Burning Atlanta

There are a couple of parts to the legislation, proposed legislation, that I'm still a little fuzzy about. One has to do with the supposed fine. More on that later. But this guy does make a good point or two about enforcement, or the lack of enforcement.

Mark Steyn

OK. But whatever happened to non-mass deportation? Not long after Sept. 11 I chanced to be heading north on I-87 between Plattsburgh and Montreal. At the border crossing from Champlain, N.Y., to Lacolle, Quebec, I noticed that what appeared to be a mini-refugee camp had sprung up. It's not often that you see teeming hordes lining up to get into Canada, so I asked the immigration officer what was going on. He rolled his eyes and did a bit of boy-those-crazy-Yanks stuff and then explained that most of the guys waiting to get in were from Pakistan. In the wake of 9/11, the authorities had rounded up various persons of interest in the New York City area. Whether or not they were terrorists, they'd certainly violated immigration law, overstaying visas and so forth. And as a result, many other illegal immigrants from Muslim countries had concluded it was time to liquidate their assets and break for the border. In other words, the roundup of a relatively small number of persons sent thousands more fleeing to Canada. As that Missouri grandma would say, don't look on it as losing a Pakistani illegal but as gaining a Canadian neighbor. Same thing at Hazelton, same thing at Farmers Branch, same thing during the Eisenhower era. Nobody had to round up tons of illegals. All they had to do was send out the message that play time was over and the illegals got out.

So the question is: Why is enforcement of U.S. immigration somewhere between minimal and nonexistent? By some estimates, half of all illegals have arrived on George W. Bush's watch -- i.e., they broke into a nation at war with borders supposedly on permanent "orange" alert.

To return to the 72-virgin jackpot, even the looniest jihad-inciting imam understands that human nature responds to incentive, to the tradeoff between obligation and reward. But the immigration bill is all reward and no obligations. The only clause that matters is the first one: the mandatory open-ended probationary legal status the bill will confer the moment it's passed. All the rest -- the enforcement provisions on border agents and security fences that will supposedly "trigger" Z-visas and then green cards -- is nonsense, most of which will never happen. If you're "undocumented," you don't care about whether your Z-visa leads to citizenship 15 years from now: What counts is crossing the line from illegal to legal, which in this bill happens first, happens instantly and happens (to all intents and purposes) irreversibly. All the rest is Beltway kabuki.

This refers to the part that I'm a little foggy about. My understanding is that there is no fine for automatic temporay legal status for illegals under this plan. The "FINE" part only comes into play if illegals want to gain permanent status leading to citizenship. And the kicker which he also refers to is the fact that many illegals couldn't give a damn less about becoming American citizens, they're just here for the money. AND, considering the total lack of enforcement that we've seen up until now, who's going to toss them when they overstay their temp visas?