Can we trust the political class on immigration reform? Specifically, can this administration be counted upon to enforce any requirement to stop the influx of illegals along the border? If the past is an indicator the answer is no.
Both the Bush and Obama administrations have been feckless in their attention to border security and Mr. Obama has signaled that he has no desire to be any more diligent in upholding our laws in a second term than he was in his first.
Thus any reform which trusts either Republicans or Democrats to establish a secure southern border somewhere down the road is doomed. The current plan, much ballyhooed because Senator Marco Rubio supports it, is a farce. Eleven million (or so) current aliens will be granted immediate amnesty on the promise that sometime in the foggy future the administration will bestir itself to do something it currently has no inclination or incentive to do. Fat chance.
At VP we've long advocated a kind of amnesty for those already in the country illegally (To read it go here and scroll down to "Addressing Illegal Immigration"), but insisted that it be predicated on two prior conditions: First, that it be codified into law that no one who has broken our existing laws to get here be placed on a path to citizenship, and second, that prior to any amnesty being declared a secure fence be erected along the entire length of the southern border to ensure that there'll be no future deluge of illegal immigrants into the U.S. Israel has done something similar and has cut terrorist infiltration from Gaza to zero. We can do it, too.
Some Republicans oppose such measures, though, because they mistakenly see illegal immigrants as a source of cheap labor and as the answer to our long-term social security funding problem. Democrats won't go along because they see illegals as a vast Democrat constituency. Rush Limbaugh has pithily observed that Democrats would be down on the border right now pouring the footers for the fence if they were persuaded that illegal immigrants would, upon being granted citizenship, vote overwhelmingly Republican. He's also claimed that he himself would support complete amnesty and a road to citizenship if part of the deal was that these new citizens be prevented from voting for twenty five years. If that were the condition, he opines, the Democrats would quickly lose interest in any solution to the immigration problem. He's probably right.
As Charles Krauthammer argues, we need to build the fence first - we could even have the president go down and drive in the final golden post at a Promontory Point II - and then declare amnesty. To do it the other way around means that the golden post will never get driven in, and we'll be having this same debate all over again in another twenty five years when there are millions more illegals in the country.
Krauthammer's probably right, too.