Ed Meese on Amnesty

UPDATE: Here's my later, more comprehensive post on the plan outlined by Meese and Spalding in the conference call.
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Ed Meese has an excellent op-ed in The New York Times today. He compares the amnesty plan being discussed now in the Senate with the amnesty plan from 1986.

Like the amnesty bill of 1986, the current Senate proposal would place those who have resided illegally in the United States on a path to citizenship, provided they meet a similar set of conditions and pay a fine and back taxes. The illegal immigrant does not go to the back of the line but gets immediate legalized status, while law-abiding applicants wait in their home countries for years to even get here. And that's the line that counts. In the end, slight differences in process do not change the overriding fact that the 1986 law and today's bill are both amnesties.

There is a practical problem as well: the 1986 act did not solve our illegal immigration problem. From the start, there was widespread document fraud by applicants. Unsurprisingly, the number of people applying for amnesty far exceeded projections. And there proved to be a failure of political will in enforcing new laws against employers.

After a six-month slowdown that followed passage of the legislation, illegal immigration returned to normal levels and continued unabated. Ultimately, some 2.7 million people were granted amnesty, and many who were not stayed anyway, forming the nucleus of today's unauthorized population.

So here we are, 20 years later, having much the same debate and being offered much the same deal in exchange for promises largely dependent on the will of future Congresses and presidents.

Will history repeat itself? I hope not. In the post-9/11 world, secure borders are vital. We have new tools — like biometric technology for identification, and cameras, sensors and satellites to monitor the border — that make enforcement and verification less onerous. And we can learn from the failed policies of the past. ...

The fair and sound policy is to give those who are here illegally the opportunity to correct their status by returning to their country of origin and getting in line with everyone else. This, along with serious enforcement and control of the illegal inflow at the border — a combination of incentives and disincentives — will significantly reduce over time our population of illegal immigrants.

Read the rest of it.

The Heritage Foundation organized a blogger conference call this morning with Ed Meese and Matt Spalding to discuss the op-ed. Additional points made in the call:

• Border security is not impossible. New technology should make this much easier than it was in the past.
• As to the temporary worker program: Nothing would proceed without meeting certain guideposts to ensure that immigration enforcement was being carried out.
• Backgrounds checks can only realistically be carried out on records in the United States because many other countries do not maintain databases the way we do.
• The three-tier plan would actually result in more document fraud as illegal immigrants scrambled to qualify for better status.

More details on this later tonight after I leave the office. UPDATE: Details are up.

Other bloggers who were on the line:

Michelle Malkin
Kim Priestap onWizbang
Captain's Quarters
Right Wing News
Mary Katharine Ham on Hugh Hewitt
John Henke
Mark Coffey
Rich Lowry
More to come as they post on this.

UPDATE: Tim Chapman organized the conference call and has a roundup of blogger comments.

UPDATE 2: Another excellent link roundup can be found at memeorandum.