As Stephen Colbert might say if I was one of his staff writers, “I feel dirty from mucking about in the cottony waters of immigration truthiness.” Before you read this post you might want to go back and read the last two. Or not. Anyway, how do we make it both harder to enter the U.S. illegally and less profitable after illegal entry? Four words: Fence, Enforcement, Fine and Amnesty. Don’t count the ‘and’.

Fence. We make it so that the chance of passing that fence without interception is 9% instead of 90%. If we can do this, it will not make much financial sense to attempt illegal entry. Two chain links separated by sensors and a lot of space. Rapid response teams every few miles. It is totally doable and completely necessary. Arguments that this will increase xenophobia, undermine human rights, or dehumanize latinos or immigrants are specious. Knowing that everyone here came legally will put us all on even footing.

Enforcement. Finding a way to punish employers that hire illegal immigrants is at least as important as making it harder for illegal immigrants to enter the country. Fixing one of these problems without fixing the other will not solve the problem. The fundamental problem in achieving this relates to our previous discussion regarding statutory prohibitions on information sharing between the I.R.S and D.H.S. Also social security numbers are a century old technology that is insanely ineffective. It is time for biometrics, period. This will fix everything. There are obviously privacy issues, but they are solvable by hashing (a non-reversible hash obviously) the biometric data and then encrypting it. The encrypted hash would be passed for verification or embedded on ID cards. If the code was compromised (identity theft), then the citizen could apply for a new hash. Once we have biometric IDs, law enforcement of right to work becomes trivial. If it takes 9 tries to enter the U.S. once successfully, and the average illegal immigrant is caught and deported after a year, it simply will not pay to try to cross the border.

Fine and Amnesty. We’ve talked stick – here is the carrot. The U.S. economy obviously depends on its current illegal workers. Deporting them all, even over a long period of time, would not be in our best interest. This is an understatement…it would cause horrific inflation and would make it difficult for most businesses to operate profitably. Think colossal blunder. So if we can’t remove the current illegal workers, but they got here, well…illegally, then what should we do? Here is my answer.

After Fence and Enforcement are up and running, we publish the following plan and then implement it, making it clear that all steps will be followed:

Step 1: All illegal immigrants must register with the D.H.S. within 12 months. Failure to do so will result in missing the opportunity to apply for a Conversion Visa. There will be no exceptions – if you are an illegal immigrant in the U.S., and you do not register in 12 months you will permanently lose the opportunity to obtain this visa. This will mean certain deportation.

Step 2: Those illegal immigrants registering and passing a criminal background check are issued a Conversion Visa. The terms of the Conversion Visa are as follows:

a. Within 2 years of obtaining a Conversion Visa, the visa holder must return to his or her country for at least a week. The purpose of this element is trust building. If the visa holder does not return within this period, the visa will expire and the holder will be permanently unwelcome.

b. After travel back to the home country and then return to the U.S., the trip will be verified by inspection of the Customs stamp in his/her passport. Upon return to the U.S., the Conversion Visa will become a “Yellow Card”. A Yellow Card confers permanent right to work and residence in much the same way as a “Green Card”, with the following exceptions:

1. Yellow Card holders may apply for U.S. citizenship after a period of 10 years. This long period is in deference to the millions of foreigners that are legally waiting to immigrate to the U.S..

2. Yellow Card holders (even after they obtain U.S. citizenship) permanently forfeit their right to collect Social Security retirement benefits, but they must continue to pay Social Security Tax. However they are eligible for Medicare/Medicaid. The lifetime forfeiture of Social Security benefits is a substantial fine – paid to the U.S. government for having broken the law.

That’s it. Fair compromise, full citizenship eventually. S’up?

PS...A lefty would (did) say (yeah that’s right I’m talking to you Greg Becerra) that making Mexico’s economy stronger will help solve the problem. No. Even if that were to happen the problem would cascade and there would be just as many illegal immigrants coming through Mexico from Guatemala, Honduras, etc. Any weak economy in the world is going to create this problem. To boot, even though Mexico’s economy has gotten much stronger over the past decade the disparity is still huge. According to the CIA world factbook, in 2006 Mexico’s per-capita income is a fourth that of the U.S. 20 years ago in 1987, it was a sixth. The actual numbers for 1987 are $26,668 vs. $4,656 in real 2000 U.S. dollars (reference here). Illegal Immigration from Mexico is at least as large of a problem today as it was 20 years ago. It will continue to be a problem for at least several decades. And that is just Mexico.

