Immigration
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9008893Bringing order to the border
Apr 12th 2007 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
A new chance to fix the system
PEOPLE can get emotional about immigration. Bill O'Reilly, a talk-show host, devoted a recent segment to the story of an illegal alien who got drunk and accidentally killed two attractive white girls with his car. If only he had been deported for previous misdemeanours, Mr O'Reilly raged, those girls would still be alive. Another talk-show host, Geraldo Rivera, during an on-air shout-joust with Mr O'Reilly, denounced his demagogic choice of story-angle as “a sinâ€.
President George Bush tried again this week to bring a more rational tone to the debate. In a speech to Border Patrol agents in Arizona on April 9th, he urged the new Democratic Congress to revive the immigration reforms that the old Republican Congress killed last year. His proposal was broadly the same as before. He said he wanted to make it harder to enter America illegally, but easier to do so legally, and to offer a path to citizenship for the estimated 12m illegals who have already snuck in.
The first part faces few political hurdles and is already well under way. Mr Bush expects to have doubled the number of Border Patrol agents by the end of next year, to 18,000. While the new recruits are being trained, some 6,000 National Guardsmen are providing reinforcements. And to defend against the invading legions of would-be gardeners and hotel cleaners, the frontier is also equipped with high-tech military gizmos, such as unmanned spy planes with infra-red cameras.
This may be having some effect. Mr Bush boasted that the number of people caught sneaking over the border had fallen by nearly 30% this year, implying that fewer are trying. He added that he had stopped the habit of “catch and releaseâ€, whereby non-Mexicans were freed and told to come back later for a deportation hearing, for which few showed up. Now they are detained until they can be deported, while Mexicans are sent straight back to Mexico.
Less effort has been made to punish firms that employ illegals. In 2004 the total number of employers fined $5,000 or more for this was zero—not much of a deterrent. Mr Bush said this week that Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, is now “cracking downâ€, but he did not reveal exactly how. Mr Chertoff revealed in October that 716 employers were arrested for hiring illegals last year, but it remains to be seen how severely they will be punished.
And the controversial part of Mr Bush's immigration package—allowing more immigrants in and offering those already in America a chance to become legal—is still just a plan. House Republicans squashed it last year. Mr Bush senses a second chance with the new Democratic Congress, but Democrats, like Republicans, are split on the issue. Some, notably Ted Kennedy, think America should embrace hard-working migrants. Others fret that hard-working migrants will undercut the wages of the native-born.
Mr Bush would like to see the pro-immigrant wings of both parties work together to give him a bill he can sign. The Senate is expected to squeeze in a debate next month. The administration is trying to entice law-and-order Republicans on board; a recent leaked memo talked of substantial fines for illegals before they can become legal and “much bigger†fines for employers who hire them before they do.
The biggest hurdle, however, may be the Democrats' reluctance to co-operate with Mr Bush. Some figure that, rather than letting their hated adversary share the credit for fixing the immigration system, they should stall until a Democrat is in the White House and then take it all. That way, they hope, Democrats will gain a long-term lock on the swelling Hispanic vote. But that would be a risky strategy. Voters might just as easily conclude that Democrats would rather carp than govern. So there is a selfish as well as a moral argument for making a deal.
