XPost: soc.culture.jewish   
   From: GeorgeWashingtonAdmirer@adelphia.net   
      
   Heather Mac Donald: Rule of law and other conservative principles do   
   not allow for amnesty   
      
   August 13, 2006   
      
   The immigration debate has divided the conservative movement, with each   
   side accusing the other of betraying core conservative principles.   
      
   Congress' immigration debate this year has drawn thousands of Americans   
   into the streets to protest, including this one in Chicago. Amnesty   
   proponents argue that America's best traditions require legalizing the   
   estimated 12 million illegal aliens already here and opening the door   
   wide to would-be migrants the world over.   
      
   Illegal immigration, these conservative advocates say, is the   
   inevitable and blameless consequence of misguided laws that foolishly –   
   and vainly – seek to prevent willing workers and labor-hungry employers   
   from finding each other. Hispanics – the vast majority of aliens and   
   the real center of the immigration debate – bring much-needed family   
   values and a work ethic to the American polity; refusing to grant them   
   legal status would destroy Republican hopes for a large new voting   
   bloc. Since popular opposition to large-scale Hispanic immigration   
   stems from economic ignorance and nativist fear, policymakers should   
   protect America from its own worst impulses and ignore the   
   anti-immigration revolt.   
      
   Conservative opponents of amnesty and liberalized immigration respond   
   that the rule of law is at stake. Rewarding large-scale lawbreaking   
   with legal status and financial benefits will spark further violations.   
   The mass amnesty protests of the spring were part of a growing   
   international movement challenging national sovereignty. Conservative   
   respect for facts should encourage skepticism toward claims of superior   
   Hispanic values. And the conservative preference for local   
   decision-making cautions against dismissing the popular backlash   
   against illegal immigration; it is just possible that people closest to   
   the problem know something that Beltway insiders do not.   
      
   Since criticizing illegal immigration often draws charges of racism,   
   few relish going further and challenging the wisdom of our immigration   
   flows, legal or not. Yet unless we accurately diagnose the immigration   
   problem, any legislative fix that merely converts the illegal flow to a   
   legal one will fail both as policy and as politics. Herewith – in an   
   effort to sharpen the internal debate – are the conservative principles   
   that militate against amnesty and for immigration-law enforcement and a   
   radical change in immigration priorities.   
      
      
   Principle 1: Respect the law.   
      
   This year's illegal-alien demonstrators put forward a novel theory of   
   entitlement: because we are here, we have a right to be here.   
   Protesters in Santa Ana, Calif., shouted: "We are here and we're not   
   going anywhere," reports The Los Angeles Times. Anger at the widespread   
   contempt for American law contained in such defiant assertions drives   
   much of the public hostility toward illegal aliens. Conservatives, with   
   their respect for the rule of law and appreciation for its fragility   
   would ordinarily honor this gut reaction, rather than dismissing it as   
   some atavistic tribal impulse. Poverty and other grounds for victim   
   status do not, in the conservative worldview, create a license for   
   lawbreaking.   
      
      
      
   Principle 2: Protect sovereignty.   
      
   Today's international elites seek to dissolve "discriminatory"   
   distinctions between citizens and noncitizens and to discredit border   
   laws aiming to control the flow of migrants. The spring amnesty   
   demonstrations are a measure of how far such new   
   anti-national-sovereignty ideas have spread. The last large-scale   
   amnesty in 1986 was not preceded by mass demonstrations by illegal   
   aliens. By contrast, this year's protesters spoke the language of the   
   anti-sovereignty intelligentsia, which defines migration as a   
   fundamental human right.   
      
   What, exactly, are the "human rights" that the U.S. is denying illegal   
   aliens? They have unfettered access to free medical care, free   
   education, welfare for their children, free representation in court   
   when they commit crimes, every due-process protection during criminal   
   prosecution that the Constitution guarantees citizens and legal   
   immigrants, the shelter of labor laws and the miracles of modern   
   industrial society like clean water, the control of infectious diseases   
   and plumbing. The only putative "right" that they lack is the right to   
   legal status regardless of illegal entry.   
      
   When the illegal-alien demonstrators and their government   
   representatives demand respect for migrants' "human rights," they are   
   asserting that U.S. immigration laws must fall before a more powerful   
   claim. The Bush administration and its conservative supporters have   
   defended American law against international claims to override it. Yet   
   when it comes to immigration law, conservative open-borders advocates   
   and the White House downplay the violation of our border law and   
   elevate the "rights" of the illegal migrant to sovereign status. If the   
   Bush administration and its supporters believe that they can reassert   
   the supremacy of American immigration law after yet another amnesty,   
   they are fooling themselves.   
      
      
   Principle 3: Support law enforcement.   
      
   Come-and-get-it immigration advocates endlessly assert that immigration   
   enforcement can't work. This claim ignores the most important   
   demonstration of conservative principles in the last 20 years.   
      
   Elite wisdom for decades held that social forces pushing criminals to   
   break the law – poverty, racism, addiction – were too powerful;   
   policing could at best try to solve crimes after they happened. New   
   York's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his first police chief, William   
   Bratton, rejected that fatalism and brought crime down 70 percent in a   
   decade. It turns out that the well-founded fear of getting caught   
   changes behavior.   
      
   Conservative open-borders advocates do not explain why policing brings   
   domestic crime down but can have no effect on border crime. Nor can   
   they point to any evidence to support their claim, since immigration   
   laws have never been enforced in the interior of the country.   
      
   Not only is the claim that enforcement doesn't work based on no   
   evidence whatsoever, but in fact what evidence there is runs in the   
   opposite direction. The merest hint of enforcement leads employers and   
   illegal aliens to make different calculations about the advantages of   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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