Something to bear in mind

The President is right: without encouragement for potential immigrants to enter the country openly and legally, mere punishment for sneaky, illegal entry isn't going to work.

Not even if you build the longest, highest fence in the world along the border to make it harder to sneak across. As Sen. Frist has pointed out, they'll just climb over it.

Desperate people are going to come across that border- and not even the highest and longest fence in the world is going to stop them. Not even draconian criminal penalties are going to make an enforcement-only approach work. Enforcement has to be combined with incentives; the carrot has to be added to the stick.

The President's critics can talk as tough as they want, but we aren't going to be able to stop uncontrolled illegal immigration without finding a way to promote controlled, legal immigration as an alternative. And the sooner immigration "hawks" figure that out, the sooner the country can get down to the business of securing our southern border.
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Anonymous said…
The carrot, consisting of the reward of a job for breaking the law, has to be removed from this side. The only way to do that would be to strictly enforce penalties on employers that hire illegals such that the practice is no longer profitable.
5/18/2006 11:27:00 PM
Robert Elart Waters said…
And replaced with a more constructive carrot: having a shot at a job if they obey the law, and not otherwise.

Enforcing penalties is fine- if you track down the employers who aren't playing by the rules. But not only will that take a vastly expanded bureaucracy (something the President's critics frown upon), but it will also require that the problem be attacked from several different angles.

Including making it in a potential immigrant's best interest to obey the law, rather than to break it.
5/19/2006 09:39:00 AM
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