce illegal immigration.
In fact, those who believe that the bill will reduce illegal immigration are even fewer than supporters of the bill. Only 16% think this compromise will address the problem it purports to solve. Forty-one percent believe it will make illegal immigration worse than before. That means a quarter of the people who support the bill do so while believing it won’t do anything to solve illegal immigration.
When we say that Congress lacks credibility, this is what we mean. When was the last time Congress worked so hard to pass legislation that so few supported, so many of which supported it because it won’t work, and whose opponents hated it so badly? Certainly not within my memory.
UPDATE: A big welcome to readers of The Corner!
UPDATE: Rational liberal Ron Beasley at Middle Earth Journal wonders what happened to the supposed majority of moderates in the US electorate. They’re there, Ron, but they don’t like the bill either, because it won’t work.

The Washington Post reports that anti-illegal immigration legislation has more than doubled this year in state legislatures, and likely will increase even faster throughout 2007. State efforts to control illegal immigration do not get many headlines, but several states have enacted or are considering strong measures to deter illegals from remaining inside state borders, if not national.
What makes the states so anxious to pass such laws? The states have to bear most of the short- to medium-term costs of illegal immigration — and they have grown tired of waiting for Washington DC to fix the problem. At Heading Right, I review the different efforts and discuss why the states may add their considerable influence in the immigration fight on Capitol Hill this week.

According to Senator Jeff Sessions, the momentum for the controversial immigration compromise has begun to stall. He told George Stephanopolous on ABC’s “This Week” that the bill would likely fail if returned to the floor, and he hoped it would create an opportunity to find a solution that respects the rule of law:

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a key opponent to the bipartisan immigration bill that will be taken up again next week, said Sunday that support for the legislation “continues to erode.”
Sessions noted that some of the senators that had supported the compromise in a series of votes when the bill was first discussed are now beginning to shift their position.
“We’re going to use every effort to slow this process down and continue to hold up the bill and read it to the American people and show them that even though they may favor the ideals of the legislation that the legislation won’t get us there,” Sessions said. “And we’re going to need a national commitment from the president through the Congress, really a mindset change, in which we say, ‘We can make this system lawful.’”

Sessions, one of the strongest of the conservative voices in the Senate arrayed against this bill, struck a more conciliatory note regarding the 12 million illegal aliens already inside the US. He told ABC that deportation on that scale is not an option. Instead, he wants a system that recognizes the roots that many have put down here, but one that does not give them the same set of benefits as lawful immigrants, let alone better — such as the DREAM act and other social programs within the immigration bill.
The bill’s backers know they have to shore up support They have had some difficult moments over the last week, as a half-dozen GOP Senators previously on the fence have publicly announced their intention to vote against cloture, denying the bill a vote. Two Democrats have joined them as well, and more may come this week as the rushed debate process almost guarantees to rub some Senatorial nerves raw.
Ted Kennedy, on the other hand, said on the same show that he thinks he has enough votes to get past cloture. Whether that comes from whipping or from wishful thinking will become clear later this week.

Backers of the immigration reform bill in the Senate keep trying to find a formula that will quell the storm of protest from conservatives the compromise has created. The latest effort changes some of the objectionable elements of the bill — but will it be enough to satisfy the opponents of the bill?

New requirements to track down, deport and permanently bar people who overstay their visas would be added to a broad immigration bill under a GOP bid to attract more Republican support.
The amendment, which also would prevent illegal immigrants from gaining lawful status until they pass a background check, is one of those the Senate will consider next week when it returns its attention to the immigration measure. The bill is likely to see a final vote by month’s end.
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., an architect of a broader deal to legalize as many as 12 million unlawful immigrants, said Friday that the amendment “will help substantially” in persuading his Republican colleagues to support the compromise.

