Moe Lane

And I’m gonna give them this one for free, largely because I’m quite keen to hear the answer myself:  Why is it that we have a legal immigration system that favors Chechen terrorists over Mexican dishwashers?

That’s it.  But it’s a doozy of a question, no?

Moe Lane

PS: If Buzzfeed is correct – big if – then the bombers were registered to vote in Massachusetts.  But, hey, there’s no voter fraud in this country.

Usually Charlie Cook’s smarter than this (bolding mine).

Every time Obama takes a public stand on immigration, he makes it that much more difficult for Republican members of Congress to support it. Keep in mind that 94 percent of House Republicans are in districts Mitt Romney carried and that 34 of 45 GOP senators represent states Obama lost. As a result, most congressional Republicans are far more afraid of losing a primary to a more conservative challenger than a general election to a Democrat. It is a lot easier for them to support an immigration bill that has broad-based support in the business and farming communities (and that also happens to be supported by Obama and the Democratic leadership) than to back a bill so popularly identified with the other side. If the president really cares about enacting immigration reform, he will get off the campaign trail, depoliticize it, and keep as quiet about it as he can.

Via Ramesh Ponnuru, who is just aware as  I am that the President doesn’t really care about enacting immigration reform.  Particularly since nobody at the moment can argue with a straight face that the GOP isn’t having an, ah, open and frank internal exchange of opinions on the entire issue.

Have at it, folks. I personally am in full ‘plague on both their houses’ mode at this moment – but don’t mind me. Just don’t insult each other and everything will be fine.

I could live with this. More importantly: so could probably 50+% of the electorate, which I suspect is getting thoroughly tired of this issue.

[Marco Rubio's] wholesale fix tries to square—triangulate, if you will—the liberal fringe that seeks broad amnesty for illegal immigrants and the hard right’s obsession with closing the door. Mr. Rubio would ease the way for skilled engineers and seasonal farm workers while strengthening border enforcement and immigration laws. As for the undocumented migrants in America today—eight to 12 million or so—he proposes to let them “earn” a working permit and, one day, citizenship.

Those proposals amount to a collection of third rails for any number of lobbies. Organized labor has torpedoed guest-worker programs before. Anything that hints of leniency for illegals may offend the talk-radio wing of the GOP.

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…in his argument (which I endorse) for immigration reform.  It’s a touchy subject.  I understand that people in the party are going to disagree with people like Ed or me on it.  But I personally need to make a few things clear…

[pause] (more…)

I am a Republican, and one that is much less hard-nosed on the subject of immigration than Mickey Kaus is.  We’re going to have the conversation about what to do next, and if Mickey wants to join in then he needs to join up.

(Via Instapundit)

Moe Lane

PS: Fair warning: Charles Krauthammer’s plan (which I can sum up as “Let us close the border, and you can have your green cards”) works for me on a basic level; it’s a plan and it can be implemented.  And there’s a lot more people in the GOP that will get behind it than Mickey thinks that there are.  Some of them are even Tea Partiers.

At least, that’s the impression that one gets from this NY Post article:

Agency-wide, the number of “reprisal” claims jumped from 43 in 2009 to 63 in 2010 and then hit 103 in 2011, as reported under the “No Fear Act,” which offers anti-discrimination and whistle-blower protections to federal workers.

The number of sexual-harassment claims jumped from two in 2009 to 10 in 2011, and the number of “nonsexual”-harassment claims rose from 37 in 2009 to 81 in 2011.

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There was this guy who was big in the Democratic party a few years ago. Had a fairly interesting name: Obediah? Omerta? Observer? :snapping fingers: Obama! Barry Obama. Anyway, this Obama guy had some strong views on separation of powers and the need to not rule via executive fiat, particularly when it comes to straightening out illegal immigration.

So, the Democrats should totally get this guy to jump into the Democratic primaries. He’s still too liberal for me, but this Obama guy would completely destroy the slapdash equivocator leading in the Democratic primaries right now…

Chuck Schumer is claiming that he’s going to pass legislation that will effectively neuter Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law if/when (and a lot of people are starting to say ‘when’) the Supreme Court upholds said legislation.  Ann Althouse notes that the law is actually popular, and that even Latinos themselves are divided on whether or not it’s a good idea.  I have a much more elemental take on this: Chuck Schumer has considerably less ability to dictate what or what does not get passed in this Congress – but if he really wants to get his legislation considered, there’s an easy way to do it.

Attach it to a Democratic Senate budget proposal.

I am going to break an internal rule, and feel somewhat sorry for an Obama appointee. Yes, I know that it’s the man’s own fault for working for this administration; I also know that anybody who would be a top-level Obama administration official would waste no sympathy on me.  But judging from this report, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli is apparently on a smooth glide path to losing in whole or in part the Supreme Court case over Arizona’s new immigration law.  Apparently he’s not even convincing Justice Sotomayor; and that takes skill, in this administration*.

So why am I feeling sorry for the guy?  Well, it’s not because Verrilli’s problem is that, as Ed Morrissey notes, he’s stuck using stupid arguments concocted for political purposes by an administration whose core competency is incompetence.  That, again, is part for the course.  No, why I feel sorry for Verrilli is because I am morally certain that if he loses both the Obamacare and immigration cases he will be blamed by everybody on the Left, because that’s much easier than dealing with, say, objective reality.  And that will be sole blame: nobody else will have to take the fall.  Progressives and liberals will tell themselves for the next two generations that they could have gotten what they wanted, only Verrilli failed them in the clutch.  His name will be mud.

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Legal Insurrection tacitly wonders about the same thing that I’ve been wondering about: what happens to the Democrats when/if the long-trumpeted Latino demographic shift – one fueled by thirty years of constant immigration from Mexico – well, stops?

Spoiler warning: probably nothing all that good.  (more…)

Ed Morrissey’s thoughts on Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s endorsement of Mitt Romney make sense, but there’s another thought: could this simply be about immigration?  Romney’s portraying himself as a hardline immigration hawk at this point*, and Brewer got herself elected in 2010 largely on her willingness to take and keep a hard line on the topic herself.  Not too surprising that this might translate into an endorsement, honestly.

But will it work?  Don’t know, don’t care.

Moe Lane

*Note my choice of verb.