Pence In The WSJ—His Plan MUST Be Bad!
06/11/2006
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It's a truth universally acknowledged, as they say, that you can either be a serious immigration reformer, or you can write for the Wall Street Journal editorial page—you can't do both.

Guess what—Congressman Mike Pence, whose privatization plan for open borders has been repeatedly skewered here, has just come out with an oped in the WSJ.[A Middle Ground on Immigration | Yes to guest workers, no to amnesty. By Mike Pence, June 11, 2006]

How is this package a"middle ground,"you ask? Well, it's meant to be less obviously horrible than the Senate bill, thus weakening House resistance, plus, of course, in Pence's new role as a WSJ op-ed writer, anything more in line with the rule of law than "There shall be open borders" is "middle ground."

Marcus Henry, whose recent piece here was the Absolutely Definitive takedown of the Pence Plan, emailed us and said

In this WSJ piece, Pence merely restates his original plan as outlined at Heritage on May 23 without any significant modifications. The stealth amnesty is still there, the path to citizenship is still there, and the unworkable "private sector visa centers" are still there, now insultingly named "Ellis Island Centers" to slander generations of refugees. Nothing I said in the VDARE essay has been refuted. In fact, Pence refutes himself on several points, most blatantly on the path to citizenship issue. There is simply no requirement in his plan that the guest worker go home after six years—he can apply for a green card if he chooses.

As I said in my original essay, in Pence's plan only the guest worker's term as a guest worker is limited, not his residence in the U.S. This confusion on Pence's part is either a sign of total ignorance of how a "path to citizenship" actually works in our immigration system or it is a conscious obfuscation.

Some people inside the Beltway may choose to accept Pence's sleight-of-hand if they are desperate for a magical solution to a difficult problem, but no one outside Washington who understands the English language will be fooled.

 

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