re: "On Jose Antonio Vargas"

Daniel Foster at The Corner ("a web-leading source of real-time conservative opinion") tells the tale of an illegal alien.


Money quote(s):


"Vargas was sent to California by his Filipino mother at age twelve. He was raised there by his (naturalized) grandparents, and did not discover he was in the country illegally until he brought his green card to the DMV at age 16 and was told it was a forgery."

Minor children are victims (at worst) or merely passengers (at best) when it comes to illegal immigration. And under current law no legal penalty (aside from deportation) attaches to them thereby. But read on.


"Vargas entered the country illegally after his grandfather paid a coyote $4,500 to smuggle him in. The grandfather then obtained a fake passport and green card for Vargas, which they used to acquire a valid Social Security card. But that card, which subjected Vargas’ right to work to the approval of the then-INS, was illegally doctored, allowing Vargas to secure job after job for more than a decade by showing nothing more than a photocopy of a fake document."

Grandpa ought to be getting a visit from various federal agencies regarding his multiple crimes in this matter.


"(A) fear- and shame-driven Vargas, with the aid of his family, perpetuated and compounded those crimes (Vargas eventually got around to what you might redundantly call fraudulent tax fraud, repeatedly reporting himself as a citizen rather than a “permanent resident”, when in fact he was neither), elicits from me nothing like the outpouring of support Vargas is already enjoying on the Left.


Punishing a minor by removing him from the culture he’s adopted as his own, for the crimes of his parents, does strike me as fundamentally unfair. But what liberals leave out of this story, time and again, is a competing — and in my view overriding — unfairness. Reihan has argued repeatedly, and effectively, that we should treat access to the U.S. economy, not to mention its extensive welfare state, as a scarce resource. We can debate and debate the best way of distributing this resource– from “not at all” to “come one, come all” and everywhere in between. But distributing it based on who manages most successfully to violate the law, at the expense of would-be immigrants who are honoring the process, is surely not a valid option."

Fear and shame notwithstanding, Mr. Vargas had a choice upon reaching age 18. Actually, he had a six month window at that point where, even though he was accuring unlawful presence in the U.S. for which he, having reached age 18, was now legally responsible, it wasn't until he had reached six months of unlawful presence that he'd even incurred a visa ineligibility!

You understand that correctly: he could have flown back to Manila, turned around and legally submitted an application for a U.S. visa, and there would have been no automatic visa ineligibility for all the years of living illegally in the U.S. right up until he was 18 years and six months of age.

NEWSDAY.COM - Enhanced DMV license available after Labor Day

From my archive of press clippings:

NewsDay.Com

Enhanced DMV license available after Labor Day

BY JAMES T. MADORE james.madore@newsday.com

May 28, 2008

ALBANY - After Labor Day, vacationers on cruise ships to the Caribbean and motorists to Canada will be able to apply for a new driver's license that meets tougher federal identification requirements to re-enter the United States, beginning in June 2009. Officials said yesterday that New York would be only the second state in the country, after Washington, to roll out an Enhanced Driver License that doubles as a passport book but costs $20 less. The new license can be obtained only by residents with proof of U.S. citizenship, and it isn't valid for entry to the country by airplane.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"The enhanced license was first raised last fall by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer as part of a larger plan to offer regular driver's licenses to illegal immigrants in an attempt to reduce traffic accidents and better track residents.

The illegal-immigrant component sparked a firestorm, forcing Spitzer to drop it in November."

&

"Under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, residents will have to show a passport or other valid identification, such as the enhanced license, to enter the United States from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean or Bermuda via land or sea.

The new license, costing $80, will resemble the current one but will include an American flag on the front and have a radio-frequency identification chip allowing border guards to access necessary information. The fee for renewing a driver's license would remain $50."