Richard Nadler on Immigration

Richard Nadler joins Karl Rove, Simon Rosenberg, and Mel Martinez in discussing why it is important for Republicans to stop alienating the Latino/a vote by promoting enforcement only immigration policies.

If conservative Republicans continue to advocate the mass removal of resident illegals, our candidates will lose Hispanic vote share - to the point where our performance among Hispanics mirrors that among African Americans. If conservative Republicans continue to advocate the mass removal of resident illegals, our business support will erode - not to levels typical of a congressional minority, but to levels reflecting a fundamental shift of interests favoring the Democrats.

Mass deportation is a deal breaker. The linked prospects of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, persecuted clergy, ruptured families, and mass profiling spooks the legal, working-class Hispanic. It is the GOP platform plan to remove the 12 million illegals among them that turns the Hispanic vote from "leans Democratic" to Democrat-dominated.

Federal immigration statutes are, by universal agreement, absurd. The law, as it applies to employers, encourages the hiring of illegals by making document fraud child's play. I took pains in my article to cite the actual warnings on the I-9 form. Employers are told that they must accept school IDs, report cards, and work visas scheduled to expire, and that they are liable to lawsuits if they do not. But border jumping is punishable by deportation.

These laws scarcely inhabit the same policy universe. Their coexistence is a tribute to the insanity of avoiding comprehensive immigration reform.

You say you want to enforce existing immigration law, but you don't. You want to change it, so that it can be enforced against a work force that was legally hired. The overwhelming majority of "illegals" were properly processed by their employers under existing I-9 procedures. Unmasking the frauds incentivized by these procedures will require new statutes. This reflects your policy preference for deportation, not your superior commitment to law.

Employers want to change existing law too. But they would give visas to existing foreign workers, and implement stricter verification standards going forward. That is their policy preference.