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| CANTOR: Friend? Or foe? |
Including
immigration reform.
HAVE
THE GOP ideologues “seen the light,” a la Jake Blues? Or is this just an
attempt to keep the larger goal of a serious reform of our nation’s immigration
policies from ever being truly implemented?
It
stinks of the latter. Although I’d like to think it has a touch of the former.
Who’s to say.
Specifically,
I’m referring to a talk Cantor gave to the American Enterprise Institute, where
he said deficit reduction (as in cutting programs that benefit people the Republican
partisans could care less about) has to remain a priority.
But
he said issues such as immigration could use change, as he said he could now
support some form of the DREAM Act – that measure that takes young people who
have lived the bulk of their lives in this country and are fully assimilated
and gives them the chance to gain actual citizenship.
EVEN
THOUGH THEIR parents may not have it, and may have brought them in without anything
resembling a valid visa. As Cantor put it, “one of the great founding
principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the
mistakes of their parents.”
True
enough!
But
I couldn’t help but notice in the news reports about Cantor’s comments that he
has his “conditions,” so to speak, for support for DREAM.
They
include more security measures along the U.S./Mexico border, more use of the
e-Verify program that often mistakes fully legitimate U.S. citizens for aliens
and can cost them employment, and the creation of a “guest worker” program to
provide for businesses that want more people to actually do work.
I’LL
ADMIT THAT Cantor didn’t phrase it like that. He tried using much more neutral
language. I’m just being more honest about his intentions. And those of many of
the other ideologues who are now feeling some need to tone down their rhetoric.
Their
basic goal hasn’t changed. They want to view this as a problem that focuses on
Mexico, and one that needs to be combatted.
Because
while DREAM might allow the children to eventually have a legitimate, open immigration
status in this country, it will do nothing for the entire family. Which means
it exacerbates the current, flawed situation that creates families where some
are “legal” and others aren’t.
And
as for all those conditions, they’re just meant to ensure that nobody else ever
gets the long-range goal of residency, as in the ability to be thought of as a “resident
alien” (in Immigration jargon) rather than an “illegal” one.
WHICH
MAKES THIS talk of supporting the DREAM seem like a weak, dinky little gesture –
one meant to ensure that as few people as possible are allowed to benefit.
For
any serious reform of our immigration policies is going to have to accept that
the bulk of those roughly 11 million non-citizens now suspected of living in
this country without a valid visa are capable of making a worthwhile
contribution to the country.
And
that no matter how many times and at how loud a volume they screech and scream
the word “Amnesty!,” there’s really no legitimate reason for keeping them out.
Except
that in many cases, their work ethic is intense enough (just think of some of
the crummy jobs they’re doing) that they make many U.S.-born “real Americans”
(or so they think) look downright lazy by comparison.
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