by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
I must say, it's nice to be able to take a break from the political fight and talk policy and legislative strategy for a moment.
Now that the immigration compromise seems to have pleased no one, it's worth examining politically feasible alternatives. And I don't share Ezra's optimism [despite his bang-up reporting] that the bill will improve in the House. The top House GOP leaders, John Boehner (D-OH) and Roy Blunt (D-MO) routinely earn low marks from pro-immigration interest groups and high marks from border control zealots; they're not inclined to vote for anything, and many members of their caucus don't want to see a bill at all. No Republican running for President wants to see a bill that includes citizenship [come out for it and you'll lose the primary; come out against it and you'll put Texas into swing territory]. What's more, an decent number of Democrats would rather not vote for citizenship; remember, before the '06 elections, 44 Democrats held districts that Bush won in 2004, and that number has only gone up since. That leaves everyone hoping to get enough business backing to convince enough "moderate" Republicans to vote for it, and then get the President to sign it while House Republicans scream bloody murder. Count me down as skeptical.
With the guest worker provisions pissing off everyone, one option is simply to drop the guest worker provisions, plus some of the goofier steps in the green card application process (like the touch-back), and vote on enforcement plus normalization for everyone illegally living in the US today. If illegal immigration slows, then you're done. If it doesn't, then you just have a third bill on immigration in 20 years.
That's not a perfect solution, but if citizenship isn't on the table, we're left with a choice between the status quo on one hand and reinstituting the bracero program on the other. Is there any reason to prefer one of those options to the other?
