Yesterday the the House overwhelmingly passed the Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Act of 2005 after years of doing virtually nothing, in a post 9-11 world, to protect our borders. Whether this excellent legislation makes it through the process and onto the President’s desk for signature is another story. To become law, it must survive a tough conference committee process and a US Senate where all good ideas go to die. Two local Valley Republican lawmakers, George Radanovich, and Devin Nunes, voted no. I’m at a loss as to why. I understand the pressure from the US Chamber of Commerce and Western Growers Association. Maybe Radanovich and Nunes they knew the votes were there and voted no to heed big agriculture’s call. We DO need a flow of labor into the Central Valley to handle a year round agricultural harvest, and the labor supply, due to the Minuteman project and other factors, was the worst we’ve seen here in many, many years. Still, does getting grapes off the vine or lettuce out of the ground really rise to the level of an issue like Homeland Security? I don’t think so. Our members of Congress have to get their priorities straight and its an easy argument to make – Homeland Security should always come first.
We have a number of problems here. One is border enforcement and a physical barrier to keep people out. This bill adequately addresses this issue. A guest worker program without amnesty is another challenge. Republicans are not going to vote en masse for amnesty. Aren’t there enough bright minds in Washington to figure out a solution here? Third, we have a tremendous problem with illegals that are already here. What do we do with them? The answer is pretty clear to me: as they are discovered, they have to be deported and apply to re-enter legally. That leads to our next big problem: systems. We don’t have any coordinated database between Homeland Security, the State of California and the various federal agencies involved in the immigration process. It is an absolute, bureaucratic nightmare for every immigrant wanting to come to this country legally, and this issue must be resolved. Frankly, a significant factor in the numbers of illegal immigrants is directly attributable to how cumbersome our system is presently. They simply don’t want to wait YEARS to get here.
For this, I have an idea. I was looking the other day at an IPOD Nano. I’m serious. I got to thinking about all the genius behind the invention of this device, the engineering, the execution, the marketing, and the enormous profits produced by this well coordinated effort. Then it dawned on me. We need to hire Steve Jobs to fix this systems problem we have and integrate everything into one seamless system of tracking and processing immigration related matters. So, I say we put $4 billion out in front of Apple and Jobs and give them two years to fix everything, with a $2 billion bonus for completion on time. What’s a couple of extra bill when we are running $250 billion deficits anyway? Liberals couldn’t attack this no bid contract because, for crying out loud, this is APPLE, not HALLIBURTON. Only until we secure our borders and fix our systems can we have a real guest worker program. I am counting on Radanovich and Nunes, two very solid conservative, bright guys, to lead the way.