Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, and Bill Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor whose recommendations to the GOP have included the Iraq invasion and Sarah Palin's turn as a VP candidate, have joined forces to advise that the GOP vote against "comprehensive immigration reform."
As they put it:
It's become clear that you can be pro-immigrant and pro-immigration, and even favor legalization of the 11 million illegal immigrants who are here and increases in some categories of legal immigration -- and vigorously oppose this bill.
The bill's first fatal deficiency is that it doesn't solve the illegal-immigration problem. The enforcement provisions are riddled with exceptions, loopholes, and waivers. Every indication is that they are for show and will be disregarded, just as prior notional requirements to build a fence or an entry/exit visa system have been -- and just as President Obama has recently announced he's ignoring aspects of Obamacare that are inconvenient to enforce on schedule. Why won't he waive a requirement for the use of E-Verify just as he's unilaterally delayed the employer mandate? The fact that the legalization of illegal immigrants comes first makes it all the more likely that enforcement provisions will be ignored the same way they were after passage of the 1986 amnesty.
Years ago, when I fixated more on abstractions, this sort of argument would have been persuasive to me. "Marco Rubio says he doesn't want to have to come back ten years from now and deal with the same illegal-immigration problem," the op-ed continues. "But that's exactly what the CBO says will happen under his own bill." Yeah, why pass a law when it won't even fix "the problem"?!
But wait a minute.
If the immigration bill passes, and 11 million illegal immigrants can reside here legally, fully participating in their communities and our society, rather than worrying every time they see a police officer about being ripped from their families and the lives they've built, the United States of 10 years hence won't be dealing with "the same illegal immigration problem." For those 11 million people, the problem will have been solved. Their status will be legal. Many of them will wake up every morning and literally thank God that the opportunities open to them have broadened and the likelihood of a devastating deportation befalling their family has drastically decreased.