Mary Sanchez or Tokyo Rose?

Mary Sanchez of Knight-Ridder offers us "The cost of mass deportation". As in "David Brooks or Tokyo Rose?" I invite you to read her editorial with the proper inflection.

Sanchez informs us that more than 10 million people have illegally settled in our country and we have no chance of deporting all of them. We have no choice but to give in and deal with it:

The fact that mass deportation continues to ring feasible to so many people is astounding. Do people really think that enough immigration agents exist to go door to door throughout America ferreting out the 10 million-plus illegal population?

According to Sanchez, we have no choice but to surrender:

The fact that leadership within the Department of Homeland Security insists mass deportation is impossible never seems to dissuade people.

I know, isn't that something? In fact, when Asa Hutchinson sat down for his famous interview described in "Rounding up all illegals 'not realistic'" many people said that he was simply admitting that he wasn't doing his job. And, some people even called the Bush administration corrupt and said they were deliberately allowing massive illegal immigration in order to provide cheap labor to GOP contributors. Why, oh why won't the American public simply believe what the DHS tells them?

Then, she discusses the Center for American Progress' immigration study, which predicted it would cost well over $200 billion to deport all the illegal aliens in the U.S. Of course, as described at the link, their study has been completely discredited because of the laughable methodology they used, but let's ignore that for the moment.

Once again, she informs we Americans that we have no choice but to surrender:

Arguments could be made that yes, the American government could drop all efforts to say build highways, finish the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, educate children in public schools - and divert these funds to this new endeavor.

Just give in, you Americans.

On a related note, Mary Sanchez was last seen trying to portray radical reconquista Armando Navarro as a moderate here.

Comments

"There's no need for mass deportation."

I agree. This sort of rhetoric ("mass deportation") is bogus -- just a canard to invoke mental images of cattle cars and Nazi style cruelty and inhumaneness, which in truth the US immigration system is anything but. As you say, all that is needed is a genuine commitment to enforcement, meaning over time arresting and deporting illegals when the opportunity arises, as well as making their lives here a little more difficult, e.g. employer sanctions, ending citizenship (and maybe even education) for their kids, no DLs, etc, which also over time will cause many to leave voluntarily.

A nation with borders as insecure as those of the US and that shrinks from deportation is doomed -- culturally, demographically. And of the two options, i.e. securing the border or stepped up enforcement including deportation, I prefer a combination, and specifically would like to avoid putting up an unsightly physical barrier -- a fence.

In other words she wants us to just lay down and just surrender our country over to Mexico. I don't think so. You wouldn't necessarily have to do sweeps but you start to make it uncomfortable for these people to live here. Unfortunately we have been doing the opposite, making things as comfortable as possible for them here. And they don't even have to learn our language. We can improve this situation if we have the desire to do so.

The main thing to do is to get tough on employers. Require that employers verify SSAN's of employees via phone or on-line. To make it even easier to obey the law create ID that is vitually tamper-proof (as the Real ID act proposes to do for driver's licenses) that verifies the right to work in the US .There are now dozens of different documents that aliens can present to prospective employers to verify eligibility to work. Employers now have no means to verify the validity of documents making it easy for them to evade the law, pleading ignorance.
If employers are found hiring ineligible aliens they should be subject to the same asset forfeiture laws as drug dealers. If convicted they should be subject to the same prison time as human smugglers.

There's no need for mass deportation. Just remove their reasons for being here and they'll deport themselves.

Labor

It's good to see that yet another person understands that mass deportation is not only not possible but the adverse effects would surely exceed the benefits (if any).