Last week’s Republican Presidential debate confirmed one thing: Texas Governor Rick Perry’s main challenge in winning the Republican nomination will be his ability to explain his record on illegal immigration as governor vs. what he proposes to do about it as President.

Perry’s opponents have hit him for signing in 2001 the nation’s first law allowing illegal immigrants to get the in-state tuition break that other Texans who attended high school in-state receive.  Four lawmakers out of 181 voted against the bill, as Perry has pointed out, making the bill uncontroversial at the time.  (Note: as a California lawmaker from 2004 to 2010, I consistently voted against expanding benefits to illegal immigrants.)

Today, 12,138 illegal immigrant students pay in-state tuition in Texas, about one percent of all Texas college students.  By comparison, the Department of Homeland Security estimates that 7.0% of Texas residents are in the nation illegally.

Gov. Perry has pointed out more than once, and with a degree of exasperation, that Texas has spent $400 million of its own taxpayers’ money on border security, hiring additional Texas Rangers to better secure the border.  Perry has also defended his insistence that a fence not be built along the entirety of Texas’ 1,969 mile border with Mexico, citing the fact that a river runs along the border through some very remote and rugged terrain that is best secured with “boots on the ground” and “aviation assets.” I have to agree with Perry on this one, building a fence along a river is costly while the river itself will constantly undermine the fence’s footings.  In addition, Gov. Perry’s Texas has passed a law that requires a photo ID to vote (only 13 other states have photo ID laws on the books) and illegal immigrants cannot obtain a driver’s license in Texas (11 states issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, including Sarah Palin’s Alaska).

Dismissing Texas’ own border security efforts, Perry’s opponents have focused on the in-state tuition, calling the law a magnet for illegal immigration.  Theoretically, that’s true.  But does it actually impact an illegal immigrant’s decision about what state they may decide to live in?  I find it hard to believe a 22-year-old man from central Mexico is going to say to himself, “Hey, I’m going to move to California or Texas because, when my two children become college age in 17 years, I can save some tuition money.”  Rather, the decision to break U.S. law more likely comes down to the availability of jobs and the seriousness with which the Federal government secures the border.

To test this proposition, it is instructive to see where illegal immigrants live in the U.S.  According to the Department of Homeland Security, the largest illegal immigrant population by state in 2010 was:

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Governor Pat Quinn quietly announced Illinois’ formal withdrawal from Secure Communities in a letter to the Department of Homeland Security.  This program, administered through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is fully successful only when state prison systems cooperate with the ICE and the Department of Home land Security.  States can choose to participate by  enabling discovery of the residency status of convicts held in state prisons and alerting ICE of upcoming convict release dates.  According to ICE, this program targets the “worst of the worst”, ensuring that these offenders no longer remain in the United States following their release from prison.

According to the FBI, Illinois ranks near the top in violent crime—number 14 out of the fifty states.  Now instead of ensuring deportation of violent criminals, the governor is choosing to release them into Illinois communities.  Such a policy may also serve to attract more criminals to this state as the risk of deportation following a conviction in Illinois is now significantly reduced.

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[Ed Note: Part 1 of the series is here. Part 2 is here.]

What is a sane immigration policy you ask?

Well it starts with a simple and straight forward process for immigrating here, procuring a work visa, obtaining residency and finally becoming a citizen. What we have now is a highly political and difficult to navigate hodge-podge of ever changing rules that are meant to help fulfill some type of social engineering ideal. Currently it takes a lot of time, money, connections and luck to make it through, and that’s if you’re from a “preferred nation”. When I say time, I mean decades! If you’re from a country like Mexico with high demand to immigrate, you’re looking at a wait of over 130 years. No wonder people take their chances making a run for the border. This idea of “take your spot in the immigration line and you’ll get there someday” is a mirage. If someone told you the line at the DMV was 130 years long and others randomly get to jump in front of you, what are the odds that you’ll just drive without a license?

We used to have a simple path to citizenship that gave people who had endured so much to come here a long term stake in this nation. They wanted it to be excellent because they felt like it was now their home too. And generationally immigrant’s kids tend to be more upwardly mobile than their parents were. They also are more educated, speak English as a first language and culturally are as American as apple pie.

We need to get rid of the whole per nation quota system.

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So here we are. We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. The rhetoric surrounding the debate is deafening and it seems most of the volume comes from one of two points of view. In the blue corner you have “amnesty” and in the red corner you have “round’em up and throw them out”. Well what if neither of these options provides any realistic or long term solution to the issue faced by having so many people here illegally?

“Amnesty” might be one of the most divisive terms out there right now, but what’s wrong with it? For starters we tried it already, in 1986, when we had about 3 million illegal immigrants. Now we have 11 million illegals. It didn’t work. At best all amnesty does is kick the can down the road until the illegal population builds back up to intolerable levels. We were at the breaking point in the mid eighties and we’re back at the breaking point again. Only now with a lot higher numbers. This policy also creates an atmosphere of disregard for the rule of law, continues to promote entering America through the “backdoor”, and does nothing to deal with the border security issue. And of course it never addresses the economic, social or political impacts of transitioning so many unassimilated people from the shadows to the citizenry.

The “round em up” crowd is just generally mad at an array of things. They think those who came here illegally cut in line, steal their jobs and destroy American culture. They see an incompetent Federal Government that rubs salt in the wound with baskets of welfare goodies passed out indiscriminately.