Clearly, the protests against this bill have had an effect on its evolution. The backers have had to start changing elements of the legislation that could not withstand the sharp sunlight of public scrutiny. Critics had focused on the temporary pass that applicants got if the government could not conduct a background check in 24 hours, a flaw that many people believe would grant de facto amnesty to all 12 million illegals in the country.
Already we have seen the administration offer $4.4 billion to do what it should have done after 9/11 — tighten border security. The new slate of amendments also proposes to fix holes in the visa system known since Mohammed Atta exploited them to remain inside the US. These are good ideas, but ones that the administration and Congress should have addressed in the wake of the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC.
The debate has begun to splinter the core coalition that brought the bill to the floor. Jon Kyl took Mel Martinez to task for announcing his intent to amend the bill in a fashion that would weaken the points-based system for immigration the bill imposes. Kyl called Martinez’ amendment a “non-starter”, indicating that Kyl could move away from the bill just as it comes back to the Senate floor.
If so, he would join an increasing number of his GOP colleagues. Kay Bailey Hutchison, John Cornyn, Gordon Smith, new Wyoming Senator Barasso have all announced that they will oppose cloture in an attempt to kill the bill. If Kyl bails, the coalition itself will collapse — and perhaps Congress and the White House will start taking its responsibilities for security a little more seriously. They have seen that we have lost patience for their horsetrading, and not just conservatives, either.

The vote count on immigration reform has drawn plenty of interest from backers and opponents of the compromise bill. The compromise coalition needs only 15 Republican swing votes in order to gain cloture on the latest version of the bill, and the focus has fallen on a narrow band of Republicans that have offered moderate views on immigration in the past.
One of the key Senators in that group is Kay Bailey Hutchison. Being from Texas, one of the border states most affected by immigration issues, her input on this bill may carry significant weight on the rest of the undecideds. If so, the bill’s backers may have a real problem on their hands. A Senate source told me a few minutes ago that Hutchison intends to vote against cloture, and will have a statement to that effect later today.
Keep your eyes and ears open on this development. When it becomes official, she may carry others with her, such as Lamar Alexander and Orrin Hatch.
UPDATE: Fixed the misspelling of Hutchison’s name, h/t to CQ commenter Bob.

I am pleased to welcome Senator James Inhofe, R-OK, for his first guest post at Captain’s Quarters. Senator Inhofe introduces his petition drive to get grassroots action on immigration that focuses on securing the nation’s borders.
Thank you, Captain Ed for allowing me to submit this guest post. I want to briefly discuss illegal immigration, an issue I know many, if not all, CQ readers care deeply about.
Before long, the U.S. Senate will engage in yet another round of debate and backroom deal making on the comprehensive immigration reform bill. And once again, the overwhelming majority of Americans who are deeply concerned about this bill will stand up in opposition. It’s the American people that have prevented its passage so far, and only the American people can stop it a second time. My fellow Senators, under tremendous pressure from party leaders, need to be reminded now more than ever that American citizens have strong opinions on immigration reform and border security.
The inescapable fact is that this bill guarantees amnesty for 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants with no clear indication that the border will be secured once and for all. Until real progress is made in stepping up border security and preventing the flow of new illegal immigrants, the question of what to do about illegal immigrants already here is irrelevant. As long as the source of illegal immigration, a porous border left irresponsibly neglected, remains unaddressed, it is impossible to have a meaningful discussion about a path to citizenship for those already here.
In preparation for the upcoming debate, I’ve started the Secure Borders Now online petition at www.SecureBordersNow.com. It gives American citizens a direct voice into the Senate debate. Already, just a few days after the site launched, we have received thousands of signatures and touching personal messages in opposition to the bill. They range from a story of personal achievement for a proud Texan who immigrated legally to a story from a gentleman who gave twenty years of military service, but now wonders how his children and grandchildren can remain safe when we don’t even enforce our own border security laws.
Now, more than ever, we need signatures from every part of the country. I’ll be sending each Senator the petition signatures from the citizens of his or her state as well as a summary of the tremendous response nationwide. We must remind them how passionately the American people feel about this issue.
Please take a moment to sign the petition at www.SecureBordersNow.com, and I hope you will share the link with your friends and family who care as much as I do about protecting this country and doing what’s right.
Senator Inhofe will join me today on CQ Radio, 2 pm CT. Be sure to join us!

