Back To Basics

From IBD:
Posted 4/7/2006

Illegal Immigration: Now that the Senate's grand compromise has fizzled out, it's time to get practical. What the nation needs is workable law, not "comprehensive" schemes that look good only on paper.

With all due respect to the World's Greatest Deliberative Body, there was a point last week when the senators' zeal for a deal got the better of their realism. That was when leaders of both parties came up with their grand compromise plan to deal with the status of America's 11 million or 12 million illegal immigrants.

It was elegant in its way. It split the illegal population into three groups — based on time lived in the U.S. — to determine eligibility for legal status and, politically, to placate both advocates of legalization and opponents of amnesty. But it also was unenforceable.

Former U.S. immigration chief Doris Meissner called it a "throwback" to the 1986 reform law, which also tried to sort amnesty-ready long-term illegals from deportable short-timers. The idea didn't work then. It was just too easy to forge evidence to document past residency. For the same reasons, it wouldn't work now.

The senators shelved the plan on Friday after it failed to muster enough voters to protect it from amendments. They have since left for their two-week Easter break, which would be a good time for them to see how America's immigration laws work in practice.

This exposure is needed badly. The laws work poorly, if at all, and the system for enforcing them is already overwhelmed. It's not ready for the demands Congress seems willing to put on it.

Washington has a history of ignoring workplace realities. Since 1986, for instance, it's been against the law to hire illegal aliens. Yet that hasn't stopped them from finding work. Blame employers who knowingly break the law. But honest businesses also get little help; most firms don't have the time or money to check documents related to past residency.

A small voluntary program enables employers to check Social Security numbers and information against a federal database. With enough time and money, it could be built into a reliable nationwide system that employers could use. But it's not there now. The House bill gives some idea of the work still needed, giving employers all of six years to verify that their workers are here legally.

And if anyone sees the worst of the immigration system, it is those would-be U.S. residents who play by the rules. The government has made progress in whittling down its backlog of applications, but it is has some way to go before meeting its stated goal of getting the average processing time for a green card down to six months.

Now imagine the impact of dumping millions of new cases — including full background checks and verification of residency at some previous point — on a bureaucracy struggling to catch up with its current workload.

There is already too much incentive to avoid the hassle of legality and sneak in or overstay a visa. Unless Congress is willing to spend what it takes to bring the system up to speed, long waits will get longer and the law-abiding will lose.

At some point Congress does need to decide how to deal with the huge population of illegal immigrants here now. President Bush is basically right in calling for a "comprehensive" plan. But because it fosters contempt for the law, a plan that neglects the basics of enforcement is worse than none at all. Whatever reform is ultimately enacted, it must be more credible than the laws we have now.