Senate Repubicans [sic] met today and it appears that the majority of them are willing to sign on to a White House-Kennedy “comprehensive” reform. Some have convinced themselves that the measure represents a good trade, i.e. amnesty for 12 million (which they privately acknowledge is the case) in exchange for beefed up enforcement including a worker verification system (assuming government can effectively design one with Democrats refusing to agree to data-sharing among relevant agencies), and an end to chain migration at some point in the future, i.e. when big backlog on extended family members waiting for green cards is cleared up.
Captain Ed puts some lipstick on the pig, arguing that the “points system” for citizenship and the requirement that certain border enforcement and work-status verification improvements take place before the legalization provisions can take effect makes this a not-half-bad compromise for the GOP under the circumstances. As he says over at CQ:
It’s either a compromise structured along these lines, or no progress on border security for two years and a large gamble on retaking Congress and the White House in November 2008. This seems like a better deal.
Is that true, though? We’ve already got a de facto Democrat in the White House when it comes to this issue as well as enough GOP “moderates” currently in the Senate to break a filibuster. How much worse could a bill passed in 2009 with a 55-45 Democratic majority be than the one they want to pass now? I ask you.
It looks like they’re going ahead with the moronic “touchback” provision, too, which requires illegals who want their get out of jail free card, also known as the “Z visa,” to go back home, queue up at the embassy, and then come right on back in. They’ve been touting that idea for fully a year now and I still don’t understand what purpose it serves except as a symbolic gesture of (re-)entering the country lawfully.
Here you go. Your party. “Four pages of crap.”
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