Earlier today, I wrote that the failure of the government to adequately prepare for the new passport restrictions Congress passed in 2005 reflected on their ability to tackle comprehensive immigration reform. A few minutes ago, the White House’s communication staff responded in the comments section, but I’ll give them a more prominent spot here at CQ to make their rebuttal:

I can see how, in order to score a quick point, it would be tempting to equate the passport backlog with the issue of Z visas.
However, you make a false analogy.
Background checks are not a significant factor contributing to the current backlog in processing passport applications. Instead, the key reason for the delay is the non-automated and very labor-intensive process of verifying that the individual is indeed a U.S. citizen. Another major reason for the passport backlog is the time-consuming process for producing the passport itself, which requires an electronic chip, a machine readable strip, and other tamper-resistant features.
By contrast, adjudication of a Z visa application does not require verification of citizenship status because the individual acknowledges at the outset that he or she is illegal. And any delays due to production of the document, of course, are irrelevant to DHS’s ability to handle the background checks.
The background check at issue for the current undocumented is an automated process involving an electronically captured print that will be run through database checks.
Of the five components of the background check, four of them nearly always generate answers within 24 hours. The DHS Interagency Border Inspection System check is immediate as is the DHS immigration records check. The biometrics check in DHS’s IDENT is completed within 24 hours and so is the FBI biometrics. The current FBI fingerprint load is about 60,000 per day. Assuming checks had to be done for all 12 million over a six-month period, this adds another 67,000 name checks per day – well under FBI’s current capacity of up to 200,000 per day.
The only one of the five that sometimes takes longer than 24 hours is the FBI Name Check. 68 percent of names checks are returned within 48 hours and another 22 percent are returned within 60 days. Others may take significantly longer, but if the FBI name check is not completed within 24 hours, it will continue during the probationary period — and if any adverse information is found, the alien’s probationary status will be terminated, and the Z applicant will be deported with no chance of gaining a Z visa. No Z visas will be awarded until all appropriate background checks begun during the probationary period are completed to the satisfaction of the Homeland Security Secretary.

I have a few thoughts about this response, as I’m sure the CQ community also has. First, I appreciate the timely response to the post. I have to say that the White House seems to have improved its communication efforts in the past few months, although I wish it would serve to support some other efforts more than the immigration bill. The improvement is a welcome development.
However, this isn’t quite responsive to the main thrust of my argument. It does address the issues surrounding the 24-hour background checks, but not the main point about allocation of resources and the instant creation of a new bureaucracy that will have to handle upwards of 12 million applications almost immediately. They’ll have to do that on top of revamping the existing visa system and establishing tight border security to meet the triggers in the bill within eighteen months, or 3 years, as the CBO predicts.
Where is the capacity to handle 12 million applicants, or more, when this bill gets signed into law? The State Department still hasn’t fixed their system more than two years after Congress mandated the changes. Why should we assume that DHS will do better handling multiple and larger-scale mandates? Why not just do one thing at a time successfully, and then move on to the next task?
What do you think?
UPDATE: AJ Strata thinks I’m gnowing at a bone of amnesty conspiracy thinking. Actually, my original post had nothing to do with “amnesty”; it had to do with competence, and AJ missed the point. He claims that the government has the ability to process 100,000 illegal aliens a day, but where is this supposed to happen and who’s supposed to do it? I’m sure that eventually they could get it done, but they don’t have the capacity to resolve an extra 5 million passport applications over a one-year period despite having an eighteen-month head start on it.
Obviously, it’s possible to do it, but this bill doesn’t provide the resources for it — and it’s one of several mandates in the bill that have to be accomplished concurrently. That’s my point, and neither AJ nor the White House addressed it.
UPDATE II: Just to make sure everyone knows, I didn’t take any offense to AJ’s post. I know his writing style and his point of view. I consider AJ a good friend, and disagreements on policy doesn’t change that.

