Mort Zuckerman: Massive illegal alien amnesty is a "second chance"

U.S. News & World Report's Morton Zuckerman offers us "A Second Chance", all about "immigration reform". There are only three good ideas in this editorial: first, at least this magazine is covering this; second, he wants to end or reduce chain migration, aka "family reunification"; third, he wants to bring in more skilled labor.

However, like others, he comes out in favor of "immigration reform", such as that offered by Bush's horrific plan or by the McKennedy amnesty. It includes this:

...We have to figure out how to fully integrate these illegal immigrants into our nation so that they become productive, law-abiding citizens, paying taxes and learning English...

We have to do no such thing. "Having to" integrate millions of illegal aliens now will just provide an incentive for millions more to come, all of whom will "have to" be integrated. How about we reduce the incentives for remaining here illegally at the same time as making it unprofitable to employ illegal aliens. As pointed out many times before, hundreds of thousands or even more illegal aliens will repatriate themselves, and we won't have to go out of our way to accomodate them.

The hope would be that once the available jobs were filled by authorized immigrants, those unauthorized would stop coming because employers could no longer hire them. This would free the Border Patrol to look for terrorists--instead of people just seeking work...

Yeah, it's good to know we're basing policy on "hope." What will actually happen is employers will keep employing illegals until it's unprofitable to do so. They'll donate some money and get exemptions in return. Or, Bush will just not enforce the law as he's doing now.

He goes on to say that these "reform" proposals are not amnesties. And, perhaps in some extremely strict, legalistic definition in some dictionary somewhere he might be right. However, in any case it will be perceived as an amnesty in all those countries that have sent us millions of people. And, it will show that the U.S. is "easy", leading to millions more coming here in expectation of the next last non-amnesty amnesty.