A Short Honeymoon for Obama: The Week in Immigration

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Riverside Border Patrol agents report that they have to fill deportation quotas, contrary to "official" agency practices:

U.S. Border Patrol agents working about 100 miles north of the Mexican border say they have been given arrest quotas at odds with agency practices and threatened with punishment if they fail to meet the number.

Agents stationed in Riverside reported being ordered to arrest at least 150 suspected illegal immigrants in January and that two such arrests must lead to prosecutions, said Lombardo Amaya, president of Local 2554 of the National Border Patrol Council.

"They were told if you don't produce this, we will have to change your weekends off," Amaya said, adding that he will discuss the matter Monday with the sector chief who oversees the station. "Sometimes, like in politics, this agency is about looking good."

Border Patrol is also reportedly picking up parents as they drop their kids off at the bus stop.  Stay classy, CBP!

Tom Barry might not be surprised at this-he believes DHS chief Janet Napolitano won't change or challenge the fundamentals of the Bush/Chertoff enforcement model.

Those who were expecting the former border governor and federal prosecutor to call a halt to the immigrant crackdown and to the post-Sept. 11 border build-up will be sorely disappointed.

There will likely be some changes around the edges, such as improved detention standards and monitoring, but no rethinking of immigration enforcement and border security will likely come from Napolitano.

No questions or concerns about the multitude of issues and problems that resulted from the security-driven campaign to fortify the border and round up suspect immigrants - the value of the border wall, the central role of private prisons in immigrant detention, the wisdom of U.S. drug policy with respect to border drug-related violence, the decreased attention to political asylum and refugee policy, the worth of workplace raids, etc.

A professional bureaucrat and politician, Napolitano is busy organizing, systematizing, and improving the crackdown that Chertoff so zealously spearheaded.

If that's the case, then this blog's honeymoon with the Obama administration will be short indeed.

Also, there's another riot happening (as of yesterday) at an immigration prison in Texas. Dee has some background on GEO, the private prison management company whose mismanagement has led to two riots in as many months.

The NY Times picks up on the meme of political dead-enders in the GOP:

For years Americans have rejected the cruelty of enforcement-only regimes and Latino-bashing, in opinion surveys and at the polls. In House and Senate races in 2008 and 2006, "anti- amnesty" hard-liners consistently lost to candidates who proposed comprehensive reform solutions. The wedge did not work for single-issue xenophobes like Lou Barletta, the mayor of Hazleton, Pa., or the former Arizona Congressman J. D. Hayworth. Nor did it help any of the Republican presidential candidates trying to defeat the party's best-known voice of immigration moderation, John McCain, for the nomination.

Americans want immigration solved, and they realize that mass deportations will not do that. When you add the unprecedented engagement of growing numbers of Latino voters in 2008, it becomes clear that the nativist path is the path to permanent political irrelevance. Unless you can find a way to get rid of all the Latinos.

Check out new guest bloggers dee and asya at Citizen Orange (where I occasionally blog).  Well worth a read.

Finally, there's an ugly scare piece from the AP on banks receiving bail-out money and (gasp) brazenly hiring foreign workers:

Banks collecting billions of dollars in federal bailout money sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers to the U.S. for high-paying jobs, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.

The dozen banks receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households.

The figures are significant because they show that the bailed-out banks, being kept afloat with U.S. taxpayer money, actively sought to hire foreign workers instead of American workers. As the economic collapse worsened last year - with huge numbers of bank employees laid off - the numbers of visas sought by the dozen banks in AP's analysis increased by nearly one-third, from 3,258 in fiscal 2007 to 4,163 in fiscal 2008.

What's next--buying fuel-efficient cars means some consumers hate America?  We shouldn't travel abroad because it sends precious dollars into foreign hands?

I'm baffled by the mentality of the people who reported this piece.  I hope the newspaper business doesn't decide its salvation lies in populist parochial drivel like this.  I can imagine the pompadoured editor from the fifth season of The Wire behind a story like this.  "Taking money from taxpayers ... and hiring foreigners.  It's a Pulitzer, in the bag!"  I carry no water for bankers--con men in wingtips--but this story is a red herring.

The kind of defensive, retaliatory economic policy the AP is promoting has a parallel in the trade dust-ups we're now seeing.  From Yglesias:

The details of roquefort's problem, the key issue is that in a "trade war" like this, everyone loses:

1. The Europeans won't buy our beef. We're mad.
2. So we refuse to buy their cheese.
3. This doesn't help our cattle guys. But it does make me sad, since I love roquefort.
4. And it's terrible for some French dairy farmers.
5. So maybe they'll have enough political clout to persuade the Europeans to retaliate by refusing to buy a wider set of our goods.
6. At which point everyone is even more worse off.
7. Bad scene.

It's a downward spiral of mutual retaliation that makes people on both sides of the Atlantic poorer.

How many American ex-pats work abroad, or work for foreign-owned corporations in the U.S.?  Do we want to see all those American workers laid off?  Apparently the AP does.

[Image: my next Halloween costume]