A recent poll revealed some surprising trends and attitudes among likely Republican voters in Iowa, and the results got me thinking about how diverse are the viewpoints in our party, and how currently none of the candidates for the GOP nomination has put forward a clear, bold strategy for confronting some key issues. This will be the beginning of a series of four blog entries about one particular issue that is very important to all voters, and especially Republican voters: illegal immigration.

My goal is to try and reshape how we think about this issue, and to offer what I think is a set of proposals that can combine to form a conservative, efficient, and pragmatic policy on immigration that can make this issue a cornerstone of the Republican campaign for the White House. I hope to use this blog in the coming months to also take on a several other important issues in the same manner, using several entries at a time to focus on certain issues and break them down to see how we can forge a new conservative consensus on proposals I think would be embraced by not merely a 50 percent plus-one majority, but instead by what I would call a super-majority that is enduring and can give our party a long-lasting dominance in the future of American politics.


Regarding immigration, 66.2 percent of GOP respondents said the issue is either very or most important in their decision on who to vote for in the 2008 presidential election. When asked to select the single most important issue in the election, from a list including terrorism, the Iraq war, the economy, health care, global warming, and education (as well as several other issues), immigration came in fourth (behind terrorism, the Iraq war, and the economy).

So clearly, immigration is a significant concern for voters in our party.  Now let's consider the actual sentiments of those Republican voters who so identified immigration.

51.7 percent said the government should let illegal immigrants become citizens if they meet requirements including learning English and paying back taxes; another 12 percent said the government should allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country as guest workers for a limited time; and 2.2 percent said the government should just allow all illegal immigrants to become permanent residents without any requirements.  That's a grand total of about 66 percent of Republican voters in Iowa saying they support some governmental action allowing illegal immigrants to remain in this country, 54 percent of whom support letting them become citizens or permanent residents.

Another aspect of GOP voters' opinions to consider is whom they blame for the illegal immigration problem in our country.  An incredible 80.5 percent most blame someone other than the immigrants themselves, with 49.2 percent saying employers are at fault for hiring illegal immigrants and another 31.3 percent saying the federal government is most at fault.

With all of these facts in mind regarding Republican voters' views on illegal immigration, in terms of its importance as an issue, what they are willing to do about it, and who they most blame for the problem, I would like to present a proposal that is not  necessarily comprehensive in terms of addressing all of the smallest details that will be involved, but that I think is a good starting point towards making a fundamental change in our immigration policy that would solve some of the biggest problems we face while laying the foundation for future proposals to move towards an end-game in the illegal immigration debate.

Let me begin by talking about how to boost border security enforcement.  I would start by creating multiple federal facilities right at the border for quick processing of illegal immigrants back to their country of origin – basically, border patrol agents and law enforcement in border states could take any immigrants they pick up directly to a processing center right at the border, and have a coordinated effort in which Mexico has buses that make pick-ups at regular intervals at each facility to transport the people back to the nearest cities.  This would make much more sense than detaining them in the U.S. for extended periods of time and housing them in gigantic prison-like federal facilities (or actual prisons and state/county jails, which is done regularly). Having a fast turn around time would save large amounts of money and would act as more of a deterrent than the current system.

These border facilities should also act as a place where people can show up from Mexico to apply for visas, work permits, and other such legal entry documentation, then take one of the buses back home to await the results of their application.  At least some people approaching the border could be inclined to veer towards one of these facilities and seek out legal immigration rather than crossing illegally through a series of incentives and active promotion and advertisement of the sites on the Mexican side of the border; but of course this would require additional ideas for how to eventually transform these border facilities into processing centers for people entering and exiting the country.

The main idea here would be to basically take all of the manpower, funding, and other resources of the INS and move it right to the border where it can be most effective, instead of spending most of our time addressing the problem after the fact. This would likely significantly decrease the number of successful border crossings, while using local and state law enforcement -- granted federal authority that also denies certain federal funding for social services if a state or locality refuses to participate -- as the means of picking up illegal immigrants across the country when they are encountered after a successful border crossing. They would be detained and transporting immediately to the INS facilities at the border for quick disposition and deportation back to their home countries.

However, this after-the-fact enforcement would be less of a focus, actually, because the first priority from an enforcement perspective must be getting quick control of the influx of illegal immigrants, otherwise any measures that address illegal immigrants already within the country will be an exercise in futility if the numbers are always growing faster than we can remove them. So the main enforcement mechanism must be border enforcement that includes fast disposition of cases. The combined forces of the Border Patrol, INS agents, and certain aspects of National Guard resources, would be a dramatic enhancement of policing the border, and would merely shift existing resources and needing an influx of funding for a bit more hiring and the construction of several facilities, a cost that pales by comparison to the current popular notion of building a huge wall across the border and doubling or tripling (or whatever exponential increase is popular on any given day) the number of agents policing the border.

Sure, we could invest billions of dollars to build a giant, ugly wall all along the border. Unfortunately, they make ladders in Mexico, and any wall would only be potentially effective if it reached from coast to coast. Then there are the tunnels, which turn into not only immigrant-smuggling underground highways, but also drug highways and weapons highways as well.  Would we really prefer to push illegal immigration literally underground where it cannot be detected or seen very easily? How would that enhance our national security, exactly? No, only if we are willing to build not a wall but a canal splitting the U.S. from Mexico, and filling acres on either side with land mines and advanced motion and heat detection devices, will we create a barrier that has any chance of significantly reducing illegal immigration, and I don't think anyone has or would propose such an outlandish concept.

The costs of constructing a huge physical barrier compared to the minimal good it would do should quickly disqualify this idea from any serious consideration, especially when compared to the much lower costs and much better results that could be achieved from the resource shifting and comparatively minor increased expenditures in the plan I've laid out. It is not fiscally conservative to call for increased federal spending for a wall, for more border patrol, and for increased ICE actions around the country, as well as of course more prison spending for construction and housing of illegal immigrants awaiting processing. This sort of knee-jerk spending on increased enforcement will always be behind the curve, and will necessitate infinite spending increases because it will always fail to solve the problem.

These facilities will also play a roll in the next important aspect in immigration reform -- economic and employment policies.  I will discuss these matters in my next entry.