Did I miss International Backwards Day?
My brain boggled in confusion the other day as I listened to my daily dose of Hugh Hewitt. Senator Clinton has decided that the only way to win in 2008 is to come down hard to the right of President Bush:
“Bush has done everything he can to leave the doors wide open,” said Robert Kunst, president of HillaryNow.com, a group dedicated to drafting Mrs. Clinton to run for president. “Hillary is the only one taking a position on immigration. She will win that issue hands down.”
In an interview last month on Fox News, Mrs. Clinton said she does not “think that we have protected our borders or our ports or provided our first responders with the resources they need, so we can do more and we can do better.”
In an interview on WABC radio, she said: “I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants.”
To which Hugh properly castigated her, saying “What does that even mean? She’s against PEOPLE?” It’s amazing when the “hard right hate mongers” are more compassionate than one of the leading Democrat senators. Isn’t this the person who gave us the “It takes a global village to raise a child” line or whatever it was?
Look, one of the biggest problems with the Mexican border is that there are a large number of people in Mexico want to keep living in Mexico but want to work in the US. They’re not trying to get into the US to live here. Technically speaking, these are not illegal immigrants, because they’re not immigrants at all. However, because of our current policies in border policing, they do have to sneak in and go pretty far afield before they’re “safe” from the border patrols.
There’s no provision in current policy for handling the number of people who want to “commute” to the US in such a way. By making “commuting” easier, we essentially legitimize as legal things which people are already doing. This is a better deal for us, as it gives us some measure of control over the process, and a better deal for Mexican citizens who don’t have to worry about being shot at on the way to work.
As far as I understand it, Senator Clinton’s plan would basically tack on a bunch of crap onto Bush’s original plan:
Moving to the right of even some Republicans, the former first lady told WABC she favors “at least a visa ID, some kind of entry-and-exit ID. And … perhaps, although I’m not a big fan of it, we might have to move towards an ID system even for citizens.”
A federal ID system for citizens is NOT going to do anything other than waste everyone’s time and money, and provide yet another avenue for identity theft experts to exploit.
As far as her “some kind of entry-and-exit ID” program goes, she gets to be farther to the right of Bush on immigration by pointing out all of her “controls” and “protections” that she had to add to his plan. And if it all passes, she gets to point out that *her* entry-and-exit ID system helps foreign citizens work in the US. I’ll be interested in the details of her plan to see how it stacks up to Bush’s temporary worker program.
Here’s a link to Bush’s plan, if you’re interested. Re-reading it nearly a year after it was proposed confirms my (mostly positive) first impressions. Most of the things I might change would be minor, but I could live with this policy as described on the White House page. It would certainly be a step in the right direction.
(Aside: while googling for more info on Bush’s plan, I came across a Daily Kos post from back in January when Bush first proposed it. I’m struck by how cynical (and wrong) Kos’s POV is. This is certainly one of the biggest “token efforts” I’ve ever seen, as Bush keeps pushing for immigration reform well after the election. Memo to Bush: you can stop pushing! You got elected! Stop caring about the poor and downtrodden and get working on emptying the public coffers into the corporate ones!
Kos’s statement that “there’s no way that Democrats allow this thing to pass, giving Bush an election-year trophy amongst Latinos” really makes my brain hurt. I thought one of our duties as the world’s largest superpower is to make the world better for everyone and not just us. I guess it’s not a duty if it helps Republicans.
This is the largest flaw in a democratically controlled government: the elected spend so much time posturing to get re-elected, progress is impeded more by their posturing than advanced by the laws they pass. Memo to politicians: just do your jobs, because maybe we ARE smart enough to see through your smoke.)