The Rest of the Story: a Response to Stephen Pizzo

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted January 31, 2007.

Editor's note: this is one of two pieces in a point/ counterpoint format. Please see Stephen's Pizzo's argument here.

Just about everyone agrees that our immigration system is a train wreck, but we're divided over how to go about fixing it. One of the reasons it's been so hard to agree on a policy is that the arguments surrounding the issue are often more emotional than grounded in fact, and the result is that it can be difficult to even agree to the terms of the debate.

Stephen Pizzo's essay on immigration is a perfect example. The great irony of the piece -- the punch line for anyone who followed the policy debates last year -- is this: After devoting considerable column inches to the evils of "comprehensive" immigration reform, Pizzo offers up his preferred solution to the problem, which turns out to be … yes, comprehensive immigration reform.

For 25 paragraphs, Pizzo describes comprehensive reform as a neocon plot to destroy America's working class, a brilliant scheme to sucker those overly empathetic Democrats onto a path that will ultimately separate them from the "very people they claim should vote Democrat [sic]." Then, taking a populist stance, he argues that all those morons in Washington are making things too complex, and he has a simple solution based on good old-fashioned horse sense: We could just have a guest worker program; a database that allows employers to check on potential workers' legal status; some tougher laws for employers; stepped up enforcement of those laws and, grudgingly or not, an opportunity for undocumented immigrants who have put five years into the American workforce to get a Green Card and then "get in line" for permanent status "behind those who followed the rules in the first place."

Those are, of course, the meat and bones of the various proposals for "comprehensive" immigration reform that bounced around in Congress last summer (which got quite a bit of bipartisan support in the Senate but couldn't be reconciled with the bill passed by hard-liners in the House). I'll concede that Pizzo's version of comprehensive reform isn't quite as comprehensive as the proposals cooked up in DC. He leaves out the most popular provisions -- beefed up border security, tougher penalties for immigrants who commit serious crimes, federal money for health care and law enforcement in the states with the largest immigrant populations and provisions requiring immigrants to pay any back taxes they owe, pay a fine for having broken the law, study English and have an understanding of American civics before getting on the back of that line.

The details might vary, but the approach favored by Pizzo and, as he says, George W. Bush and La Raza (along with the majority of Congressional Democrats, the NAACP and forward-looking unions like UNITE HERE!) is basically the same. The internal incoherence of Pizzo's argument makes it hard to know what he thinks "comprehensive immigration reform" means when he writes that it'll drive the left to its "inevitabl[e] end in excess."

For progressives, the more comprehensive the better; when we talk about immigration we should also talk about how our trade and other economic policies influence its flows. We should talk about how reforming the World Bank and the IMF and giving debt relief to the poorer countries in our hemisphere might decrease the number of migrants at the source.

In Congress, those who oppose a comprehensive approach put a premium on enforcement -- they want to make it a felony to be or even to aid an illegal immigrant; they want mass deportations of (at least a large chunk of) the estimated 12 million undocumented aliens already here; they want to dispatch (more) federal troops to the Southern border; build fences and detention centers and do whatever possible to make things tough for the immigrants themselves. (Some proposals, like that made by John Cornyn (R-TX) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) are hybrids; heavy on enforcement, there's a big fence involved, but it also contains a guest worker program).

An analysis by the decidedly un-empathetic and illiberal Heritage foundation concluded that enforcement-only simply hasn't worked (something I discussed at length here):

Increased border enforcement has only succeeded in pushing immigration flows into more remote regions. That has resulted in a tripling of the death rate at the border and, at the same time, a dramatic fall in the rate of apprehension. As a result, the cost to U.S. taxpayers of making one arrest along the border increased from $300 in 1992 to $1,700 in 2002, an increase of 467 percent in just a decade.

Pizzo's analysis of the politics of immigration is as problematic as his take on the policy. He calls it the "GOP's comprehensive immigration reform" and makes much of the fact that Bush supports it. But the comprehensive approach -- dubbed "amnesty" by the organized anti-immigration movement -- is tearing apart the conservative coalition. The issue lays bare the huge gap between the patrician, corporatist wing of the GOP and the nationalist and socially conservative rank-and-file, who have long been in bloody revolt over their Fearless Leader's approach to immigration.

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Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.

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