"Tamper-Proof" ID is Fantasy

The buzzword in the illegal immigration debate is “tamper-proof,” as in tamper proof ID cards for aliens. I just watched Tony Snow’s interview this morning with Steve Doocy on Fox and Friends, and Snow was out there front and center defending the proposed amnesty bill by touting the “tough” enforcement measures it allegedly contains. Perhaps some of the measures would be “tough” if the government had any track record whatsoever of enforcing past laws. However, the most outrageous falsehood that Snow, President Bush, and even the field of 2008 presidential candidates continue to perpetuate, aside from claiming the bill is not amnesty, is the notion of a “tamper-proof” government issued ID card.

Show me a “tamper-proof” ID card, and I can take you to a street corner in Los Angeles near MacArthur Park where the card can be taken, analyzed, dissected, and reproduced to near perfection in a matter of minutes. Governments have a poor history of making “tamper-proof” official documents, as evidenced by the phenomenally lucrative criminal market for counterfeit or forged Social Security Cards, passports (including the new ridiculously vulnerable RF chip encoded version), driver’s licenses, and even law enforcement credentials and badges. The simple truth is that there is no such thing as “tamper-proof,” whether one is referring to ID documents, ID cards, computer networks, or product packaging. Computer hackers, some of them mere teens testing their skills on a dare, have penetrated “secure” networks operated by the Defense Department and many other local, state, and federal agencies. Private corporations guarding priceless trade secrets have also learned by sad experience that their secure systems are anything but tamper proof. Credit card companies have spent millions of dollars attempting to make their cards as tamper-proof as possible, but with only mixed results.

Tony Snow told Steve Doocy moments ago that the proposed “tamper-proof” ID card for illegal aliens would allow the government to know who is currently here, because, according to Snow, anyone found without one would be “kicked out” of America. Let me see if I have this straight: The government that has never made any serious effort to deport illegal aliens it stumbles upon or are handed to it without proper documentation or ID will miraculously transform itself and “kick out” any illegal aliens found without the magic “tamper-proof” ID card after they are issued to amnesty recipients? It doesn’t take a math whiz to calculate that something in that equation is significantly flawed.

Americans should be suspicious of anyone who insists that something is tamper-proof, and even more skeptical of the pie-in-the-sky promise that any new form of ID card will eliminate the underground market for counterfeit official documents. Unfortunately, many 2008 presidential candidates have adopted the lingo of “tamper-proof” ID cards in their policy positions on illegal immigration, including Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. To their credit, they advocate a “tamper-proof” ID card AFTER the borders have been secured and after illegal aliens currently here are given Z visa applications and sent back to their native country to await the granting of legal permission to enter the U.S. That is not the case when the White House champions “tamper-proof” ID cards. President Bush’s vision for immigration reform does not require anyone currently in America to leave, allowing all to remain in place, apply for the Z visa, and continue working and living in America.

As Romney pointed out strongly in the third GOP candidates’ debate, allowing any Z visa applicants to remain in the U.S. to await adjudication of their status gives them tremendous advantages over applicants from other countries who are waiting in their homeland, where they should be. Let’s face facts: immigration adjudication officers will be under enormous pressure to grant Z visas first to applicants already in America, and they will receive preferential treatment despite the illegality of their presence here. A law abiding foreign national who wants to become a U.S. citizen will be kept waiting for years, while foreign nationals who broke our laws by entering the U.S. without documentation will be rewarded with all the benefits of life in the U.S. throughout the entire application time line.

Consider the following whopper from Tony Snow, courtesy of World Net Daily. I preface the inclusion of Snow’s comment and my subsequent analysis with the disclaimer that I think Snow is a fantastic White House Press Secretary, tragically tasked with defending a terrible piece of legislation. Having made that point, note in Snow’s comment all of the violations for which illegal aliens would allegedly be deported under the proposed McCain-Kennedy-Bush amnesty bill:

Snow launched his response by denying that the plan is amnesty. "Right now a lot of times 'amnesty' is used as shorthand for saying, we don't like the bill," he said. "If you look up the dictionary definition of amnesty, it means total forgiveness of a crime.

