Perry’s transparently phony “solution” to the illegal alien problem

A friend told me that this morning on Fox News there was a “crawler” across the bottom of the screen announcing that Gov. Perry has proposed a system whereby Mexican illegal aliens could travel freely back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico, but without the right of becoming U.S. citizens. (I looked for the story online but haven’t found it.) If the Fox report is correct, then Perry is simply proposing that illegals be given permanent legal residence in the United States. Which of course is what amnesty is all about, since the great object of the illegal aliens and their champions is the acquisition of permanent legal U.S. residence (a.k.a. the Green Card), with citizenship being a distant or non-existent concern for them. Yet Perry evidently thinks he’s proposing a measure that is less than amnesty, a measure that will win conservative voters’ support, because it doesn’t involve citizenship. Once again this provincial man shows his ignorance of the burning national debate on illegal immigration these last several years, or he thinks we’re fools.

UPDATE, 12:47 p.m.: My impression of the Fox News crawler as described to me by a friend was 100 percent correct. Clark Coleman sends an article detailing Perry’s marvelous solution, never conceived of before by the mind of man, to the illegal alien problem, with this note:

Perry is really committed to those Mexicans. I thought he would lie low on the subject after having been burned publicly, but he is a true believer like Dubya, and an intellectual lightweight like Dubya, as well.

Here’s the article:

Perry endorses work visas for illegal immigrants
November 4, 2011 6:27 am

AUSTIN, Texas (AP)—Texas Gov. Rick Perry proposed the federal government should extend work visas allowing illegal immigrants to move freely between the U.S. and their home countries—but stressed that he opposes amnesty or a path to citizenship.

Perry said in an interview with CNN’s John King on Thursday that expectations that U.S. authorities are going to arrest and deport up to 15 million illegal immigrants isn’t realistic. He added, however, that other Republicans, including fellow Texan George W. Bush, went too far when they previously proposed an immigration overhaul that included a path to citizenship.

The Texas governor also claimed his chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, had once supported amnesty. Romney has drawn criticism for hiring a lawn care company that employed illegal immigrants at his family’s property in a Boston suburb for a decade—but has also said amnesty is not appropriate for illegal immigrants.

“You can put a program into place in which these individuals can be identified, and work visas in which they can move back and forth between their countries but not to become United States citizens,” Perry said. “And I think that’s where McCain, that’s where Romney, that’s where even Bush went wrong when they talked about the issue that, ‘we’re going to give amnesty to these individuals,’ and people just said, ‘no, we’re not.’”

Perry didn’t elaborate on what such a visa plan would look like, saying only that authorities need to determine a better way to identify illegal immigrants and make them part of mainstream society. He also said the program would only work if the federal government first does a better job securing America’s borders.

“I disagree with the concept that somehow or another we’re going to pack up 10, to 12, to 15 million people and ship them back to the country of origin. That’s not going to happen,” Perry said. “So realty has to be part of our conversation. And then you need to have a strategy to deal with it. That is what I think we will have, but first you have to secure that border.”

Perry called Washington’s efforts to stop the flow of illegal immigrants “an abject failure” but said that, as president, he could accomplish the task in just a year using the existing fence, more border patrol agents and air surveillance. Perry also repeated his opposition to a fence running the length of the border, saying it would take 10 to 15 years to build.

“There’s places where a secure fence will work, and that strategic type fencing will work,” he said. “But the idea that people can easily just stand up and say ‘let’s just build a fence’ and be done with it and wipe our hands, and it’s going to secure the border, that’s not reality.”

Perry has seen his polling numbers plummet after a string of lackluster debate performances—and angered some conservatives by defending a Texas plan that extends in-state university tuition to illegal immigrants who were brought into the country as children and attend high school in Texas.

The governor again defended the initiative on Thursday, saying better education helps ensure those participating in the program contribute to society: “We want taxpayers, not tax wasters.”

- end of initial entry -

JC writes from Houston:

This might be the story you’re talking about. Perry gave an interview with UNIVISION in which he stated that he was open to work visas for illegals and didn’t want to deport them. The man must be major stupid, continuing to dig his hole deeper and deeper on this issue.

LA replies:

But he thinks he’s being brilliant and original, because G.W. Bush et al. proposed amnesty, and he, Perry is supposedly not!

JC replies:

I just shake my head at this man’s obtuseness.

LA replies:

Among other obvious holes in this plan, imagine the federal court case you would have by people who have been given lifetime legal residency in the U.S., but are barred from applying for citizenship! The inequality of it, the violation of “the equal protection of the laws,” would stand out like a sore thumb, and all these “non-amnestied” persons who wanted citizenship would get it.

LA continues:

And remember that Bush and McCain also vigorously denied that they were proposing amnesty (i.e. the legalization of illegal aliens). Because there were some kind of requirements that a person would supposedly have to go through in order to be legalized, therefore it wasn’t amnesty. McCain (the worst man in America) actually got quite indignant when people said he was for amnesty.

But Perry, who of course supported the 2006 and 2007 comprehensive immigration bills which included amnesty, and (assuming he followed the debate at all) probably agreed with Bush’s and McCain’s denials that this was amnesty, NOW implicitly states that Bush’s and McCain’s denials that they were proposing amnesty were false, because they WERE proposing amnesty, while his, Perry’s, denial that HE is proposing amnesty is true.

Stephen T. writes:

Yes, and when those temporary permits expire, they’ll all line up on schedule in nice, neat queues for an orderly return to Mexico in the law-abiding, by-the-book way of doing things for which the Mestizo Mexican culture is world-renowned. [LA replies: But the permission is not temporary. It appears to be a permanent license to live in the U.S.]

The funny thing is, this will not only lose Perry the nomination, it won’t even get him the credit from Mexicans in this country he so obviously desperately craves. They’re just biding their time until they have an Hispanic surname somewhere on the ballot in Texas to vote for (any one will do) and they’ll dump Perry so fast he’ll wonder what happened. Remember that, even after Bush sang Mexican folk songs in Spanish on the campaign trail, got teary-eyed over the family values of illegal aliens and tried to shove amnesty down the throats of Americans, Mexican president Vicente Fox released an autobiography in which he ridiculed Bush as a “cowboy who’s afraid of horses,” and said he couldn’t believe he even got into the White House in the first place. Mestizo Mexican culture holds territory as a supreme value and even they don’t respect someone like Perry or Bush who won’t stand up for his own turf and blood.

LA replies:

An even greater blow to amour propre was McCain’s 32 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008. The indications are that that experience changed McCain and made him less fanatically pro-Hispanic. Reason could not do it. Concern for America could not do it. But when he—who had virtually committed political suicide for the sake of Hispanics in 2007—ended up getting just 32 percent of their votes, that bothered him.

Alan Levine writes:

Re your comment on the folly of recognizing illegal aliens as legal residents ineligible for citizenship: That was precisely the status of Asian legal immigrants under the Oriental Exclusion Act before it was ended in 1943. They could become legal permanent residents, but could not become citizens.

Whether that is a disreputable precedent or possibly a solution for some illegals—I am thinking of those brought here as small children and Americanized—is perhaps arguable.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 04, 2011 10:52 AM | Send