So you're willing to allow a vote on a stand-alone biometric ID card and employer sanctions for not using it? That's a major consession from the standard left position that has paralysed any reform for the last 20 years.

Any North American citizen who declares their citizenship should be allowed to remain here for another four years.

That solves most of the problems.

Yeah, well, then there is the other deleterious effect that is absolutely crippling. The clogging of the Federal trial court system, which was already straining at the seams from the ridiculous war on drugs and emphasis on low level offenders, and the excessive and mandatory sentences that either force trials, or at a minimum, lengthy prosecutions with numerous court appearances before resolution. Tacking the necessity of dealing with all these immigration cases is so short sided and ignorant it is beyond belief.

Tens of thousands of unlicensed drivers on the roads, who may not know the traffic laws, who are sure to leave the scene of any accident lest they risk deportation - that has a deleterious effect on the nation's roadways.

... the problem is the unlicensed drivers. Giving them a license won't make them any more legal, and they'd still drive off for fear of deportation. The solution is to impound their cars, auction them off, and use the proceeds to send them back to their home country. If they don't have a car or other proceeds from their felony trespass on US soil, then the government will just have to foot the bill; it pays for itself.

Ahhh, al.

You epitomize the conservative ideal: If the scales are tilted against a person, the best solution is to tilt them further. After all, once someone is off American soil, they cease to exist, isn't that right?

Great post! Of course, I'm a little biased, since I think the Dems should highlight even more how their leadership supports illegal activity, with some elected Dem politicians even having links to the MexicanGovernment. It will also make it easier for me when I go to an Obama appearance and ask him one of these. The look on his face when someone finally calls him on one of his lies and points out what's wrong with his policies is not only going to be priceless, it's going to get a lot of views. So, keep on keeping on!

[Note: WM and/or KD have a habit of deleting or editing comments without notice, so this comment may disappear or be different from what I posted. Search for "kevin drum" at my main site for examples of comments that were deleted.]

So what's the point? That we should give Republicans the extra "oomph" they may have needed for this to work as a wedge issue by standing hard and far-left on it-- and on the kind of specific policy Hillary proved a Democrat has to play safe about-- during election season? During a period of time when playing safe & winning are key?

Even the Republicans (who hold the keys to the castle of the Fourth Estate) back away from their extreme issues during election time. Look at what a school-boy they made Bush look like prior to Nov. 2000, and look at their recent moves (their so-called "Family" legislation that looks like weak-tea Democratic legislation, for one).

The fact that we have the momentum of the demographic shift on our side on this issue is a reason to wait to move until our political situation is more certain-- it means that time is on our side-- than to start new experiments with it before November. If the public were really thirsting for protecting the burgeoning Latino community- if there was a huge social movement in the style of the 1960s behind it- that would be a different matter, but such is not the case.

The basic strategy for now until November is to keep hitting the sweet spots, the issues those voters who might vote for us really want to hear about, and to garnish it with the choicest, most logical criticisms of the Republicans' stances on their strongest issues. We should point out the most illogical parts about the Republicans' positions on something like immigration, but beyond that-- assimilating immigrants well and keeping them from being hassled by over-reaching INS officials isn't what's dragging people to the polls for us. It's Barack Obama's personality and his promise of integrity.

Stick with what works, team.

I've grown to trust recently that the Washington Monthly blog is a place I can come to to find horrible, horrible political strategy for our side.

But there is no shortage of those, nowadays.

Good topic, dday.

If I understand the logic, America is a country with a poor education system, a poor healthcare system, a large and permanent underclass, a huge gulf between rich and the rest of us, long standing racial issues and that faces a continual threat from foreign terrorists.

So the proper reaction to this reality is to:
1) Throw open our borders
2) Stop enforcing immigration laws
3) Import millions and millions of non-English speakers who are illiterate in their own language to serve as slave labor for the rich and corporations
4) Eliminate any meaning of US citizenship

The only leftie I have heard who is honest about the immigration question that I have heard is Barney Frank (aka Bawny Fwank). He basically admitted that making any poor Mexican who can sneak across the border an American citizen will have very bad short term consequences for working class blacks and whites. But he supports it because it will lead to future majorities for Hugo Chavez style socialism in America. I wish you could all be so honest.