"What you have here is a crime [entering the U.S. illegally] for which there was no punishment originally. Now what we're saying is everybody who came across the border, No. 1, you pay a thousand dollar fine. No. 2, you are on permanent probation. If you break the law, you're deported. If you do not maintain a job, you are deported. If you do not learn the English language, you're deported. If you do not subject yourself to a criminal background check, you're deported. If you do not have an ID that allows us to trace who you are, where you are, for whom you work, you are deported," he said.

This statement by Snow is astonishing in its scope and in its audacity. When someone has to pull out the dictionary to explain why a proposed bill is not amnesty, you can rest assured that he is in fact trying to conceal amnesty. The semantic hairsplitting involved in defining amnesty is disgustingly reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s legal obfuscations over the legal definition of “sex” in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Trying to sound tough on illegal immigration after doing virtually nothing about it for 6 years is also less than impressive. Snow stated, “If you break the law, you’re deported.” That’s a good place to start, Tony. We have laws on the books that include deportation. Enforce them. The government has not enforced them in the past and claims that deporting illegal aliens already here is logistically impossible. If the government has not been deporting illegal aliens who have already broken our laws, why should anyone accept the claim that the government will suddenly grow sufficient spine to start deporting violators of the proposed bill?

There are certainly a lot of violations listed in Snow’s comment for which deportation is promised. Snow should be reminded that deportation has always been the prescribed punishment for illegal immigration but the government never writes the prescription and the medicine is never administered, hence the 12-20 million who have come here with impunity knowing that the government lacked the spine and/or stomach to deport anyone unless public outcry over a specific case made it unavoidable.

Even in those cases, most criminal deportees are back in the U.S. in a matter of weeks, free to commit further crimes or kill law enforcement officers (remember the slayer of L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy David March). They return so easily because the borders are not secure. Note that I wrote “borders” rather than “border,” because there are enormous security problems associated with both our northern and southern borders. Instead of offering “tamper-proof” ID cards as a spoonful of sugar to help the amnesty medicine go down more smoothly, the government should strive for a “tamper-proof” border and “tamper-proof” deportation proceedings.

Technorati Tags:
Illegal Immigration, Amnesty, Tamper Proof Identification, Tony Snow, Deportation, Immigration Reform, Border Enforcement, Border Security

McCain Fears Riots if Illegals Deported

I fully expected that this morning, considering that the second Democratic candidates’ debate occurred last night, it would be easy to select the most asinine comment of the weekend from a wide variety of choices. Thanks to John Hawkins at Right Wing News, it was easy to identify by far the most ludicrous statement made over the weekend, but it dismayed me that the comment did not come from any of the Democratic candidates and was not uttered in last night’s DNC debate on CNN. Instead, it came from a leading GOP presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, who may have quashed his presidential ambitions through his continued political jihad against true conservatives who oppose giving amnesty to America’s illegal aliens.

As quoted by Right Wing News:

McCain went back and forth with one audience member, who said he was upset that the immigration proposal before Congress is not tough enough. The man told McCain that there were already adequate laws on the books — they just aren't being enforced.

McCain said that was a misnomer.

``The old rules are not workable and enforceable,'' he said. ``We've certainly proved that over the last 20 years.''

Congress ``failed you,'' McCain said. ``We passed a law in 1986 that said we'd give amnesty to some people and now we have 12 million more,'' illegal immigrants.

The man wasn't satisfied with McCain's answer. He asked McCain why the U.S. couldn't execute large-scale deportations, as he had heard they did in France and other countries.

The question seemed to pique McCain.

``In case you hadn't noticed, the thousands of people who have been relegated to ghettos have risen up and burned cars in France,'' McCain said. ``They've got huge problems in France. They have tremendous problems. The police can't even go into certain areas in the suburbs of Paris. I don't want that in the suburbs of America.''