“Pay It Forward” and “Born in East L.A.” both seemed like good titles, but I couldn't choose. So instead, I’m going to call it “The Smartest Compromise Possible in the Ongoing U.S. Illegal Immigration Debate: Part I”

My last article was an appetizer, but this one is the meat course. It is an entire churrascaria in one dish. It is the essay equivalent of a sautéed scallop wrapped in fried bacon, popped into a roasted chicken, stuffed in a deep fried duck, inserted lovingly into a broiled turkey and then finally placed into a spit-roasted butter-basted capybara (the pork of the rodent order). Anyway, now that I have tortured my meaty analogy and it has died on the grill, down to business. This article is about immigration policy.

By the way, it is near impossible to be serious with a 15 pound cat sleeping on your head and occasionally licking your eye. But I vow to do my best. Immigration Policy.

There are about 10 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. right now. Their lives, and the lives of American citizens and legal residents will be hugely impacted by how America chooses to handle the immigration status of those who are not currently in the country legally.

If you think this is an exaggeration, let me throw a fact at you. Experts estimate that between $6 and $8 billion dollars are paid into Medicare and Social Security every year by illegal immigrants using fake or stolen social security numbers. The Social Security Administration is aware of this, and not only includes this income in its budget, but makes the assumption that it will never have to repay these funds to their (illegal) contributors. From what I have read, I estimate that by the time Social Security goes bankrupt, it will have collected $130 billion USD of funds from illegal immigrants.

Whether you are liberal or conservative on this issue, it makes no sense to advocate a policy that will fail just because it seems correct. So I generally fall into this camp: if you are here illegally, you cut in line. You don’t get rewarded for that. Without a doubt there are a billion people in the world that would like to legally immigrate to the U.S. The majority of them are deterred by the hellish bureaucracy, cost, and tiny probability of acceptance. Did you know that the average waiting time for a foreign sibling of a U.S. citizen to receive an immigrant visa is 11 years? Check it out here.

Before I tip my hand and you figure out where I stand on this horribly divisive issue, let’s enjoy the fleeting possibility that you and I might agree. And since we might agree, let’s take a minute to civilly discuss the major Immigration-related issues on both the right and the left.

On the right:

1. People should not be rewarded for breaking U.S. law.
2. People who followed the law and are going through the immigration process legally should not be penalized.
3. It is meaningless to discuss amnesty if new workers without visas will flood in after reform.
4. Illegal immigrants do not pay taxes but consume/use costly services and infrastructure.
5. Not having English as a national language spoken by all destabilizes society and divides us.
6. Illegal immigrants repress wages for Americans.
7. Unsecured borders are a real threat to the policing of terrorist threats.

On the left:

1. Not providing a path to citizenship for people who have lived and worked here for a significant time might create a permanent underclass that does not feel ownership in their country. This could undermine our culture and divide us.
2. Expelling a large number of workers in a short period of time could seriously damage the U.S. economy.
3. The current situation is not unprecedented. Historically, the U.S. has had a higher % of immigrants before.
4. Many families may be split up by an aggressive policy of expulsion.
5. Demonizing “illegal” workers may cause racism to worsen.
6. Illegal immigrants largely do the work that U.S. workers are unwilling to do.
7. Children of illegal workers, many born in the U.S., will be greatly harmed by the expulsion of their parents.

I’m not taking sides yet. Let’s just agree for now that this is a fair representation of the points made by each extreme. If it is, then a good compromise should address all 14. Surprisingly, it isn’t really hard to do.

But it takes a long, loooooong time. This article is 12 pages long now, and even though it is finished I’m going to split it up into parts. Consider this the end of Part I. Night!

Ps…anyone know a detergent that will get cat drool out?