"Big immigration waves nearing political beach"

From a Palm Beach Post editorial:

Social Security used to be considered the untouchable "third rail" of American politics, but immigration soon may replace it.

Both candidates bobbed and weaved around the subject during the presidential campaign, and neither party has offered credible ideas for reform, fearing the political implications of being the first to propose unpopular solutions to long-ignored problems. A report released last week by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based group that favors tighter immigration controls, underscores the nation's need to confront the issue head-on...

...The political calculus is difficult as ever, but a deal with Mexico, which President Bush promised at the start of his first term, remains the critical centerpiece for comprehensive reform.

As Time magazine reported in September, the issue has national security ramifications. About 60,000 of the illegals who cross from Mexico are not Mexican; some are from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. Without control of the border, there is no control of security...

...From a business standpoint, immigrant labor remains essential, especially in the restaurant and hotel industries that dominate the Florida economy. That is a reality the federal government cannot continue to ignore. Frustrated border states such as Arizona, which just passed a citizens' initiative restricting public services to illegal immigrants, are starting to act on their own. Such a hodgepodge policy will bring unintended consequences, not progress.

So, the editorial isn't as strong as it could be. However, unlike many other articles and editorials, it at least takes a clear-eyed look at the problem.

I note also that the editorial has a hash code attached. (A "hash code" attempts to summarize a long string of bytes in a short series of bytes. In this case it distills a 1000-character or so editorial down into 8 bytes. The attempt is to uniquely identify the long series, as an ID or to determine whether changes have been made for instance.) I have no idea why they'd do this.

Comments

That is typical nonsense about how immigrant labor is essential. That older immigrants got jobs, does not give any information on whether the next million are actually needed. The anti-palestinian structures in Israel, do tell us that you can wall out the bottom 10% or so the workforce, without any obvious damage to the economy clearly attributable to that, and only that, cause.