We conservatives quite properly insist that the government enforce immigration law. Cleaning house at Citizenship and Immigration Services is the other side of the Rule of Law coin. But unlike the enforcement side of the coin, we’ll actually become the immigrant-friendly party by applying the Rule of Law on the processing side. Let us be the party that finally gets grandma’s application approved.
Some conservatives might say government is inherently incompetent and that the bureaucratic bungling at CIS is just what we should expect. Perhaps so. But we spent the Reagan years making those arguments about the IRS and the Postal Service and the state DMV’s. And all of those agencies are now more accountable and user-friendly than they used to be. We should insist on improvements from our Immigration Service.
Immigration tore the Republican coalition apart in the last election cycle. Now that the Democrats have won, they may have as much trouble holding their coalition together as we did. Some Democrats ran “get-tough” on immigration campaigns.
We should move on a straight-forward, simple bill to streamline and improve the processing at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Republicans from across the spectrum, from country club conservatives to libertarians to social conservatives to fiscal conservatives, can get behind this reform. This a winning proposal since no one from either party is going to raise their hands and say, “I’m in favor of making legal immigrants wait years to hear from the Citizenship and Immigration Services.”
Face it: Republicans are now in the minority party. Let us make a virtue of necessity. Propose something simple and winnable. Then watch the Democrats thrash around.