For those who support the establishment of new Z- and Y- visa programs to settle the status of illegal immigrants, consider the scope of the management function this requires. The immigration compromise envisions a system that can process and manage a minimum of 12 million people who have never registered for services in the past, and one that can do so successfully almost immediately — as a matter of national security. However, the government’s track record on system management in this field looks decidedly poor, especially if you’ve been unfortunate enough to travel abroad recently:

Federal officials in Washington acknowledge that they failed to anticipate just how much the post-Sept. 11 travel regulations would fuel demand for passports; did not hire enough workers to handle the increase; and neglected to notice or react to signs early this spring of a burgeoning problem.
The State Department estimates that the number of Americans seeking passports this year will reach 17.5 million, up from 12 million in 2005 — the result of new rules requiring such documentation for air travelers returning from Mexico, Canada, Bermuda and the Caribbean. Applicants’ average wait time has swelled from six weeks to 12 weeks or more. …
In an effort to ease the backlog, the State Department announced earlier this month that it would waive the new rules — which took effect in January — through Sept. 30 for travelers who already had applied for passports. Under current plans, the requirements for airline passengers will apply to travelers arriving by land and sea as well in January 2008.
The regulations grew out of recommendations made by the Sept. 11 commission, which in 2004 called for a standardized form of identification for all U.S. travelers to boost border security. In April 2005, the Homeland Security and State departments unveiled the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which required passports, rather than simply driver’s licenses or birth certificates, for travelers returning from nearby countries.

Legislate in haste, repent in leisure.
At the time, critics warned that the crush of new regulation and the expansion of passport requirements would create massive backlogs. George Bush went along reluctantly with the new rules but warned Americans that their trave could get complicated to the point of impossibility while the new system came into being. It has taken more than two years since Congress mandated these rules, and it still hasnn’t fully materialized — and now we have to create bypasses in the regulations just to get American citizens out of the country, which was hardly the national-security problem this new system meant to solve.
Now the Senate wants to establish a brand-new system of government documentation for illegal immigrants on top of this meltdown at State. This system won’t need to process an additional 5 million people over a two-year period; it will have to process 12 million or more people in a matter of weeks.
Once the immigration bill passes with these visas, illegals will want to register immediately for the temporary status that will keep them from the risk of deportation. Where will they go? How can the existing system, which already does a terrible job of keeping up with its existing demand, possibly withstand the traffic the bill will generate? If a good-sized DMV could process 1,000 applications for licenses a day, it would take more than 400 such offices around the country to process 12 million applications in the first 30 days.
That doesn’t even consider the lack of infrastructure for the visas. We need computer systems developed, staff hired, documents designed and printed, and so on. The State Department had all of that infrastructure available, and they still couldn’t get the job done more than two years after the mandate.
We’re going to wind up in exactly the same place as the passport system. Applications will be locked in closets, people will not get responses from the bureaucrats, and Congress will angrily grill officials about the stupidity of the system Congress created.
And the same President that questioned the ability of State to handle an expansion of the passport regulations suddenly believes that the DHS can create a massive bureaucracy out of thin air to manage 12 million illegal immigrants.
Legislate in haste, repent in leisure.
UPDATE: I realize that the “incompetence argument” can be used to negate any sort of proposed government program, including border security. I’m not exactly arguing it to that extent, although it does explain the multitude of failures on border security rather nicely. What I’m saying is that this bill doesn’t even begin to plan for the massive bureaucracy it will create. It ignores reality, sets up goals without the resources to meet them, and therefore promises something it will never deliver..
That’s why it’s better to tackle this one step at a time.

