The Path to Citizenship Must Be Simple
Posted at 9:45 a.m. on Feb. 26
As lawmakers negotiate the steps that undocumented immigrants will have to take on their path to legal residency and citizenship, Peter Skerry warns against a system that is too complex.
“One looming challenge here is the English-language requirement… the likely scenario is increased demand, inadequate resources, oversubscribed classes, and the inevitable—and in the event, understandable—lax enforcement of standards so as not to obstruct the path to citizenship.”
“As for collecting back taxes from illegals… The overarching question is whether the tax proceeds to be collected from low-income, unskilled workers would exceed the costs of securing those taxes. It would be a nightmare, for example, to reconstruct work histories in the informal sector where the undocumented typically labor.”
“Republican immigration reformers are relying heavily on an administrative state whose routine functioning is the source of much of the disaffection with government on which their party’s political success has been based.”
