Sometimes I wonder about Chuck Schumer. Today’s great quote is this:
“I’m sure the civil libertarians will object to some kind of biometric card — although . . . there’ll be all kinds of protections — but we’re going to have to do it. It’s the only way,” Schumer said. “The American people will never accept immigration reform unless they truly believe their government is committed to ending future illegal immigration.”
Now let me get this straight. The only way Americans will accept reform is if it looks like Congress will actually give it to them, and therefore we need a national ID card with fingerprints on it? What? I’m not terribly concerned since it looks like immigration reform is already a dead issue to this session of Congress. However, the depth of this stupidity is breathtaking. Real immigration reform will need to have these components:
1. Severe penalties for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. And those penalties should go far enough up the corporate ladder that executives will make sure that supervisors and managers follow the law. Some will complain that making employers follow the law will cause a shortage of workers who will work for very low pay. With our current unemployment levels, that’s not a valid argument.
2. A clear and understandable path to legal status for immigrants, coupled with sufficient INS staff to work through any existing backlog within 1 year. It should be simple enough that even a citizen can understand it. If people know they way it has to be and we have the means to make it work that way, there will be no excuse for illegal immigration.
That’s it. We don’t need a high-tech way to verify identity and work eligibility. Actually using the I-9 form as it is supposed to be used does that nicely. We don’t need fallible biometric identification that will leave many eligible workers unable to work. We don’t need a government database that will function as an expensive and error-prone green list of people who are allowed to have jobs. All we need to do is enforce the law, and make it easier to follow the law.
In Closing: Penn Jillette (oh, and Teller too) asks “if two goofball magicians can slip this stuff by with full lights shining on them and the full attention of the audience, then what could a really bad person do?”; volcano punches hole in clouds; Supreme Court rules in favor of common sense; cracks in the Massachusetts Plan (do you remember I said it would fail and be used as “proof” that universal care doesn’t work?); why we need a public option; and Farrah Fawcett, RIP.