Conservative and Liberal pundit voices alike are up in arms about Bush's Immigration Reform package.   As a pragmatic libertarian, this alone is occasionally, but not always, a good sign for me.  My take?  Well, I've read what I could get my hands on the immigration proposal and my cursory opinion is, I like it.  I even find the proposal clever.  This answer probably surprises my readers and particularly my friends @ GNXP.

In a nutshell, the proposal creates something akin to a new type of Visa - sign up, stay employed, and you can stay here for 3 years and later repatriate pensions/social security/etc. on whatever lawful income you earned in the US.  I think it's an excellent first step towards dealing with the problem of illegal aliens (and I do NOT shy away from using that term):

• Documents the undocumented -- instead of slipping between our fingers we now have some systemic knowledge of who they are, where they live, what they do, how much they make, what taxes they pay, etc. - the same knowledge we have for lawful citizens / taxpayers.  There is now a stronger basis, for example, for creating criminal records, traceable paper trails, credit reports, etc. of currently illegal aliens.
• Enforces labor standards -- because of #1, we can now enforce the same labor standards on illegal aliens as regular employees.  It is no longer radically cheaper to hire undocs vs. docs and thus avoids a classic labor cost death spiral:

  Employers who hire illegal's pay them cash and thus evade employment taxes. They may also not report revenue from the work the illegal's do and thus evade income taxes. Companies that compete with these employers must cut their own costs, mostly by paying their own workers (regardless of status) lower cash wages under the table, and the tax evasion spreads further.

• Extends civil and criminal law -- formerly illegal aliens now have access to the full resources afforded by civil and criminal law.   If a crime is committed against them, they can call the police without fear of deportation.   They can sign contracts, open bank accounts, buy property, get loans, etc. in the full, open market without resorting to the shady characters in the alien-exploiting underworld that prey on them.

• New Restrictions on Employers -- Employers who hire "guest" workers have to go through more hoops relative to hiring citizen workers (basically having to prove that no Americans want to clean pig troughs for minimum wage).   Not dramatically more but enough to create at least some semblance of a speed bump.  This is in STARK contrast to the status quo where in some circumstances, you have FEWER speed bumps hiring illegal's relative to natives (not the least of which is that pesky minimum wage law).  Laws of supply and demand are extremely prescriptive about what happens when it's easier to hire / fire one group vs. another.

• Sets a firm "exit date"  -- In 3 yrs, the documented, traceable individuals have their work permits up for renewal.   If they aren't renewed by their employer, they're out of here.   If they don't want to go, it'll be easier to trace 'em, round 'em up, and put 'em on a one-way truck now that they've got legal bank accounts, credit cards, legal residences, etc.  I think the firm exit date aspect is the single least understood element of the proposal. 

• No greencard benefit -- individuals who participate in the guest worker program have no incremental benefit w.r.t. securing greencard's vs. the status quo.   This is NOT a new fast path to US citizenship or an amnesty program like '86.

• Free transit -- In the status quo, once you're in, you stay in and stay low.   One of the perverse outcomes of previous "lock down the border" initiatives was an increase in the illegal population as folks who were already here no longer felt like risking a return home.   This system allows them to go home freely at will, visit & care for your family, etc.

• Benefit to returning home -- The proposal provides a specific, incremental advantage to registering - you earn the prospect of securing a pension / social security benefits back in your home country once you've returned.  This is another critical, oft-misunderstood aspect to the plan -- it creates incentives for voluntary repatriation.

One of the perenniel faultlines when debating legal systems is What is Right vs. What is Good.    What is legally Right here (the "conservative" view) is mass deportation - they've broken the law, they should face the consequences.   What is legally Good (the "liberal" view) is some form of mass citizenship - individuals are in need, our society is rich and even benefits in some (albeit arguable) ways from them and thus we have some moral obligation to assist.

Complicating this debate is the question of extra-legality - what happens when folks are simply outside of the legal system altogether?   There is a 3rd, important component to this classic debate - What is Feasible? - which is quite applicable towards the otherwise intractable problem of illegal immigration.  There are structural solutions out there which are neither Good nor Right in an absolute sense but are Feasible.  The beauty is that I think Bush's proposal is one of them.

Illegal aliens (once again, I don't shy from using that term) are here, they've skirted the law quite effectively for decades and by almost every measure, are likely to continue to do so.   Heavy-handed immigration enforcement alone won't solve the problem.  As Linda Chavez notes:

There is no way that the United States can find and deport 8-12 million illegal aliens in this country, and even if we could, we would do more harm than good.

We can pass statute after statute further threatening them and those that hire them but until we offer some incentive to participate and be recognized by the legal system, they will continue to live in a murky grey area.  Liberals and conservatives alike must recognize that "they" are far more comfortable with this stalemate than "we" are. 

A feasible solution, therefore, requires incentives for voluntary compliance.  In order for "our" laws to manage their behavior, "they" need to feel like there's some benefit to being visible to the arm of the law in the first place.  Voluntary compliance is the unseen backbone of our socio-economic system and is the factor holding up our now byzantine legal framework without a police state.   This is the core nugget that Bush's proposal recognizes and that many of the detractors fail to.  I should emphasize that this is just a first step and there is still room for others (for ex., "Parker's Wall").

Still, I'm generally impressed - who still thinks that Bush is a dummy?  Illegal immigration is a Gordian Knot that I've casually blogged about before (here , here and here) and that has eluded other politicians.   Bush has adroitly tackled a third rail issue and has given us the first workable, yet principaled solution we've seen in nearly 20 yrs that equally offends and appeases Conservatives and Liberals alike.

[BTW - check out Friedrich @ 2Blowhard's SUPERB POST w/ some great illegal alien stats]

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