Immigration Reform Now?

 I’ve been watching the immigration reform debate taking place in the halls of Congress, the media, and amongst the public and I’m struck by one thing. Why another piece of sweeping legislation and why now?

We all know that illegal immigration has been a longtime problem that keeps getting pushed off for another day, but do we really need to address this issue now, given all of the problems we have with laws being passed that we’ve come to regret?

The Patriot Act was enacted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. It was supposed to give law enforcement agencies and the national security establishment new tools to be able to go after those who would do us harm. We’ve come to find out in the wake of a former federal contractor leaking details of specific programs to certain press outlets (after he hightailed it to Hong Kong) that our privacy was one of the first casualties in the Global War on Terror.

The Internal Revenue Service is supposed to be the Federal Government’s enforcement arm for the Affordable Care Act (more “affectionately” dubbed Obama Care). This law was rammed through Congress without much in the way of debate, introspection, or inspection. We now have a monstrosity on our hands that will do very little of what had been touted by its supporters and cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars. It recently came to light that the IRS targeted conservative groups in the run-up to the 2012 election cycle, was responsible for leaking confidential info on one organization’s tax records to a rival group, and has been embroiled in additional scandals ranging from extravagant conferences to employees behaving badly when it came to taking care of their financial obligations. So the question that comes to mind is: do we really want to put the fox in charge of the hen house?

The financial crisis that put us in the worst recession since the Great Depression was the impetus for the banking and finance reform law known as Dodd-Frank. The problem here is that it really does nothing to keep the very same big banks and investment houses from going down the same road that got us into trouble in the first place. The folks who will suffer the most are the small banks that can’t possibly comply with the mandates of this law (many of which have yet to be written) which by default, means not much competition for the big banks and the legions of compliance folks they have at their beck and call.

Regardless of your politics or party affiliation, as far as any pending legislation on immigration reform goes, ask yourselves these questions:

• Are the immigration laws that are currently on the books being enforced? If not, why not?  
• Do the reforms being planned address loopholes in current immigration law? If not, why not?
• Do the reforms being planned impose additional costs on an already strained federal budget?

My guess is that not much good will come out of any new legislation, since the push to get this out seems more geared towards a lead-in to the 2014 mid-term elections. So here we go again, rushing to pass more legislation that doesn’t look like it’ll stand any chance of genuine debate or scrutiny because one side feels that they could gain political advantage with its passage and the other fearful about what passing or not passing it will do to their chances in future elections.

Here’s my advice to Congress. Quit thinking about your job prospects and start thinking about doing your jobs. You might actually figure out that taking care of the latter enhances your chances at the former.