by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n Marco Rubio\u2019s press secretary, Alex Conant, might wish to cease his demagoguery when he\u2019s behind. After replying to a skeptic of \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform\u201d with ahistorical nonsense like, \u201cWe haven\u2019t had a cohort of people living permanently in US without full rights of citizenship since slavery,\u201d he compounds his problems with his \u201cclarification:\u201d \u201cThe point I was trying to make (in 140 characters) is that allowing immigrants to apply for permanent residence, but not eventually be able to apply for the full benefits of citizenship, has been tried and failed, and has had disastrous social consequences in Europe today.\u201d<\/p>\n Millions of visitors of all statuses are already quite free to apply for both permanent residence and citizenship. It is called going into the immigration office, and beginning the process by applying for a green card. Today\u2019s illegal immigrants were not braceros, who were brought in officially by the U.S. and Mexican governments as permanent guest workers, but rather on their own volition chose to come into the United States \u2014 and in at least 11 million instances to do so illegally. At any time in their unlawful residency, they had the choice to rectify that lapse and apply to become legal residents and eventually citizens, in the way that millions of others worldwide, who are not so close to our borders, now wait patiently and legally for just that opportunity. The problem was not apparently the freedom to apply, but the uncertainty whether such applications would always be approved.<\/p>\n Mr. Conant in his \u201c140 characters\u201d managed to use the accustomed linguistic gymnastics to cloud the issue at hand. The issue is not \u201cimmigrants\u201d but dealing with \u201cillegal immigrants\u201d; the question is not \u201callowing immigrants to apply,\u201d but whether or not to change federal law to suit illegal immigrants who in the past have\u00a0not chosen to apply<\/em>\u00a0for legal residence.<\/p>\n And under current law, every legal resident (apparently even the Tsarnaev brothers) are quite free to \u201capply for the full benefits of citizenship.\u201d That again is not the question; the real issue hinges once more on what sort of exemptions should be granted to millions who broke federal immigration law but who now constitute a powerful enough political force to have the law changed for their own benefit. Should we weep or cry when Conant says that \u201callowing immigrants to apply for permanent residence, but not eventually be able to apply for the full benefits of citizenship, has been tried and failed, and has had disastrous social consequences in Europe today\u201d \u2014 given that a \u201cguest worker\u201d provision is often floated as a key component of \u201ccomprehensive immigration program\u201d and is about as close to the European notion of\u00a0Gastarbeiter<\/em>\u00a0imaginable, and surreal in an economy of chronic 7.5-plus percent unemployment, a rate that is far higher among minority and youth, who would be most affected by importing millions of \u201ctemporary\u201d and largely unskilled foreign-national job seekers.<\/p>\n The strange thing about the Republican members in the Gang of Eight debate is that to ram through immigration legislation, they and their supporters are beginning to adopt the same sort of tactics that we have seen used by the Left during the fights over Obamacare and gun control: obfuscate the issue by imprecise vocabulary and ahistorical allusions; demonize your opponents with all sorts of crazy accusations of quasi-tolerance of \u201cslavery\u201d to abortion; create a false sort of urgency (we are supposed to pass this very minute the huge and mostly unread immigration bill in the manner of the huge and unread Obamacare bill); and speak loftily of principles and humanitarianism when the issue is mostly driven by electoral politics and demography.<\/p>\n Finally, given the language of Conant and others, they are managing to turn off their own reasonable supporters, who are more than willing to consider a \u201cpathway to citizenship\u201d for those who are free of a criminal past, are not on public assistance, and are long-term residents \u2014 if only the assurances to enforce those provisions and ensure border security were believable. The present hysteria, invective, and mass rush to legislate suggest that they might not be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner Marco Rubio\u2019s press secretary, Alex Conant, might wish to cease his demagoguery when he\u2019s behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[111],"tags":[862,327,1031,861,860],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1x7","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7233,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-true-opponents-of-immigration-reform\/","url_meta":{"origin":5897,"position":0},"title":"The True Opponents of Immigration Reform","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Too many special interests profit from the present mess. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Solving the illegal-immigration problem should not be hard. No one knows how many foreign nationals are residing illegally in the United States \u2014 estimates range from 11 million to 20 million. But everyone understands\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":623,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/incoherent-immigration-reform\/","url_meta":{"origin":5897,"position":1},"title":"Incoherent Immigration Reform","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Nothing about illegal immigration quite adds up. Conservative corporate employers still support the idea of imported, cheap, non-union labor \u2014 in a strange alliance with liberal activists who want the larger blocs of Latino voters that eventually follow massive influxes from Latin America.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8577,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-true-immigration-reform-would-look-like\/","url_meta":{"origin":5897,"position":2},"title":"What True Immigration \u2018Reform\u2019 Would Look Like","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 30, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Can we be honest about illegal immigration? It is a common challenge to almost every advanced Western country that is adjacent to poorer nations. American employers and ethnic activists have long colluded to weaken border enforcement and render immigration law meaningless. The former\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Immigration reform rally in Washington, April 2013. (Alex Wong\/Getty)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/real-immigration-reform-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6848,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/resisting-immigration-reform\/","url_meta":{"origin":5897,"position":3},"title":"Resisting Immigration Reform","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Identity politics rejects ending illegal immigration and reforming legal immigration. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 We are fast approaching what promises to be the year of \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform.\u201d In the manner of the \u201cAffordable Care Act,\u201d it will not be comprehensive nor will it reform immigration. 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Remember that paradox, and the insanity at the border makes some sense. 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