The latest digestible morsel on the nation's immigration issues, from six-year-old Dickie. Take it away:

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"Daddy says mean things about the immigrats. He says they need to go back to their own dirty trash-can countries. Daddy says Mexico smells like a sewer. Even Acapulco, when they did the hunnymoo.

"Mommy says he is a racist. She says the sewer was not the problem on the hunnymoo.

"I don't know what a racist is. But I think Daddy is a racist, whatever a racist is.

"Daddy throws his bottel against the wall. It breaks. He tells mommy it's all her fault.

"It scares me and I run upstairs. Mommy cries. I close the door and jump on my bed and hug Teddy.

"I wish Daddy would stop saying bad things about the immigrats."

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Disclaimer: And just to be clear: these six-year-old Dickie events do not describe my actual childhood. In reality, Momma and Poppa Dickie are very loving people. My Dad only blows his top when he's watching golf on TV - particularly if Tiger Woods is in a tourney with Phil Mickelson. Thank you. On with the show.

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Anyways, so I covered this immigration "panel discussion" yesterday, at the behest of my paper.

*sigh* Christ.

You know, it's funny - a couple weeks ago I pitched a panel sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and they said "no - probably gonna be too slanted," which is fine, because they had a point.

But then they send me out to cover this tripe?? What for? The shock value?

Nobody said life was ever supposed to make sense, I suppose. But I reported this alongside my intrepid associate Rebecca, who covers a lot of immigration for the Imperial Valley Press. (That's California, for anyone who might have grown up in Minnesota.) We just sat there, half in shock, mouths dropped open.

Afterwards, Rebecca said "I think I need a shower."

Me too.

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Analyst takes hard line on illegal immigration

5/25/05
By DICKIE CRONKITE
NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT


Think tank director says strict law enforcement will lead to voluntary departures


WASHINGTON -- A high-profile policy analyst on Tuesday offered a solution to America's immigration woes: laws so stringent -- including seizing property -- that those tempted to enter illegally would be discouraged, and those already here would leave voluntarily.

At a panel discussion, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, called for increased deportations, as well as stricter identification measures like the new REAL ID driver's license law, to make life so difficult that illegal immigrants eventually will "give up" and go home.

"Self-deportation is essential," Mr. Krikorian said, maintaining that harsh penalties must be threatened and enforced on both federal and local levels.

Instead of either granting illegal immigrants the chance at a green card or deporting them en masse back across the border, Mr. Krikorian said, a policy of "attrition" would, over time, erode the undocumented population.

In a phone interview, Benjamin Johnson, director of the Immigration Policy Center, adamantly disagreed.

"Stopping undocumented immigration is an important goal, but stopping all immigration to the United States -- closing our borders and sealing them off from all foreigners -- is a ridiculous idea," Mr. Johnson said. "Immigrants aren't going to go home because we refuse to give them driver's licenses -- that's silly."


Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., recently introduced a bill that would allow foreign workers a six-year stay, provided they clear all necessary security checks and show proof a job is waiting for them. Once their visas expire, the workers could apply for a green card.

Mr. Krikorian criticized their bill, saying it would "declare surrender" to illegal immigrants. But he wasn't much kinder to President Bush's guest worker proposal, nor to legislation that Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., plan to introduce as an alternative to McCain-Kennedy. Their bill is expected to have a "work and return" proposal.

Mr. Krikorian disparaged all worker programs, whether they force immigrants to leave or allow them to stay.

"Guest worker programs are bad in themselves," he said. "They lead to exploitation; they're premised on the idea that you can use people's labor and get rid of them when they're done."

As for programs that permit workers to stay, Mr. Krikorian maintained that fully legalizing the immigration flow "will always beget more (illegal) flows."

Mr. Johnson, however, defended guest worker programs.

"We still have an incredibly robust economy and a growing need, particularly in lower-skilled sections of the economy," he said.

Mr. Krikorian received support from fellow panelist Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, an organization that works to reduce levels of both legal and illegal immigration.

"Illegal immigration is a criminal business," Mr. Beck said, "in which everybody involved . . . profits."

He said "tens of millions" of Americans are victimized by illegal immigration -- losing jobs, losing wages, watching their quality of life suffer.

He compared illegal immigrants to burglars, saying that most burglars do not break into houses with the intent to harm, but rather to improve their quality of life.

Mr. Johnson disagreed. "We need them to recognize that legal immigrants are a good thing for this country, and the undocumented would be very good, if they were legal. We shouldn't . . .vilify them," he said.

"The . . . reality is that the immigrants coming in, legally and illegally, are filling jobs that for the most part U.S. workers are not taking," Mr. Johnson said. "As long as they're a response to a legitimate need, they should be allowed to come in legally."

Mr. Beck argued for the elimination of programs that allow immigrants to bring extended family members into the country, calling it "chain migration."

"There are millions of extended family relatives" on the waiting list to enter the United States, he said, and some will have to wait perhaps 25 years. "But once they're on that waiting list, they believe they're entitled . . . to be in this country."

A practice that allows family members to enter the country via a waiting list, he said, serves "no national purpose."

Mr. Johnson was unmoved.

"Immigrants are human beings with aspirations and in many cases families," he said. "U.S. immigration law ought not to require those families be separated."


Dickie Cronkite writes from Washington, D.C., for Medill News Service. Contact him at ******@newspress.com.