For a lover of history and politics, John McCain here demonstrated a remarkable ignorance, particularly through his analogy with France. Of course there have been and continue to be neighborhoods of young Muslim immigrants in France who riot and burn cars, but McCain leaves out the salient fact that most of these young Muslims in France are not illegal aliens at all. They are not rioting against the government because France is deporting those who are in France illegally. They riot because they came to France expecting “the good life” but have discovered that living on France’s socialist welfare and unemployment benefits is becoming more difficult. Anytime anyone (such as newly-elected President Sarkozy) proposes reducing welfare benefits and forcing these idle hooligans to find jobs or face deportation they riot and burn their own neighborhoods in suburban Paris. The comparison by McCain is completely disingenuous. So disingenuous, in fact, that Sarkozy’s opponent warned French voters that if Sarkozy were elected, France would be torn apart by rioting immigrant workers. Senator McCain might want to remember that she lost that election, and fear-mongering did not sway the French, nor will it sway the American voter.

Yet, even if the riots in France were solely to oppose deportation, McCain’s invocation of them as an example of why America cannot and should not deport its illegal aliens is quite revealing about McCain’s leadership potential. McCain survived the Vietnam War and imprisonment as a POW for 5 years, yet his primary reason not to deport illegal aliens is fear. He fears an illegal alien uprising; he fears riots in American streets; he fears cars burning and police unable to go into certain neighborhoods in America. He fears all of these more than he fears the gangs, drugs, murders, rapes, DUI’s, and other crimes that are already attributable to illegal aliens in disturbingly high numbers in America. I sense that McCain does not take many occasions to venture outside his protected comfort bubble and witness firsthand with law enforcement that America has plenty of neighborhoods and entire suburbs where police will not go.

Notice that when asked why America does not deport illegal aliens like France, McCain became condescending to the audience member and tried to scare the audience with mental images of rioting illegal aliens (isn’t that profiling?), but he did not answer the question. He did not claim that the government lacks the ability to deport, only that it fears the social consequences of doing so. Why is there no fear among our elected officials about the consequences that result when a nation does not enforce the laws it enacts? If Congress cannot agree that enforcing laws governing legal entry and presence is critical to living up to their sworn duty to defend the United States, how likely is it that Congress is in any way serious about any of its other duties? Every election year brings a slew of incumbents and challengers, each of whom vows to “change Washington” or “restore public trust in government.” That trust will never be renewed until government learns to enforce existing laws that the people demanded in the first place.

The question the audience should have posed to McCain was “since you already granted one time amnesty in 1986 and continue to fail to enforce deportation laws already on the books, why on earth should we believe you have any intention of enforcing any measures in the Kennedy amnesty bill?” McCain made the ridiculous claim that the government has proven that the old laws are “unworkable” or “unenforceable,” yet this, too, is simply false. The government has never made a concerted effort to try to enforce the deportation provisions of our immigration statutes, whether out of misguided compassion (President Bush), fear of social unrest (McCain), or political pandering to Hispanic voters (the GOP and DNC). The truth is that since the 1986 amnesty, the government has made only a token effort to enforce deportation. It is an issue of will rather than capacity. Are we supposed to believe that a nation that can send men to the moon, harness the energy of the atom, and make powerful computers that fit into shirt pockets lacks the logistical capacity to secure its borders or systematically deport illegal aliens, especially those who have committed criminal acts? Why would anyone vote for a candidate who lacks the faith and optimism to believe that America is capable of surmounting any obstacle?

Senator McCain is likely to discover, to his chagrin and well in advance of any state primaries, that Americans do not appreciate fear-mongering from their leaders, nor do we want our leaders to be held captive by their own fears of burning cars and riots. Should we forbid the Tigers, Red Wings, or Pistons from ever playing for championships because their fans have a tendency to riot in, loot, and burn various sections of Detroit when they win? Should we never hold another Democratic Convention in Los Angeles because protesters overturned and set fire to vehicles and threw bottles at police in 2000? What about the violent riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention? If fear of potential rioting were the determining factor, large events of every kind would be banned for safety reasons. Fortunately, Americans are not ruled by their fears even if some of its prominent leaders and political candidates think otherwise.

Technorati: John McCain Presidential Candidates Immigration Reform Illegal Immigration Riots Nicolas Sarkozy Deportation Amnesty Illegal Aliens