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News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Working on immigration

Shock No. 1: There is actually somebody in the federal government who takes illegal immigration seriously -- U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which has the responsibility for immigration issues. Shock No. 2: Smith is focused on the one approach most likely to succeed.

Regarding illegal immigration, however, he proposes a program of "attrition through enforcement." Workplace enforcement, that is.

He says such enforcement has declined 70 percent in the past two years, and fines levied on employers of illegal immigrants are treated by businesses as a bearable cost of doing business as usual. Nationally, 250,000 businesses are using E-Verify, the program that quickly validates the legality of workers, and each week another 1,300 businesses sign up for the system.

He's also willing to tackle the most controversial proposal to come out of the get-tough crowd: ending birthright citizenship. He says the Supreme Court has never addressed the "precise question" of the meaning of the 14th Amendment and its application to illegal immigrants, and he thinks he could write a law that would get the vote of five justices ending birthright citizenship as it is currently administered.

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