Any immigration policy except open borders is going to have enforcement.That means that folks that violate US immigration law will at times be required to return home.

During the recent senate debate, there was discussion over whether there should be 4, 6, or 8 million new grants of US citizenship. What about folks forced to return home? What about the folks that have had such a bad experience in the US they really don’t want American citizenship?

Steve Sailor and I have both suggested buyout options for immigrants. That technique has the possibility of both increasing the number of illegal immigrants that return home after a change in immigration law enforcement–and would soften the blow for those that found they had to make a significant change in their life plans due to erratic US immigration policies.

I don’t particularly blame Mexicans of modest means for violating US immigration law after corporate America foisted NAFTA on Mexico. I’ve consistently said: Corporate America made a mess here and ought to clean up their mess.

What I like about the buyout option: it means that there is no reason for anyone who returns home to do so empty handed–unless they get real stubborn and resist the law after it is clear that this time it is serious.

I’d like to see a buyout option for illegal immigrants that has a sliding scale. Folks that have been in the US the longest, paid taxes and avoided involvement with the legal system would get the most. I’d also make the payment over time-and assure that the recipient only gets the money if they prove they are legally in another country. I’d also give the “early adopters” assurance that if the price is increased at a later date, they’ll have not put themselves in a bad position by taking this deal early on. I’m sincerely worried about the guy that has barely arrived and has invested his life savings getting to the US via a coyote.

Under recently proposed legislation, he’d be in a very difficult situation. When America lets scum like the Kennedy and Bush clans occupy positions of wealth and influence, how do we expect some uneducated guy that doesn’t speak English to understand he really isn’t dealing with legitimate businessmen? He’s just assuming this is the way things are done in the USA-and I don’t think it is really fair to rapidly change the rules to his disadvantage.

The key factor in a sound immigration policy has to be controlling the behavior of folks with wealth. The influence the US has over how Mexico treats its wealthiest citizens is rather limited. However, I expect the first time we see a corporate CEO or wealthy property owner being placed in prison for systematic violation of immigration law, will be a highly visible media event–much like Paris Hilton’s or Martha Stewart’s recent experiences.

I worked on an investigation of a very wealthy man (I was a Software Engineer supporting a team of auditors that helped convince the CEO of Riscorp to plead guilty to illegal campaign donations). I came out of that experience with the opinion that the legal system is enormously biased in favor of the wealthy and is not capable of handling pervasive, high level corruption.

We need an immigration policy in which fines aren’t just another “cost of doing business”. US residency rights are valuable-and we need to recognize that value in the way we treat this issue. Otherwise, we simply feed a predatory elite adept at mining the value of their fellow American’s citizenship.

James Fulford pointed out that most Americans wouldn’t give up their citizenship rights for a $1 Million. Few folks worldwide have the mix of skills, knowledge and characteristics necessary to obtain that kind of value from US citizenship. I suspect it would be cheaper to give illegal immigrants a financial incentive to “self deport”–and far less costly in terms of international publicity. Who can really complain about poor Mexicans voluntarily returning home with money in their pocket?

There is no reason for the taxpayer to have to bear this cost. The maximum fine under existing immigration law is $25,000 per violation. I think that is far too low compared to the value of citizenship, but with 12 Million illegal immigrants-many of whom have had multiple jobs, that still offers a big pool of money to immediately work with compared to the amount of money on average compared to what most illegal immigrants could ever expect to return home with.

In many cases, the fines will not be collectible. Often, the “employer” is technically a highly leveraged contractor with no real assets. Some smart attorneys might figure out a way to “pierce the corporate veil” and go after the real assets benefiting from this violation of immigration law-but I expect substantially new laws will be necessary. I also expect that we can get even these ‘front men’ to give valuable information about their overall operations and who they are working with. I also expect that a lot of wealthy people would find it seriously uncomfortable just to be placed on the stand answering questions like: “Did you know that the business in which you invested was employing illegal immigrants?”, “Did you know the property you owned was being used to house illegal immigrants?” Al Capone was imprisoned for Income Tax violations–because they couldn’t get him on anything else. We can and should identify the wealthy who have profited from illegal immigration-and treat them similarly.

Employer Sanctions are clearly popular in recent polls. We have a real education project in informing the public of what the fine levels must be to be effective. A sensible buyout option could prove to be more popular than the other alternatives currently under consideration. Combined with employer sanctions and border/interior enforcement, a buyout of illegal aliens could actually help move towards the lower overall levels of immigration the American public wants-and treat poor people with the compassion the American public wants.

