February 01, 2008

Mitt Romney's giant, amorphous guest worker scheme?

As pointed out a few times, it's difficult to find out exactly what Mitt Romney's immigration policy is. In the past, he's hinted at attrition, but as far as I know he's never come out explicitly for it and defined it in the depth that Fred Thompson did.

And, earlier today KFI's John & Ken interviewed him about his positions, and they were unfortunately in "nice" rather than "attack" mode and thus didn't try to pin him down. But, it sounded to me like Romney wanted to give all or most current illegal aliens some sort of worker card that would enable them to stay in the U.S. for some period of time. After that, they'd have to leave the U.S. While some wouldn't, the card would have expired and thus they couldn't find work.

Now, there are several problems with that. First, it would be opposed by the left/Democrats who, forever tempted by millions of votes, would work night and day to convert those temporary "guests" into voters. Second, there would probably be many loopholes in the card and the checking for the card and some illegal aliens would remain and work off the books. And, perhaps even worst of all, the card would eventually morph into some form of national ID. Otherwise, regular social security numbers could be used instead.

It'd be nice if someone in the MSM would actually do their job and press Romney on this issue to find out exactly what he supports.

UPDATE: There's more on his plan here. (Note that their "analysis" is faulty; I'm only linking to that for his quotes.)

Posted to Immigration2008a at February 1, 2008 05:15 PM