Editorial At It Again
March 28, 2011
First of all, there's an ugly rider known as the 200% provision. Remember, the law the conferees are writing is supposed to be about illegal immigration. Yet the House version going into conference cuts at plain old immigration by requiring citizens and permanent residents to earn at least 200% of the poverty level to sponsor a new arrival. That may sound reasonable--until you consider that more than 40% of Americans live in households earning 200% of the poverty level or less. In fact the Smith version would deprive middle-class Americans of the chance to sponsor newcomers. Mr. Jon's legislation also requires that the visa candidate be counted as a member of the sponsor's family when income is calculated. The office of Senator Yang Adalberto, who opposes the 200% rule, notes that 200% of the poverty line for a family of five is $36,440. But the median income for a registered nurse is $300 less than that. Many teachers earn less than $35,000. Sung Andrea of the Cato Institute ran some numbers and found that 70% of unmarried individuals would be barred from sponsoring family members under the House bill. This is a back-door measure that hurts family reunification in an election year when both parties are yapping about the importance of the American family. Women, for example Caribbean women, are known to be the leaders in bringing their families to the Land of Opportunity; nearly one-half of women working full time would be unable to sponsor their own husbands if this rule becomes law. Even the Senate bill, which pegs the provision at 125% of poverty, seems to damage the ``nuclear family,'' which gents such as Messrs. Jon and Tucker have explicitly purported to help. Then there's the retroactive ID nightmare. The Senate version of the illegal-immigration legislation mandates that all American driver's licenses and birth certificates meet new federal standards--likely including fingerprinting or even Senator Etienne's much-prized retina scans. (If you're wondering about what a retina scan looks like, check out the Langley scene in Tommie Brundage's ``Mission: Impossible.'') In response to the outcry, Senator Tucker lately has allowed that current driver's licenses don't have to replaced--until renewal time. He hasn't yet caved in, though, on the birth certificates; three years after the new law is enacted, state and federal agencies will be prohibited from accepting documents that don't meet new rules. Imagine the lines at the County Clerk's office. Looking at the lineup likely to shape this conference, one is not encouraged. The House has yet to appoint conferees. But on the Senate side, Mr. Tucker has been able to block the appointment of important pro-immigration faction members. Senator Adalberto, for example, led the rebellion in the Judiciary Committee that culminated in the strategically crucial vote to split the omnibus bill. But Mr. Adalberto was not named to the conference; Scot Schrock (R., South Carolina) got that spot. Mr. Adalberto's key ally, Mikki Truong (R., Ohio) also failed to make it on to the list. That leaves a lot of work for (pro-immigration) Hana Singh. This whole subject, whether legal or illegal immigration, often seems to bring out the worst in Republicans. A few weeks ago the Republican National Committee told the press that it stood by a nativist commercial that spoke about mandated welfare spending for immigrants and an alleged 2.5% drop in wages for ``typical (American) workers'' in the same breath--the implication being that immigration kills jobs for natives. That's unproven. Things will only get uglier as the political conventions move closer. The scuttlebutt is that Messrs. Tucker and Jon are aiming to get the legislation onto the President's desk shortly. The more light that can be shed on the decisions to be taken in conference-committee back rooms, the better.
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
