Immigration Triple-Threat

First, the story:

Senators negotiating a bipartisan immigration reform bill have settled on the details of a plan that would immediately grant legal status to all illegal immigrants currently in the United States.

The deal on “Z visas” for illegal immigrants is one of several issues where Democrats and Republicans have reached broad agreement. …

The plan to award legal status to all illegal immigrants who meet certain qualifications would occur only after other “triggers” are met. These triggers would require that certain border security and work-site enforcement measures be in place before other aspects of the overhaul go forward.

The Z visa plan would start with the estimated twelve million illegal immigrants in the United States going on a probationary legal status. If the triggers are met — a process that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) estimated would take eighteen months — then illegal immigrants who qualify could get Z visas. Those who have committed felonies would not be eligible, Graham said, and all participants would have to pass security checks, pay a fine and a processing fee and pass an English proficiency test.

Z visa holders would be able to apply for legal permanent resident status, a step toward citizenship. But at some point, the heads of households with Z visas would have to return to his or her home country and then reenter the United States. They would have to take their Z visa to the U.S. Embassy or consulate and would be guaranteed reentry. The Z visa would include a photo and fingerprints, Graham said.

And now, the combatants. First, in the blue corner, wearing the "glass is half full" trunks, he is the man who captured lightning in a bottle, parlaying a hobby into a smashingly successful second career, he is of the admiral of BlogTalkRadio's political conservative fleet, and a reigning TTLB Higher Being....Ed....Moooooooorrisseeeeeey:

It doesn’t seem that the conservatives do all that badly in this compromise. They get the borders-first approach demanded last year (and ignored by McCain-Kennedy), with an eighteen-month delay for the triggers to get met, as well as a statutory burden to ensure that they are met before continuing with normalization. It keeps in place the fines and requires a “touchback”, forcing the head of household to return to his/her country of origin and applying for legal entry into the US. It excludes felons from the program, and levies a fine for the illegal entry.

Conservatives won another battle over temporary labor. Democrats had insisted that any guest-worker program allow for permanent resident status; it looks like they’ve dropped that demand. Republicans had to allow for a points system for immigration which takes into account family status as well as economic potential for legal-resident applicants, which does not appear to be an overwhelming compromise.

If the final version of this bill falls into these lines, then the GOP has done well in keeping most of their demands in the final legislation.

And in the red corner, wearing the styling jogging ensemble, he is a former Reagan Justice Department lawyer, a constitutional law professor, a broadcaster known far and wide, and a seven-time best selling author...the Blogfather...Huuuuuuuuugh....Hewwwwwwwwitttttt:

Word is leaking that the GOP in the Senate are on the verge of agreeing to an immigration bill that has - as a "concession" to the GOP - less than half of the fencing promised by law last year.

White flag time on the border, and a national security and thus a political disaster.

The GOP are sending around talking points attempting to make this "compromise" defensible, but it won't and shouldn't fly. Agreeing to it takes the party down the tubes on the issue of border security - because it doesn't provide what the public understands to be border security, a very long, very high fence with a very wide gate.

This is McCain's continuing gift to the GOP, and the immigration absolutists' legacy: Lots and lots of promises and no fence worth calling a fence.

Aren't there forty-one GOP senators willing to fight for border security? Apparently not. And they will see the result in their depleted coffers and diminished numbers come November '08. All they have to do is fight for border security, but they won't even do that.

Ooh, sounds like this'll be a grudge match! And now, introducing, in the white corner, the soul of the nation's longest running conservative journal, the collective creature of conservative credibility, the voice of reason, ladies and gentlemen, the editors...of National Reviewwwwwwwww Onliiiiiiiine:

Whatever the outcome of to[day]’s vote, the Senate immigration debate has been based on false premises. First among them is the idea that the negotiations will produce a meaningful compromise. That’s hardly the right word when everyone sat down at the table taking it for granted that illegal aliens would be legalized and immigration levels would rise. It’s true that some conservatives joined the talks hoping to make the best they could of a bad political situation by pushing for tougher enforcement measures....If these things are included in the “compromise” bill, it will be improved from last year’s version — but the improvement will not represent a significant compromise with conservatives on immigration policy, and will not be enough to make an amnesty palatable.

Another false premise is that the various components of “comprehensive immigration reform” must go together....Why? There is no reason not to pass enhanced enforcement measures now and turn to the status of remaining illegal aliens later. Certainly they’re not all going back, even under the most optimistic scenarios of “attrition through enforcement.”

