More Slaves, Please

By Mark Krikorian on July 22, 2009

An op-ed in yesterday's Post is titled "Immigration Pitfall: Why 'Legalization Only' Won't Fly" and I thought to myself it'd be worth a look to see what pro-enforcement arguments might have made it into the paper. Then I saw the authors and figured out what was up. Penned by former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castaneda and amnesty czarina Tamar Jacoby, now head of a business-oriented open-borders lobby, the piece argues that amnesty must be coupled with increases in future guest-worker programs if it is to be acceptable to business or to Mexico. (The word "enforcement" appears just once in the whole piece.) It's actually a good sign politically, because it signals the deep disaffection between the right and left wings of the "comprehensive immigration reform" crowd, with the lefties figuring their man is in charge now so they can stop pretending to care what rope-selling businesses think. That makes both amnesty and increased immigration less likely, and thus America better off.