We are so fortunate to be enlightned, O great one.

"America is a country with a poor education system"

We actually have the best education system in the world, but our schools suck. Cramming rambunctious kids into classrooms is not education, that is babysitting and pretending by the NEA.

Why is it so hard to understand that we should know who is crossing the border so that we can tell if a criminal is coming in? That is not bigoted...it is smart. Immigration is fine, but know who you are inviting in.

Every chance some people get to throw the race card they do, now that there must be some of that nuanced thinking I keep hearing about.

I suspect I'm being too simplistic here, but it seems to me that McCain's past stance on immigration mixed with a record of such initiatives as the McCain-Kennedy Bill, will shift large segments of the Hispanic vote towards McCain, a border-state candidate that the Hispanic voters may feel will best advance their interests (whatever those may be).

Doesn't having McCain as the nominee create a major problem for Dem's keeping Hispanic votes?

Angry Customer is a good example of a Republican poster looks like when he is working the liberal websites to spread Republican propaganda or misinformation.

As is usual of Republicans, he claims liberals want to completely throw borders open-- but there isn't a shred of support for that. You won't find a single honest person anywhere who wants to throw our borders open with no accountability.

Interestingly, and as I'm sure many of you have concluded, the Republicans failed at exploiting immigration as a wedge issue because liberals simply did not turn out to be the pro-illiegal immigration loons Republicans needed to paint them to be. But as I described in my earlier comments, the advice of dday's post seems to be that we do just that-- that we make ourselves the party of all-out support for immigrants, immediately prior to an election.

But to answer the anti-immigrant arguments he/she made, though:

The illegal immigrants, though, have become an important part of our economy that the laws simply don't account for. The idea that they are hurting our economy is preposterous-- they make up such a large part of our labor force, that the number of working-class white people who are out of work could by no means match them. No working-class white man wants his daughter to aspire to be a maid in some rich person's house. He wants her to go to college so she can get a job where she sits at a desk all day in an air-conditioned office, using a phone and a computer-- and unlike illegal immigrants, she can. Even if it takes her six years to finish college, she can.

The average working class white or black person's life in America would probably be worse off without all the illegal immigrants, because there wouldn't be enough labor to service industries like agriculture. The price of food would rise and be less affordable for many poor and working-class families.

"(aka Bawny Fwank)"

Stay classy, AC.

I don't know if some of us are really that naive, but the "tough" stance on illegal aliens (please don't use the Orwellian Doublespeak "immigrants") is simply a dog-and-pony show to avoid enforcement of immigration laws. We know Bush is 100% corrupt on enforcement of immigration law in order to marry U.S. capital with Mexican labor. We know the Democrats are 100% corrupt on enforcement because low end chamberpot immigrants vote Democratic. We know that illegal migration could be stopped easily by going after employers, and it ain't being done because of corruption in Washington and the low morals of PC libs.

I asked some libs on a PC forum how many people this country could hold without lowering our standard of living, and got a range of 3-240 billion people in response. LOL.

Reagan's amnesty for 3 million brought in 30 million more illegal aliens. How exactly do libs expect to ever stop the flow when Hispanics are gaining more and more power? Anybody with any sense should realize by the support for illegal aliens in the Hispanic community that Hispanics are far more racist and power hungry for la raza than they are American, which presages trouble ahead.

There's an important new book, "Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race," from UCLA sociologists Vilma Ortiz and Edward E. Telles of the Chicano Studies Research Center tracking Los Angeles and San Antonio Mexican-American families from 1965 to 2000. It decisively concludes the debate over how long it will take Mexican immigrants to catch up with the American middle class.

Their multiple regression analyses show that the key factor, driving all the others, is education. They conclude:

"Throughout this book, our statistical models have shown that the low education levels of Mexican Americans have impeded most other types of assimilation, thus reinforcing a range of ethnic boundaries between them and white Americans."

As is well known, American-born Mexicans average more years of education than do their Mexican-born immigrant ancestors. Unfortunately, as Telles and Ortiz report, the third and fourth generations of Mexican Americans do not continue to close the gap relative to non-Hispanic whites:

"In education, which best determines life chances in the United States, assimilation is interrupted by the second generation and stagnates thereafter."

