Paul Ryan: Legalization Before Border Security

Rep. Paul Ryan

Byron York reports that Rep. Paul Ryan is leading the way to get an immigration bill passed in the House of Representatives. The House bill Ryan favors has the same legalization before border security sequence as the Rubio immigration bill passed in the Senate.

York quotes from a Ryan interview with Sean Hannity where Ryan affirms:

Hear what I say. What we’re talking about in the House is we’re saying, people who are here undocumented, because we realize we cannot deport 11 million people and find them and deport them, so we want to put them on a probationary status, that’s the kind of thinking we have here, and they can’t get out of that probationary status, they can’t get legal permanent residence, which is what Chuck Grassley was talking there*, until these border efforts are made, until the border is secure, until the E-Verify set up.
[emphasis added]

York summarizes Ryan’s position: "First, comes the legalization, and then come the measures to secure the border."

Hannity was skeptical and challenging. “My sources have been telling me, congressman, that you guys are considering a five-year temporary legal status, and then if the border security measure is not met in five years, that that would be revoked.”

“That’s right,” Ryan said. “That’s right.”

“I don’t believe that would ever happen,” Hannity shot back.

Certainly Sean Hannity is right. If you're not going to deport them now, you certainly aren't going to deport them in five years for something that is not their fault (lack of border security). Paul Ryan knows this, and it doesn't say much for his integrity that he pretends revocation is a real possibility.

Temporary legal status has the same practical effect day-to-day as permanent legal status. With no true "revocation" trigger "temporary" becomes de facto "permanent".

Ryan asserts that one cannot secure the border without "a workable legal immigration system". He then implies that a workable system somehow necessitates legalizing 11 million illegals.

“Because in order to secure the border, you have to have a workable legal immigration system that people who are trying to come to this country to work have a way of coming here legally,” Ryan said. “You can’t just seal it off, you need to make sure that people can come here legally and we also have to remember, we’ve got 11 million people in the country who are undocumented who either overstayed their visa or crossed the border illegally. What are we going to do? We’re not going to be able to find them and deport them. We have to find a way of dealing with this population, we want to do it in a way that respects the rule of law, and puts them at the back of the line, so that everybody who did things right — ”
[emphasis added]

But, of course, there is a current legal immigration path and there has been one since 1790. U.S. borders have never been totally sealed off to immigration. Secure borders do not mean and have never meant no immigration. Secure borders only mean much diminished illegal immigration.

The real issue is the 11 million people who are, according to Ryan, "undocumented". Ryan says that since we can't deport them, we need to find a way to make what they have done legal. If we send them to "the back of the line" it will show that we and they respect the law. This is like letting those who didn't pay for a ticket to an event get to go in anyway but at the back of the line. It's not much of a punishment and not much of an incentive for anyone else to buy a ticket next time. 

Just as the 1986 immigration bill didn't fix the system when it legalized 3 million illegal immigrants, temporary legalization will not fix the system that allowed 11 million more "undocumented" immigrants in. The problem has almost quadrupled since 1986 (3 million to 11 million). What are the chances of it quadrupling again in 25 years under the Rubio-Ryan immigration plan?

With fuddled thinking like that shown by Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, some of the Republican silver-tongued young guns are looking more and more tarnished.