Suman Raghunathan

Update on Fred Thompson’s Immigration Plan

(Now that more details are available, this follows my previous post
on former Senator Fred Thompson’s stance on immigration policy issues.)

Ah, Fred. I was waiting with bated breath to see if your long-awaited immigration plan
(I see a resemblance to your candidacy announcement that is, I’m sure, purely coincidental) would make more sense once I could see more detail and fine print.

Ahem. The details and fine print are there, but I have to say the sense is still lacking.

[Though at least your pollster really likes what you want to do on immigration!
The media and political pundits panned your plan as ‘unrealistic and too tough’, but apparently (the main source being your of-course-unbiased pollster) Iowans like it. Wahoo!]

Since the rub is often in the details, here we go:

The Wall
No, I’m not referring to the legendary Pink Floyd album and host of many laser light shows for teenagers. I’m talking about the fence along the US-Mexico border of which Fred was so enamored. Turns out, he’s still in love with it. So much so that he wants to extend it until kingdom come. Looks like it’s not a problem for Fred that much of the border fence project until now was underfunded, and that as we’ve extended and fortified the fence over the past two decades, the numbers of undocumented immigrants entering the country have tripled.

Fred sticks to his guns and does more provide more details on just how much he wants to militarize the border. How, you may ask? Well, first he wants to double the number of ICE agents - yup, the same ones who were ditched by Long Island’s Nassau County Police Department after organizing large-scale raids that nabbed US citizens and legal permanent residents without criminal records or deportation orders in their homes at dawn. Clearly, ICE agents are doing a great job and we need more of ‘em. Phew! I feel safer already.

No Amnesty. Whatsoever. Ever.
Fred has toed the line (though he doesn’t want there to be a line, at least to get into this country – he believes in drastically reducing the number of visas available so people can enter the country legally, but really who’s quibbling?) on comprehensive immigration reform – for the past year, at least. And he’s sticking to it. His latest opposition to ‘amnesty’ as he calls it is his opposition to extending education loans to undocumented college students – aka the DREAM Act, a win-win bill that tragically died last week (again) in the Senate.
At least Fred’s in touch with the rest of the Senators who voted to bar promising immigrant students from accessing federal loans to get a college education. American dream, here we come.

Speaking of sticking to his guns, Fred’s only exception to his stern ‘go to the back of line’ attitude is to put immigrant military personnel with legal status at the front of the citizenship line.

Enforcement, Employer Sanctions, and SSA No-Match – oh my!
Despite Fred’s fervent desire to target employers who hire undocumented workers, mum’s still the word on enforcing wage and hour laws – which, coincidentally, apply to all workers regardless of immigration status, and would go the longest way to making sure all workers (immigrant and native-born) could work in fair conditions, retain the right to unionize, and earn a fair wage.

Fred seems to believe that if employers are told not to hire undocumented workers, they won’t. He then makes a giant leap of faith: namely, that undocumented workers would simply go home, something he labels ‘self-deportation’. Ok, Fred. Clearly 12 million people who have been living and working in the US, who went around or underneath your fancy border fence, and who likely have US citizen children and family members will simply deport themselves. Gotcha. This makes perfect sense, and makes sense for the nation’s economy that depends on immigrant workers in a number of industries from hotels and restaurants to construction to childcare. Right. (note: I am, indeed, being facetious here.)

The straw that seems to break the camel’s back in Fred’s immigration plan is his proposal that the Social Security Administration (SSA) share information with immigration authorities and law enforcement personnel. Now that’s really a new (and not good) idea, and let me explain why:

1. Information on who’s eligible to work in this country comes from the Social Security Administration,
and even they admit their records boast a whopping (and confidence-boosting) 50% success rate. So, in fact, there’s not accurate information currently available on who’s eligible to work. In addition, a federal judge already ruled that the feds shouldn’t (and can’t) send out SSA No-Match letters to inform employers they might, just might, have an employee who’s undocumented (or might have changed their name when they got married).
The reason? Employees (many of them with legal status) are the ones who’ll bear the brunt, not sleazy bosses who want to exploit their workers.
2. We’ve already seen what it looks like when the feds and local police departments try to cooperate on immigration enforcement – i.e., the recent raids in Long Island.
Long story short, the feds get it wrong and the two haven’t mixed well in the past.
3. Police departments don’t want to act as immigration agents, and I’m betting they don’t want to act on information that only has a 50-50 chance of being correct. Never a good sign when the police chiefs of major cities like New York City, Los Angeles, and even San Diego don’t want to touch immigration enforcement with a ten-foot pole.

Still looks like your plan needs some fine-tuning, Fred.

Suman Raghunathan: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 8:04 AM, Oct 31, 2007 in Immigration | The Candidates on Immigration
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