The fourth generation (whose grandparents were born in America) was particularly unaccomplished:

"Sadly and directly in contradistinction to assimilation theory, the fourth generation differs the most from whites, with a college completion rate of only 6 percent [compared to 35 percent for whites of that era]."

The fourth-generation Baby Boomers averaged 0.7 years less schooling than the second and third generation Mexican Americans born in the same era.

Telles and Ortiz found:

"…the educational progress of Mexican Americans does not improve over the generations. At best, given the statistical margin of error, our data show no improvement in education over the generations-since-immigration and in some cases even suggest a decline."

In 2000, the UCLA interviewers also asked the Baby Boomer children of the original subjects about their own children (i.e., the grandchildren of the 1965 respondents). These grandchildren (who are third to fifth generation Mexican Americans, Generation X-ers born in the 1960s and 1970s) "seemed to be doing no better than their parents" at graduating from high school.

In summary, illegal immigration is creating a "Permanent Proletariat" in what is supposed to be a middle class country.

For details, see: http://vdare.com/sailer/080601_barone.htm

swan,

Please describe one thing that the Democratic Party is supporting that would not be considered open borders and unlimited immigration. The no deportation stance alone is enough to demonstrate the support for open borders and unlimited immigration.

Given the money the middle class is going spendng to support illegal aliens along with higher real estate prices to escape living near them, the higher insurance costs, the higher costs of crime, and the costs of private schools to avoid the impact of large number of illiterate students.

Even Senator Obama is smart enough to send his own children to school is no illegal aliens.

How do you think that single payer health care, free college for all, or reducing carbon emissions will ever occur if the government supports open borders and unlimited immigraiton.

Also, please explain how why employers should be the enforcers of immigration laws when the federal government, state governments, local governments all refuse to enforcement. How will private sector employers be able to enforce immigration laws withouth profiling, withouth beng sued, or withouth the enfrocement being ineffective.

"Please describe one thing that the Democratic Party is supporting that would not be considered open borders and unlimited immigration. The no deportation stance alone is enough to demonstrate the support for open borders and unlimited immigration."

The Democratic Party opposes immigration by criminals. The Democratic Party supports the deportation of illegals who commit crimes (other than the victimless crime of illegal immigration).

To say that the Democratic Party supports open borders, unlimited immigration and no deportation is simply a lie.

Why do conservatives feel they are allowed to lie to support their POV?

The solution to the immigration problem is solving the economic problem - in Mexico.

The solution to the economic problem involves scaping NAFTA and coming up with a more equitable arrangement for both countries, especially, agriculture in Mexico most especially.

Most of the immigrants are coming from farms that failed after NAFTA exposed small Mexican farmers to Big-American-Corp-Agriculture. The welfare system was nothing less than becoming an illegal in the United States.

The second part of that is forcing Mexico's tiny ruling elite to have to share the wealth. The only difference between Mexico and the United States is FDR. We had a New Deal, they're still stuck with the old deal.

Coerce Mexico into a New Deal of some sorts, or threaten them with a massive influx of their own illegal alliens walking around their streets with nothing to do all day.

Both of these are tied together. When Spain joined the EU, they had to liberalize their institutions. The result was overnight prosperity. You give Mexico prosperity and illegal immigration goes away as a problem.

joel,

If you look at http://www.barackobama.com/issues/immigration/
the word deportation is not used. As far as I can tell, Senator obama believes once you are in the U.S., you get to stay no matter what. Remember, law enforcement is not really allowed to ask about immigration status.

What Senator obama does support is more chain migration, more anchor babies, citizenship for all illegal aliens who are in the U.S. and maintaining the current border non-security system. It seems that to Senator Obama putting millions of illegal aliens on the path to citizenship so that they will become automatic Democratic Party voters is much more important that off-setting the negative impacts of uncontrolled immigration.

Now, please answer how carbon emissions can be reduced while allowing millions of more immigrants (legal and illegal) into the U.S. each year. Please explain how the public schools will ever get better with million of new immigrants each year. Please explain how traffic and sprawl can be reduce while allowing in millions of immigrants each year.

"If you look at http://www.barackobama.com/issues/immigration/
the word deportation is not used."

