From phantom security enhancements to a complicated points system that
only a bureaucrat could love, the immigration compromise before the
US Senate is worse than nearly every realistic alternative except
one: more of the same.
Read my article on ForeignPolicy.com here
I read your piece at Foreign Policy. Interesting and pragmatic. I think you’re right especially about the problems with the guest worker program, notably the home country “touch back” and its non-renewability after six (?) years. I also agree that we need to legalize those illegal aliens who are here, but a backlash is brewing over what some are describing as “amnesty.” So, the greatest asset of the bill might be the most controversial. Today’s L.A. Times reported how that issue has the potential to breakup up the GOP’s electoral coalition:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig27may27,0,4722393.story?coll=la-home-nation
Also, we’ve got this whole debate, at least among some conservatives — like Victor Davis Hanson, Samuel Huntington, and Heather MacDonald — on the development of an “Hispanic Nation.” Are new immigrants assimilating as well as earlier waves of immigrants to America did? I’m for the bill, with some revisions, perhaps along the lines you suggest. But the cultural conservative arguments are compelling, especially for someone like me in Southern California.