Finally, there is almost a panic on Capitol Hill about the “need” to pass some kind of bill this year. Again we ask: Why? Sure, it would be best to proceed on those areas where there is already broad consensus, especially with regard to improved enforcement. But if, as a political matter, such measures cannot be separated from the objectionable ones, then it would be better instead to focus on enforcing the laws already in place.

Okay, I'll spare everybody any more of the Michael Buffer impersonation.

I will reiterate here that I don't have the passion for this issue that Double-H and a lot of other right-wingers have. It isn't out of any fundamental, or even minor disagreement with the anti-illegal immigration position. Nor is it because of any feeling of hypocrisy given that both my paternal grandparents emigrated from Germany in the 1920s, sailing right by Lady Liberty and through Ellis Island. How could it be? They came here legally, jumped through all the hoops, played by all the rules, assimilated culturally, and pulled their own weight as naturalized American citizens. I can't really tell you why I'm against the border erasure crowd with my head more than my heart; it just is.

Perhaps it can be described as a principled pragmatism (had to rummage around for a while in my oxymoron closet for that one - like it?):

(1) In a time of global war with Islamic Fundamentalists who use terrorism as a tactic and are gaining access to weapons of mass destruction, control of our borders is utterly critical to national survival and the preservation of American lives. Ergo we need a stout, if not impregnable, fence running the entire length of our southern frontier, at a minimum. Anything less than that is, plainly and simply, unacceptable.

(2) A country that cannot control its borders is destined for cultural and economic homocide; a country that WILL not control its borders is bent on national suicide. This is why a fence is not enough; we must also remove the incentives for sneaking into our country and sponging off the system.

(3) Nothing, no single factor or provision, would provide a bigger incentive for millions and millions more Mexicans (and Islamist remoras) to flood into and overrun America and overwhelm its social welfare net, than another big, fat amnesty. We tried that back in 1986 with the three million illegals present then; there are twelve million here now. I realize that, as a professional accountant, I may have an unfair advantage when it comes to analyzing numbers, but I'd say that's not a positive trend when stacked up against the contrary selling points of that amnesty. Doing it again (a real life illustration of one of the definitions of insanity), rewarding the contemptuous flouting of U.S. immigration laws with ANY track to citizenship, much less a move to the head of the line, and the same runaway influx rate suggests that in the mid-2020s we'd be playing host to almost fifty million Mexicans, all here illegally, staggering an economy already suffocating beneath imminent, entitlements-driven government default, with a demographic shift of sufficient magnitude that the crisis would by then be politically irreversable even if the political elites (which, by then, would be a de facto one-party Democrat autocracy) had the will and stomach to try to turn back the tide.

(4) Maybe it wouldn't be fifty million; if the exponent was "just" three, it'd "only" be thirty-six million. But at these levels it's like John Madden talking about the weight of an NFL team's offensive linemen - "320, 340, 360, it doesn't matter - they're just "over three hundred pounds". Perhaps most of them would try to assimilate and seek an honest living; but there is a limit to how many "furiners" we can "digest" at a time. Never before in our history (until now) did we ever attempt such a thing; periods of immigration influx were only occasional, and even then there were ceilings. Even as a "nation of immigrants" there has to be a recognition that we are a nation, and all that that means and entails.

To quote Lazarus Long, "American citizenship is a privilege, not a right."

(5) Returning from the bleak near future, we come back to NRO's question: with polls showing public disgust with the "do-nothing" Democrat Congress burgeoning, why should Republicans hand them a high-profile accomplishment, whatever "credit" from which will perhaps give the President (from whom you can count on a veto not being forthcoming this time) a legacy uptick but is guaranteed to infuriate the GOP base even more than it was last year (see Brother Hugh's sentiments above)?

As I say, the dog I have in this fight is only an abstraction. I'm not pissed at GOPers succumbing to this "compromise," if they ultimately end up doing so. Heck, they were going to do the same thing last year when they still ran Congress until the base raised unshirted hell about it, and the latter took a walk on them come Election Day anyway. Now, no longer in the majority, having been abandoned by that same base, I somehow doubt that panicked Pachyderms in survival mode are going to care all that much what the conservative grassroots think.

This was what I was afraid of. It came to pass. And it looks to be every bit the disastrous downward spiral into rump party status that I presciently feared.

Maybe Fred Thompson can do a run-in and turn this symbolic yet all too real triple-threat intra-GOP grudge match into a shamoze (pro wrestling term for a no-contest finish). I just hope the referee speaks good enough English to understand him.