A Swimmingly Good Immigration Solution to Border Security

Let's hope CIR doesn't end up 'swimming with the fishes.' - Angelo A. Paparelli reminds Congress that:

• No law will ever be so successful as to prevent determined families from reuniting even if it means crossing a heavily fortified national border illegally.
• Eliminating the "pull" factor of American jobs will not remove pressures on the border caused by the "push" of economic misery, political instability, religious intolerance, dictatorial regimes, natural catastrophes, wars and revolutions.
• E-Verify will not succeed in closing the systemic holes allowing unauthorized persons to gain employment in the U.S. until Americans are willing to accept the loss of privacy and libertyinherent in a massive national database and system requiring all native-born and naturalized citizens to pay for, obtain and proffer a fraud-proof national work-permission card in order to be hired.   
• An unrealistically low quota, such as the maximum of 200,000 visas allotted per year under the "W" category proposed in S. 744 for unskilled and low-skilled foreign workers, disregards the needs of the American economy and creates new pressures to breach the border illegally.
• If illegal entries are to be stemmed, then abuses at U.S. consular posts abroad, such as the recurrent problems of far-too-powerful, abusive, inadequately staffed, unmonitored and sometimes even criminal consular officers (like the American visa officer in Vietnam who is alleged to have sold nonimmigrant visas for up to $70,000 each) must be more vigorously policed and subject to robust review.
• Border enforcement requires a far more substantial investment in the courts than is proposed by Sen. Cornyn or the G8 (as these letters from the Judicial Conference of the United States to the Chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committee underscore), and a dramatic revamping of the atrocious "system" by which "immigration justice" is meted out.
• Secret, unchecked administrative processes in the immigration system, just like the recently revealed NSA monitoring of all Americans' phone calls, must be subject to the rule of law, an expanded right to counsel and greater transparency.
• Immigration protectionism will boomerang and ultimately harm America just as much or more than trade protectionism.
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