Watching the on-going legislative scramble over "comprehensive immigration reform" I am reminded of:
IRCA's Gang of Three. Currently there are Gangs of Eight in both the Senate and the House trying to resolve the inevitable immigration policy conflicts by quiet negotiation among these self-selected, bipartisan groupings. Too many commentators regard these (conspiratorial?) gatherings as signs of progress. I beg to differ.
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They strike me as all-to-reminiscent of the triumvirate of (then-young) House members who put together the Special Agricultural Workers (SAW) aspect of IRCA's 1986 legalization program. The three were Rep. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), now a leading member of the Senate's Gang of Eight, and Leon Panetta and Howard Berman (both then D-Calif.). Panetta just retired as Secretary of Defense and Berman, after decades in the House, was forced out of office in the 2012 elections because of a re-drawing of district lines.
Panetta, who owns a walnut farm, represented the growers; Berman, the farm workers; and Schumer volunteered to be the mediator. Conveniently, two of the three (I forget which two) shared bachelors' quarters on Capital Hill, and the work was done around the kitchen table.
Once the three of them agreed on the provisions of the amnesty for farm workers, they were able to sell the package, largely unexamined, to the Democrat-dominated House Judiciary Committee, and eventually the U.S. Senate.
Though discussions of legislative procedures are known soporifics, I have to say that what the trio did was totally outside the committee structure of the House, and turned out to produce a disastrous flood of fraudulent SAW applications. There was no chance for public input into the process, there was no chance to get seasoned government officials to comment on the proposals, there was no transparency. The resulting program tilted outrageously in favor of farm workers as opposed to other illegals, it massively expanded the legal farm labor force, and it created an administrative process that was a nightmare. For more on the legislative history of IRCA's legalization program see this CIS Backgrounder.
My fear is that the Gangs of Eight this time around will produce something equally unattractive, particularly with Schumer as a link between the two periods.
The Diversity Lottery. This is the wasteful, thoughtless provision in the immigration law that allows 50,000 visas a year to be allocated to aliens who have simply filed a computerized application for a green card. In order to qualify one does not need relatives in the country, a history of refugee status, or a skill of any kind — a statement that one has finished high school is all that is needed. On at least two fairly recent occasions the House has voted to repeal this provision, but I have seen nothing (maybe I missed it) in the press about someone suggesting that the Diversity Lottery be dropped forever as any part of "comprehensive immigration reform".
This is perhaps the worst of the immigration provisions and certainly should be dropped if there is to be a new immigration law.
The Hastert Rule. In the days when Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was Speaker of the House, he had a practice of not bringing anything to the floor of the House unless it had the support of the majority of the Republican members. He eliminated the free-style voting of many prior years when a bill could be passed if it had the support of a majority of the members of the House. Under the Hastert Rule, in effect, only Republican votes counted.
While as a citizen I was opposed to the Hastert Rule, I must say that in the current situation vis-a-vis immigration legislation, it potentially has its uses. I think that only if the Hastert Rule is invoked by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) can a disastrous immigration bill be defeated on the Floor of the House. It would be easy to muster a number of soft-headed GOP members along with the entire Democratic minority to support "comprehensive immigration reform" if a free vote were allowed.
For better or for worse, there is a recent precedent for ignoring the Hastert Rule. Speaker Boehner allowed a free vote on the fiscal cliff measure earlier this year in which a minority of Republicans joined most of the Democrats in voting through what I regarded as a needed money bill.
Should the Speaker make a similar decision on a big immigration bill, we probably will get a similar result. Another possibility is that the House Judiciary Committee will bottle up such a bill, and that it would never reach the House floor for that reason. I am assuming that such a bill will pass the Senate.
