BCT Editorial – 3/3/06

This page was last updated on March 4, 2006.

The real world; Editorial; Beaver County Times; March 3, 2006. As of this writing, this editorial was published in the print edition but not on the Times website.

The purpose of this critique is to provide more examples of how Times editorials distort the positions of opposing points of view. That’s why the critique addresses only excerpts. Also, I was too lazy to transcribe the entire lengthy editorial.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“U.S. immigration policy must acknowledge global changes that have taken place

…

“Like so many measures seeking to find common ground in Washington’s highly partisan environment, Specter’s proposal doesn’t please either side. The hardliners think it is too soft and the pro-immigration forces believe it to be too harsh. The anti-immigration hardliners aren’t being realistic.”

[RWC] Did you notice that if you support legal immigration but oppose illegal immigration, you are “anti-immigration” and a “hardliner.” If you support illegal immigration, you are “pro-immigration.”

The editorial used the “hardliner” label once more.

The editorial gave us the Times opinions of why those of us who oppose illegal immigration are wrong. It didn’t give one example of how the illegal immigration supporters are in error or even what they would consider reasonable.

In summary, the editorial took the Democrat position that the only change we need to make is to grant legal status to “the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. today” and issue guest worker cards, though it was careful to do so subtly. At least the editorial didn’t refer to illegal immigrants as “undocumented workers.”

Though I’m sure there are a few nuts out there, I believe the vast majority of us who oppose illegal immigration support legal immigration. I’m also relatively sure the vast majority of us would have no problem with a guest worker program. A guest worker program, however, still doesn’t secure our borders.

First, I believe most of us who support legal immigration believe illegal immigrants who broke our laws to get here and who are continuing to break them by staying here should at least be sent back to their home country where they could apply for a legal guest worker pass. In short, I don’t support amnesty. Amnesty is also not fair to the millions of immigrants who do play by the rules.

Second, I suspect any guest worker program would need to impose numerical limits of some kind. Unless the limits were so high as to be useless, we’d still have illegal immigration and we’d still need to improve our border security. Contrary to what the editorial would have us believe, a guest worker program would not eliminate the need for effective border security.

Third, we’d still need the means to monitor guest workers to make sure we knew where they were, what they were doing, and to make sure they went back home when their guest worker pass expired. This is something we don’t do well for visas and the number of guest workers would be orders of magnitude greater. We’d also need systems in place to make sure the guest workers didn’t receive the same benefits as U.S. citizens. For example, guest workers should not be given the right to vote and should not qualify for government-supplied services, like public or government-subsidized schools, public housing, Medicaid, welfare, et cetera. In other words, if a guest worker can’t live solely on the wages and benefits paid by his employer, he should be denied guest worker status.