By Byron York
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
There's a fundamental conflict at the heart of the Senate
debate over the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill. Most
Republicans believe a policy to integrate 11 million currently illegal
immigrants into American society must be conditioned on stronger border
security and internal enforcement. Most Democrats don't. At bottom, that's what
the fight is about.
Most Republicans believe security must come before
integration, in one of two ways. Some believe enhanced security must be in
place -- not a plan, but a reality -- before the 11 million can be granted
temporary legal status. (In the world of the Senate, "temporary"
means six to 10 years.) It's probably fair to say that a majority of the Republican
voting base holds that opinion.
Other Republicans believe enhanced security must be in
place -- again, reality, not a plan -- before the legalized immigrants can move
on, after 10 years, to permanent legal resident status, signified by a green
card, and ultimately on to citizenship.
What unites the two camps is the conviction that enhanced
security must actually be in place before today's illegal immigrants are
allowed to stay in the U.S. for the rest of their lives.
Many Democrats pay lip service to the idea; after all,
it's pretty popular not just with Republican voters but with Democrats and
independents, too. But they don't see enhanced security as something that has
to happen before immigrants may move forward.
If there were any doubts that many Democrats do not
support enforcement before integration, those doubts were dispelled recently by
Sen. Richard Durbin, a leading Democrat on the Gang of Eight. "We have
de-linked a pathway to citizenship and border enforcement," Durbin told
National Journal. And Sen. Charles Schumer, another leading Democrat in the
Gang, called a Republican attempt to strengthen the link between enforcement
and the path to citizenship "a nonstarter."
As Democrats see it, reform must move today's illegal
immigrants to temporary legal status, and then to permanent legal status, and
then to citizenship without any major obstacles along the way. A requirement
that any of those steps be dependent on specific security and enforcement
improvements is a nonstarter not just for Schumer but for Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid and most other Democrats.
Right now, Durbin, Schumer and Reid have the advantage.
The Gang of Eight bill being debated in the Senate does not require any
security advances before illegal immigrants are granted a decade-long
"temporary" legal status. And all that is required before those same
immigrants move on to permanent legal status and citizenship is that a
"Comprehensive Southern Border Security Strategy" be
"substantially deployed and substantially operational."
What does "substantially" mean? It could mean
anything, which is why lawmakers who don't want to place specific security
requirements before permanent legalization like it.
When Sen. John Cornyn proposed to take out the word
"substantially" and replace it with the specific standards for border
security -- 100 percent surveillance of the border, a 90 percent apprehension
rate -- Democrats immediately rejected it. They vowed never to even negotiate
the issue.
Both Democrats and Republicans have been happy to let the
public think the bill is tougher than it is. For example, Sen. Marco Rubio, the
leading Republican on the Gang of Eight, talks all the time about the
importance of putting new security measures in place, but he means before
immigrants are given permanent status, not before the temporary, decade-long
legalization that starts the process.
Rubio made that crystal clear in a recent
Spanish-language interview. "First comes the legalization," he told
the network Univision. "Then come the measures to secure the border."
He added that legalization "is not conditional" -- that is, it
doesn't depend on any new security measures being in place.
A number of Republicans were surprised by Rubio's words.
When he talked about enhanced security these last few months, they thought he
meant security before the first round of legalization. He didn't.
And just to make it unavoidably clear, last week the
Senate voted on an amendment proposed by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley that
would have delayed the first, "temporary" legalization until six
months after border security was actually in place. Rubio voted against it,
along with the rest of the Gang of Eight and nearly every Democrat.
And even when it comes to the granting of permanent legal
status, the Gang bill requires "substantial" deployment of new
security, whatever that is. There's simply no requirement that the border be
definitely, measurably secure before today's immigrants complete the journey
from illegality to citizenship.
That's the way the Gang of Eight wants it.
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