After just a week of controlling the U.S. House of Representatives, members of the Grand Old Party are making good on their vitriolic, anti-immigration campaign rhetoric and introducing bills that would hurt undocumented migrants.
Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa's birthright bill now pales in comparison to Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee's proposal to build 20 federal prisons to house undocumented migrants. In other words, the GOP's solution to the crisis of illegal immigration is simply to round up and jail the "illegal aliens," much like their solution to the country's health crisis is to repeal an historic health care bill.
And there is more insanity.
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California wants to eliminate the 55,000 visas awarded through a lottery and grant them to foreigners who graduated from American colleges, while another bill would require authorities to ascertain the immigration status of anyone "taken into custody" to make sure that the check would apply to those who were arrested by police but released on bail or bond before being taken to jail.
Then there is the call for the revocation of the driver's licenses of pending deportees; the push to have no undocumented migrants in colleges and universities; and for states to begin tracking the number of undocumented children in public schools.
The Republicans have soundly rejected criticism from many, including their own Jeb Bush, that such serious anti-immigrant measures would further alienate the immigrant vote, especially those in the Latino community, who are seen as the new swing bloc of voters, and are pushing ahead with their anti-immigrant agenda.
What is lost in the Republican tactics, as usual, is the fact that their solution to what they perceive as the problem is really no solution at all.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg is right when he said in his State of the City last week that immigration reform "is the single biggest step we can take" to promote innovation and economic growth.
Comprehensive immigration reform is the only real solution to the issue of illegal immigration. To do otherwise would simply result in a complete shutdown of the very basic economic engines of this country – including farms, factories, hotels, restaurants, housekeeping, janitorial, construction and other blue-collar sectors.
Close the borders, yes, but permit those who now work and live here without legal papers to obtain a work permit and a travel document.
This is by no means amnesty or citizenship but a rational solution to the problem without being overly dramatic and continuing to bury our heads in the sand.
The reality is that the United States does not have the resources to round up, jail and deport over 11 million people, and if they did manage to, the economy would grind to a halt. Worse, in this time of security threats, the biggest nightmare is to have millions of people in the country that you have no knowledge of.
Let's secure our borders, but let's make sure we fix the problem within our borders in a rational way that would allow for those in the backlogged processing system to obtain their green cards, and for the rest of the undocumented population to be counted and pay taxes while living in a legal state that hardly qualifies as citizenship.