If you look at that site, you will see that the word astrophysics is not used. What does that tell us about Barack Obama's views on astrophysics? Does it entitle you to say whatever you want?

"As far as I can tell . . . "

You? Who are you?

"What Senator obama does support is more chain migration, more anchor babies, citizenship for all illegal aliens who are in the U.S. and maintaining the current border non-security system. It seems that to Senator Obama putting millions of illegal aliens on the path to citizenship so that they will become automatic Democratic Party voters is much more important that off-setting the negative impacts of uncontrolled immigration."

It seems that way to you because you are a Democrat-hating wingnut.

"Now, please answer how carbon emissions can be reduced while allowing millions of more immigrants (legal and illegal) into the U.S. each year."

Presumably the same way that carbon emissions can be reduced by allowing millions of American citizens to live in the US. Illegal immigration has no more effect on global warming than US citizens. Indeed, affluent citizens have the largest carbon footprint per capita.

"Please explain how the public schools will ever get better with million of new immigrants each year."

The same way public schools always get better. When teachers are paid appropriately and parents are involved. This has absolutely nothing to do with illegal immigration.

"Please explain how traffic and sprawl can be reduce while allowing in millions of immigrants each year."

LOL! You seem to labor under the illusion that every societal problem in the US today can be mapped to illegal immigration!

I suppose that next you'll want me to explain how we can ever hope to "win" in Iraq while allowing millions of immigrants each year.

Smarter trolls, please.

You give Mexico prosperity and illegal immigration goes away as a problem.

Complete B.S.

First, undocumented immigrants aren't only coming from Mexico. They are coming from El Salvador, Brazil, India, China, Eastern Europe. There are jobs here for them. Many have come here for college and then overstayed their initial visas.

We have created a system now that is anti ALL immigrants. The visa system is a horrible mess and yet employers who want to get them for their non US employees - can't. And this isn't just a problem for lettuce farmers. There was an article recently in the Washington Post about swimming pools in the Washington area that can't find lifeguards. Turns out that was once a job that high school- and college-aged citizens wanted in the summer is no longer job they want. Even at pay of $9-$13 an hour. Smart kids are doing test prep and extra classes in the summer. And can't spend all day at the pool. So Eastern Europe had been a place to find lifeguards until the visas had dried up.

There are simply more jobs than we have citizens to take. Unless we start a migration of inner city unemployed to exurbs, farms, and construction jobs -- perhaps setting up labor camps in the Southwest in booming places? While simultaneously eliminating restrictions on hiring felons, I am not sure who we are going to get to fill these jobs.

And then, lets look at another area: LGBT immigration. I cannot sponsor my foreign born partner for purposes of immigration. We are not recognized as a family? What are my friends in the same situation doing? (People by the way, that are college educated, often owning homes and their own businesses, often with quite a bit of money in the bank.) They are leaving the U.S. Exactly the types of people (like the valedictorian) that we should be encouraging to stay. And we are not alone, of course, graduate students -- who used to come from the rest of the world in droves -- are increasingly going to graduate schools in Europe and Asia, and then staying there. Because there is no way for them to LEGALLY get into the U.S. anymore.

We are a nation of immigrants, who's competitiveness on the world scale has always been our relatively open doors, easy immigration and our constantly shifting multi-cultural society where ideas came together in a great cross-pollinating stew. This is the CORE of the innovation culture that gave the U.S. industrial and research and artistic dominance in the 20th Century -- and we are losing that edge. And fast.

My great-grandparents came here from Austria and Ireland, my great grandfather was a machinist and well trained. My great grandmother was a nanny, she was not as well educated. But they just showed up, and were processed. They came in away that would be deemed "illegal" in today's climate: they just showed up. As did my German farmer relatives in the 19th century. All became citizens of course. There was certainly anti-immigrant backlashes, my Austrian-Irish family moved to Canada during and after WWI because of the anti-German backlash in Upstate NY, my great grandfather could no longer find work because his name sounded Germanic, but eventually they came back to the Detroit-area. Hopefully, time will heal these wounds now as well and people who want to be here LEGALLY (and everyone wants to be here legally) will be given that opportunity instead of being forced into coming here as undocumented immigrants by an economy that needs them (and the promise of a better future, a more prosperous culture and our unique innovation: multiculturalism) while at the same time wants to pretend that they are not needed or wanted.

