Immigration

akdoxey asked that we talk about something new: Immigration. I thought it was a worthy request.

Neither candidate has focused much on immigration, probably because it has the potential to be such a polarizing issue and perhaps because there's not much difference in their positions on the issue. I took a look at the candidates websites to see what they say.

Obama admits that our immigration system is broken. His website outlines the following components of a plan to fix it:

• Create secure borders through additional personnel, infrastructure, and technology.
• Fix the dysfunctional immigration system, while helping ensure that families are kept together.
• Remove incentives to enter illegally by cracking down on employers who hire undocumented workers.
• Allow undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.
• Work with Mexico to promote economic development there, to address a major underlying cause of illegal immigration.

McCain also admits that our immigration system is broken. His website outlines the following plan:

• Secure our border through "physical and virtual barriers". Ensure that funding is adequate. Implementing software and infrastructure.
• Prosecute "bad actor" employers and implement an "electronic employment verification system."
• Implement temporary worker programs to meet our labor needs, including specific plans for highly-skilled workers, low-skilled non-agriculture workers, and low-skilled agriculture workers.
• Require undocumented workers to enroll in a program to resolve their status. Identify and deport criminal aliens.
• Eliminate the family backlog.

Although the candidates' websites use different terms to describe their respective plans, the plans themselves are remarkably similar.

The Economist's special section on the election, to which I have referred in previous posts, includes an article on immigration that goes beyond the candidates' plans and looks at their records. Here are a few excerpts from the article:

Like many politicians with roots in troubled cities, Mr Obama is much less keen on increasing the number of guest workers... He backed a measure cutting the number of guest workers from 400,000 to 200,000. He introduced another measure that would have banned companies from employing guest workers in areas of high unemployment and required them to pay prevailing wages.

Until recently Mr McCain’s record on immigration was so liberal that the National Council of La Raza has twice given him an award for his political work. He has long fought for “comprehensive” immigration reform—code for any change that would provide a route to citizenship for illegals... When Mr McCain talks about the issue these days he sounds chastened. The failure of immigration reform taught him a lesson, he says—that Americans will tolerate a move to legalise illegal immigrants only if they are assured the border has been fixed.

The phrase "until recently" about McCain's record reflects the belief that his position on immigration seems to have changed. For example, he admitted that if his own immigration proposal came to a vote in the Senate, he wouldn't vote for it.