The main problem with the “round em uppers” is the total implausibility of extracting and deporting 11 million people.

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As cited by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit,  Hans A. von Spakovsky of Heritage, writing at Pajamas Media, points out just some of what a grassroots group of concerned citizens has turned up regarding potential voter registration issues in Houston, Texas.

True the Vote reports that at least four noncitizens have been registered to vote in Harris County. The group provided Justice with the actual voter registration forms where applicants marked “NO” to the question: “Are you a U.S. Citizen?” The group also provided the voter registration numbers of these confessed noncitizens. Yes, astonishingly, Harris County registered them to vote anyway. They are now on the rolls and able to participate in the upcoming midterm elections.

There are multiple aspects to this developing story, which may drive some discussion on addressing voting irregularities across the country after November, if not to some extent before the 2nd. Melissa Clouthier of Liberty Pundits has been blogging on the group and on October 22nd posted on an instance where Sheila Jackson Lee appears to have been in violation of election laws.

Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Houston) violated election laws when, on Tuesday, October 19 [corrected: date was wrongly noted as the 18th], she entered into Acres Home Multiservice Community Center, walked to where the voting booths were looking for the poll watchers, greeted voters there, and then found and confronted the poll watchers before being directed to, and then asked by, the presiding judge Bernard Gurski to leave the area.

Additionally, the video tape below purports to show Lee electioneering directly outside a Palm Center polling location. The video is believed to have been made at approximately 4 PM on October 22nd, allegedly placing Lee well inside of a 100 foot limit allowed by law as early voting was going on.

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A few months ago, Attorney General Eric Holder took an important step in ensuring that all men are treated equally under our legal system. In a memorandum to federal prosecutors, he noted that those who commit similar crimes in different jurisdictions “should, to the extent possible, be treated similarly.” He also cautioned against unwarranted disparities in charging decisions, plea agreements and sentencing recommendations.

But while putting these words on paper to guide federal prosecutors is important, the Department of Justice ultimately is to be judged on whether it follows in deeds. Unfortunately, right now the Obama administration is missing a golden opportunity in Iowa to show it supports parity for all.

Sholom Rubashkin was the manager of a highly successful kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa.  He recently was sentenced to 27 years in prison for banking offenses. It was a startlingly long sentence for a first-time, non-violent offender; especially for a man who never intended any loss to the bank from which he borrowed funds to run the meat business. By contrast, Mark Turkcan, the president of a St. Louis bank who knowingly defrauded his company out of nearly $35 million, was sentenced last year to just 366 days in jail.

The details of how prosecutors have handled Rubashkin’s case have raised many eyebrows; and dozens of former Justice Department officials have spoken out on Rubashkin’s behalf. But Holder and his team thus far have refused to investigate the case. How, then, can we take seriously their calls to end disparities of justice?

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Michael Graham in today’s Boston Herald:

Anyway, if enforcing immigration law is a bad thing for local cops to do, as Holder claims, why pick on Arizona? If he’s really upset that the same laws he has taken an oath to enforce might actually get (gulp!) enforced, why isn’t he suing Providence instead of Phoenix? They’ve been doing local immigration enforcement for years now.

As The Boston Globe-Democrat reported yesterday, “From Woonsocket to Westerly, the troopers patrolling the nation’s smallest state are reporting all illegal immigrants they encounter, even on routine stops such as speeding, to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

Even liberal Providence, where politicians long opposed any local enforcement efforts, changed its policy in 2008 after the infamous Marco Riz case.

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Some major aspects of Arizona’s immigration law are Keynesian and left wing, and criticisms of these aspects are quite consistent with conservative values. I focus here on three of those values: one, the sovereignty of freedom; two, the sovereignty of the individual over the collective; three, the opposition to big government power.

S. B. 1070, in some key ways, falls short of these three principles.

One, the sovereignty of freedom: Often we are asked to choose between freedom and safety–and many understandably choose safety. But in S. B. 1070 precious little safety is provided in reality. If in enforcing this law there must be “lawful contact” with possible illegal immigrants and “the most likely context where this law would come into play is a traffic stop,” very few of Arizona’s 500,000 illegal immigrants will be caught. But freedoms of many innocent people will be intruded upon. Of this, there is no doubt.

Two, the sovereignty of the individual over the collective: John Stuart Mill wisely observed the “tyranny of the prevailing opinion” throughout times in history. When, for example, the American majority approved the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II, those minority individuals who opposed such incarceration were called unpatriotic Americans by the majority. Similarly, those in the minority who denounced the majority’s defense of the Salem witch trials were called blasphemous. And those who criticize S. B. 1070 are dismissed by many in overly harsh tones.

Three, the opposition to big government power: S. B. 1070 doesn’t codify abuse, but it does codify the power for government abuse–and that abuse will surely come. Ten years ago in Texas, as a relevant example, a federal judge cited a catalogue of “reasonable suspicions” that police offered in stopping and searching vehicles in South Texas,

–”The vehicle was suspiciously dirty and muddy, or the vehicle was suspiciously squeaky clean.”

–”The vehicle was suspiciously traveling fast or was traveling suspiciously slow (or even was traveling suspiciously at precisely the speed limit).”

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