Timbo's post reflects my view. We are spending hundreds of billions nation building in Iraq. We really ought to be dealing with the foreign policy nightmare right across our border. For too long Mexico's has been allowed to export its social problems to the US. If we forced Mexico's leaders to institute real reforms giving their people real hope both countries would benefit. Take some of those dollars we are spending in Iraq and start investing them in Mexico making life better for the average Mexican.

Mexicans would benefit by development of a strong public educational system. The institution of labor and environmental standards in the Mexican work place would also help. A strong Mexican legal system would also help. Gangsters need to be weeded out of Mexico's leadership. The rule of law needs to apply equally to all Mexicans. The Mexican people really need a strong multi-party political system.

Until Mexicans believe there is a future staying in Mexico we will continue to have an immigration problem. The solution to America's immigration problem is a stronger Mexico committed to the rule of law. Every other proposed "solution" is nothing more than reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Joel,

If you remember the idea of at the margin, the illegal immigrants have higher carbon footprints that they would have in their home country. At the margin each immigrant increase the carbon footprint of the U.S. and increase the overall carbon footprint in the world.

At the margin, many schools and school systems, like the Los Angeles Unified School District, are buckling under the stress of illegal immigration. Students who do not read at home and who have parents who are illiterate in English are much harder and more expensive to educate the middle class Americans. At the margin, each literate illegal immigrant families lower the educational possibilities for everyone else.

People commute long distances in places like Houston, Dallas, LA, San Antonio in order to avoid the bad neighborhoods that are filled with illegal immigrants. If you want people to stop moving further out and spending a huge portion of their income on housing, one of many things. At the margin, each illegal alien increases the average commuting distance and time and increases the number of cars on the road.

Everyone should wonder how politicians who turn a blind eye to the negative imipacts of illegal immigrant can ever hope to solve problems like education, energy, transportation, and sprawl. If they refuse to look at all of the causes due to political correctness along with political ambitions.

Also, thank you for confirming that most immigrants (legal and illegal)will eventually become an automatic vote for the Democratic party that those voters will demand more government services to be paid for with more taxes of middle class whites.

Polls show that Rahm is right.

300,000 in North Carolina that is alot of people who are here illegally - and it does matter. Border states have at least three fold more than the NC problem if 10 fold more. There are severe problem with drug trafficing from Mexico - in fact it has exploded in that country and horror stories just across the border are truly frightening. Americans want something done about it and that is a fact in issue. Twice now I've been rear-ended and twice it totaling my vehicle whereby the drivers were illegal residence that HAD no insurance and were using someone else social security card.

Since I was taking legal assisting classes at the community college, I've had to attend court room proceedings for assignments and had watched the court handle illegal residence problems - and these group makes up the largest culture that must be processed. I've been deny jobs because I can't speak Spanish in a fairly large town where most the residence don't speak English because most of those Spanish people speaking are in here in this blue collar town illegally - and yet people tell you they do only jobs nobody wants - and that simply is NOT true, they are displacing LOTS of workers in many blue collar jobs.

The illegal immigrant problem is a sereve problem and Dems had certainly better treat it like one. If New York didn't like granting these people license and they sure as heck DIDN'T just imagine what border towns would feel like if told to do the same? It is a very, very bad problem.

Why does the left have such a hard-on for immigrants?

They make the whole country worse, and giving them driver's licenses doesn't change that fact.

Ibod

Why does the right never want to solve a problem? All you guys want to do is rail against something without really addressing it. I guess keeping immigration alive is job security for some Republican politicians.

By the way this is a nation of immigrants. Unless you are a Native American you got no standing to heap your crap on immigrants legal or illegal.

Ibod,

The left supports open borders and unlimited immigration because it benefits certain groups on the left.

Those immigrants will all eventually become Democratic voters and will support candidates who want to expand the government. Also, since the turn out of immigrant voters is much lower than white liberals, they give liberals more power without totally diluting their power base.

The public service unions want unlimited immigration because the immigrants are poor, uneducated, and make many poor life choices, Illegal immigrants creates a demand for more government and NGO employees.