Down in Mexico, the drug barons are negotiating how to divvy up the dead carcass of the once-charming country.

What do they think they are, the Mafia?

Leaders from the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels are negotiating over carving up the critical northern states of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, both of which border Texas, intelligence officials said.

Meanwhile, according to these sources, the Zetas, a violent enforcement group formed by highly trained military deserters, would share the state of Tamaulipas with their old bosses, the Gulf cartel. Negotiations over other states could follow, including Michoacan, Guerrero and Veracruz, the officials said. [...]

The talks include some local, state and federal officials in Mexico, Mr. Valle and authorities said.

“The realignment under way is not just within the cartels, but also with some members of the government,” said Mr. Valle. “That’s the only way any pact can work because of the vast corruption within sectors of the government.”
[Mexican Cartels in Talks to Split Turf, Dallas Morning News 7/1/07]

This article assumes a rather bizarre viewpoint, in that it assumes criminal gangs arranging territory among themselves is a fine thing. That attitude, clearly shared by Mexican officials, is an admission of failure, that the Mexico City government cannot return cartel territories to the rule of law.

Furthermore, the DMN notes, “In the past six years, nearly 10,000 people have been killed in every imaginable way — from beheadings to being tossed from planes.” That’s a lot of bodies laying about, even if most of them are professional criminals.

The problem has been the cartel guys’ irrational exhuberance with their murder behavior, taking it to the beaches and the newspaper offices, to the point where news coverage about narco-crime has dropped off considerably. After all, Mexico is considered to be the most dangerous place on earth for a journalist, after Iraq.

Do we have the world’s worst neighbor, or what? Hey, Washington, build the darn fence already!

Check out Borjas on Bush Vs. The People, Kaus on paranoia at the Wall Street Journal, Lonewacko on Elvira Arellano, and Michelle Malkin on “The diminished credibility of the Dept. of Homeland Insecurity.”

I disagree with my friend Joe Guzzardi’s analysis of us patriots’ winning cloture vote on the late, unlamented S.1639. In “Joe On Immigration Vote–’We Had Them All The Way!’” he wrote,

“Not only did we win but, in the end, we coasted. Although analysts, including Senators on both sides, predicted a razor thin margin on the cloture vote, it turned into a 46-53 rout.”

But, as they say in sports, the game was closer than the final score indicated. The point is, once it was clear to all the senators that the YEA votes were going to fall short of the 60 needed to invoke cloture, a bunch of would-have-been-YEAs stampeded into the “NAY” column, knowing it would make them look good with the howling legions (i.e. us).

Such senators are hardly friends of ours. (However their stampede our way indicates that they’re at least dimly aware of the citizenry.)

As Kate O’Beirne wrote at National Review Online’s “Corner” blog shortly after the vote, citing anonymous old Senate hands, “No one wants to be one of 59 on a failed cloture vote.”

Rich Lowry further fleshed out the point:

“The way the game is played is that you vote ‘yes’ if they need your vote, and then when it becomes clear that it’s failing, you become a ‘no.’ That’s why there were so many ‘no’s’ by the end. But it means you were ready to go along when it really counted.”

(And Lowry explains the cruciality of a Wednesday night vote on an amendment here.)

So Joe’s remark about coasting to our victory could encourage fatal complacency: “Well, we needed 41 NAY votes and we got 53, so we really didn’t have to melt the Senate’s switchboard. We can let up next time.” (Nitpicking clarification: Given the absence of South Dakota’s hospitalized Senator Tim Johnson, we actually “only” needed 40 NAYs.)

In fact, every bit of our screaming may have been needed to get us to our magic 41.

As Peter Brimelow, embroiled in our civilizational fight-to-the-death since at least the early 1990s, has written, “It has been obvious for some time that this will be a long and terrible war.”

So we can celebrate last week’s great defensive victory, but we cannot let up. Perhaps we are at the end of the beginning.

But we still have a herculean battle ahead to actually vanquish illegal immigration. We’ll reach the beginning of the end only when mass legal immigration is within our sights.

==

Further explanatory note on voting dynamics: If the cloture vote had gone against us big-time (e.g. 75 YEAs, 25 NAYs), we couldn’t conclude from the vote that we actually had 25 hard-core friends among the senators. Some of the 25 NAYs would likely have been YEAs if they were needed to get to 60 YEAs, but those senators would have been released to vote NAY (and look good to us naive types) if their YEA votes were overkill.

Ah, yes, the “world’s greatest deliberative body” … Inspiring, no?