Lost in the immigration debate is whether or not the federal government is ready to implement/execute ANY plan passed by the Congress and signed by the President. The answer is no, and I can’t believe no one is even asking the question.
In Washington there is often a rush to do something, anything, to appease voters and quiet the press. This more often than not results in public policy that not only doesn’t work, but makes the situation worse. Accordingly, I opine that any bill passed by Congress would have made the immigration problem worse, not better. During this "breather" is anyone going to step up and talk about the foundation that must be built to accomodate the passage of any plan? What needs to be done?
First, we need Silicon Valley leaders to unleash their resources on the problem and devise technological solutions to take a 6-10 year process of obtaining legal residency down to a matter of 4-6 weeks. We cannot deport anyone nor ask any illegal immigrant to leave if faced with YEARS of waiting to re-enter the country. It cannot and will not happen no matter how bad people (like me) want it to happen. We must fix the wait time to enter the country, and do accomplish this, we need to blow up the administrative systems and processes and get into the 21st century with our technology at the federal level. Faced with a 4-6 week wait, illegals will leave voluntarily if given a chance to go through a background check and streamlined process. If not, we will deport them.
A guest worker program is completely impossible. Are we going to ask the same federal government that bungled Katrina response times, regularly loses track of those here on student and other work visas, squanders billions in uncollected student loan funds and makes a mess out of entitlement program administration to all of a sudden step up and handle 12 million guest worker applications? WE ARE NOT READY.
I call on our Congressional Leaders to create a brain trust from Apple, Microsoft, Sun and other blue chip technology companies to fix this mess and to spend whatever it take to get our country ready for an immigration bill.
If we do not do this work first, any bill that passes Congress will be a disaster.