I also suspect that the left's hatred of blue collar whites had a lot to do with it. When you realize that cities like Washington, DC have almost no blue collar whites but many highly educated, white collar whites, it is easy to see what the Democratic party wants for the future.

The left supports open borders and unlimited immigration because it benefits certain groups on the left. superdestroyer

Superdestroyer,

The right supports illegal and unlimited immigration because it benefits certain groups on the right, in particular it benefits large multinational corporations who benefit from cheap labor and demagogues like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh.

If Republicans were really serious about dealing with illegal immigration the Bush administration would start by prosecuting the President of Tyson Foods and the heads of large construction companies whose use of illegals have impoverished construction tradesmen across the country. Republicans aren't serious so they will continue to rail about the issue without ever solving it.

Superdestroyer, you can now return to LGF where the mindless propaganda is delivered straight up.

"Also, thank you for confirming that most immigrants (legal and illegal)will eventually become an automatic vote for the Democratic party that those voters will demand more government services to be paid for with more taxes of middle class whites."

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Superdestroyer isn't concerned about carbon footprints, schools, traffic or urban sprawl. He/she is concerned because illegals are *brown people*. It's not that American tax money might be needed to deal with this issue, it is the taxes of whitey.

Less racist trolls, please.

Our current system is best for the employers who hire the undocumented aliens. And we as liberals have to ask, is it worth subsidizing these businesses?

I say let's give the anti-immigrant Republicans what they want until it starts to hurt business. Then they'll wonder why they are losing more of the buisness community.

In the future, national borders will be of no more significance than county lines. You can't have a world where capital is free to go wherever it chooses and expect people to stay put where they are born. Deal with it.

Ron,

I think you are getting your template talking points mixed up. Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh have been anti-immigration. It is President Bush, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham who have been for open borders and unlimited immigration. One of the reasons that President Bush has such low approval ratings is due to his open border/amnesty proposals. The middle class realized how much there were going to get screwed by the proposal.

There is no way that there federal government can design a law to make employers enforcers of immigration law. Any document review that an employer would use to show due diligence can be easily forged. Employers would also be open to charges of profiling. I am sure that the tort lawyers would love to second guess every hiring decision made in the U.S. that is affected by new immigration requirements.

Joel,

What do you think Hispanic or black audiences are thinking when Democratic politicians talk about raising taxes on the rich to pay for programs that will benefit ethnicity based interests groups. Do you actually think anyone in audience believes that there taxes are going up or will you admit that the audience believes that whites will pay all of the higher taxes?

The point lefties tend to miss is that illegal immigration and the Mexican invasion isn't a Republican/Democrat issue. It is largely a class issue. The two biggest supporters of illegal immigration are our idiot President and the Wall St Journal.

If you live in an exclusive gated community or on the Upper West Side you only see the benefits of illegals. If you live in a working class community where the emergency rooms, schools, and prisons are packed to overflowing with illegals while all the costs are borne by working class Americans you mostly see the horrible negative affects.

Just as you know a black defendant is guilty when his lawyers are reduced to playing the race card, you know a policy is terrible when its supporters are reduced to screaming "racist" to anyone who opposes it.

And who are the real "racists" in this dispute anyway?
http://www.nclr.org/

"What do you think Hispanic or black audiences are thinking when Democratic politicians talk about raising taxes on the rich to pay for programs that will benefit ethnicity based interests groups."

Not being clairvoyant, I have no idea what Hispanic or black audiences are thinking. Neither do you. Since you are a racist, you no doubt project your racism on others.

"Do you actually think anyone in audience believes that there [sic] taxes are going up or will you admit that the audience believes that whites will pay all of the higher taxes?"

So the only people who pay taxes in this country are white, according to you? Where is the plank in the Democratic platform that says that taxes will be levied based on race?

Smarter and less racist trolls, please.

Joel,

I noticed that you did not deny that the Democratic Party supports open borders and unlimited immigration because it will benefit them. I noticed that you did not deny that middle class whites will be hurt by open borders and unlimited immigration. I noticed that you did not deny that open borders and unlimited immigration will cause much higher taxes while making most of the Democratic espouses positions harder to achieved.

I did notice that your only response is to scream racism and play the race card.

Please explain how open borders and unlimited immigration will help middle class Americans who do not have servants and who mow their own grass.