Critics of the immigration reform bill in the Senate have asked repeatedly why Congress can’t address border security and visa-system overhauls first before addressing normalization and guest-worker programs. Even those of us who do not oppose some form of normalization as part of a national-security effort understand that Congress needs to build trust with the American people on the two key portions of controlling entry into and exit from the United States before creating huge new bureaucracies to deal with the 12 million people already illegally in the US. However, when asked, Senators talk about triggers instead of severability.
The House, however, seems to have few problems with severability, at least in theory:

House Democrats say they may break the immigration issue up into a series of smaller bills that would put off the tougher parts and allow others to pass, such as border security, and high-tech and agriculture worker programs that have clear support.
That could buy Democrats more time to work out the tougher aspects of immigration, such as what to do about the estimated 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens now here, but it would go against the Senate’s massive catchall approach and contradicts President Bush’s call for a broad bill to pass. …
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, says he is committed to getting a “comprehensive” bill done before releasing the Senate for its Fourth of July vacation, and he has the support of top Republican leaders.
In the House, though, Republicans are more uniformly opposed, and many vulnerable freshman Democrats could be hurt by a bill labeled “amnesty.” That leaves Democratic leaders trying to see what they can pass.

In our interview last week, Rep. Tim Walberg said that the House would take a very different approach to immigration. Walberg also told us then that the GOP caucus in the House almost unanimously opposed the Senate approach to immigration, and that the prospects were not good that a bill could even get past a conference committee. It makes sense; all 435 House members face the voters in 2008, and they are much more vulnerable to voter anger. The Senate only has one-third of its members running for re-election in any given cycle, and can afford to be less responsive in the short run.
House leadership has apparently read the polls in this case. They know that the American public supports some rational form of normalization by a thin majority, but that they overwhelmingly support strengthening border security and visa programs first. They want to take the common-sense approach of fixing the actual underlying problems that create illegal immigration first, and then worry about correcting the symptoms once the problems have been resolved.
House Republicans encourage this approach. Eric Cantor, the deputy whip for the GOP, rightly says that Congress has to rebuild trust with the public on border security before we will accept the rest of the package. Those portions of the bill in the Senate, Cantor says, is no more than what Congress has already passed and then effectively ignored. Attempting to foist that on the American public again will anger the electorate, and not just conservatives.
If the House can figure out a way to effectively tackle immigration one step at a time, why can’t the Senate?

The debate in one thread of the immigration topic here at CQ — and we have many of them, I know — offered up an interesting fact about the current bill. RBMN, a longtime commenter and voice of reason here at CQ, made this comment yesterday:

I’d be very surprised if most of the public, who’ve been answering pollsters on this, have any clue about 21st-century database search technology, or the law enforcement value of just having this large database full of new names, faces, fingerprints, addresses, and vital record information for millions of resident aliens in the country now, that we don’t know anything about. The law enforcement value of that is tremendous. When you’re looking for an anonymous needle in an anonymous haystack, for a Mohammed Atta type, it helps a lot to cut the size of the haystack by 3/4. Z-Visas will make the haystack a lot smaller. For terrorism, that’s the real security part of the compromise. For preventing terrorism, it sure as hell isn’t how many fences we have on the Mexican border.

Jabba the Tutt, another longtime and reasonable CQ commenter, replied:

Precisely for this reason, the bill forbids ICE from sharing the database with law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Does this fact change your opinion on the bill?

I decided to look into this question, as it seems rather fascinating that the federal government would forbid other federal agencies from using a federal immigration database — especially since part of the argument for normalization is to have that information available. In section 302 of the bill, one of the subsections includes this language:

(10) Limitation on use of the Employment Eligibility Verification System.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, nothing in this subsection shall be construed to permit or allow any department, bureau, or other agency of the United States Government to utilize any information, database, or other records assembled under this subsection for any purpose other than for the enforcement and administration of the immigration laws, anti-terrorism laws, or for enforcement of Federal criminal law related to the functions of the EEVS, including prohibitions on forgery, fraud and identity theft.”
(11) Unauthorized Use or Disclosure of Information.
Any employee of the Department of Homeland Security or another Federal or State agency who knowingly uses or discloses the information assembled under this subsection for a purpose other than one authorized under this section shall pay a civil penalty of $5,000-$50,000 for each violation.

The truth lies somewhere between RBMN and Jabba. The database is available for counterterrorism investigations — but that’s it, outside of immigration and employment verification enforcement. Why would the data in this database be kept secret from other law-enforcement agencies working on criminal investigations? Is this a normal provision in federal databases?
Right now, this looks like a Gorelick Wall for criminal prosecutions to me.