PenceBlog: <b><i>NYT's</i> John Tierney: Just Don't Call It Amensty</b> - U.S. Congressman Mike Pence : 6th District Of Indiana

Today's column by John Tierney in the NY Times contains some interesting information about the immigration debate.

(Tierney's column can be accessed via subscription at www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.html)

Here are the take away paragraphs:

Pay more attention to a recent national poll of likely Republican voters conducted by the Tarrance Group for the Manhattan Institute. These Republicans liked the House's seal-the-border approach to immigration less than the comprehensive approach favored by the Senate and President Bush: combine tough enforcement with a chance for the illegal immigrants already here to pay a fine, become legal and eventaully earn citizenship.

You call this amnesty, and nearly 40 percent of the poll's respondents agreed. Yet 75 percent of all the Republicans favored it anyway.

If you're still terrified of the A-word, consider how Republicans defined it in the poll. It made a big difference how an immigrant went about applying for legal status. If he could apply while staying in America, that was considered a form of amnesty by nearly 60 percent of the respondents. But if he had to go back to his native country and apply, then only 22 percent called it amnesty.

To Mike Pence, that poll result is a "window of opportunity." Pence, the Indiana Republican who leads the House conservative caucus, is dead set against the Senate immigration bill, which he considers amnesty. But he thinks there's a deal to be made before the election by giving immigrants an incentive to go to their home countries in order to get a visa.

Pence wants to beef up border security immediately, and then, once the measures are in place two years later, open up "Ellis Island centers" in Mexico and Central American countries that would quickly match foreign workers with American companies.

If the worker passed background checks and an American employer promised to hire him, he'd get a high tech ID card and a guest-worker visa. During the first three years of the program, there'd be no cap on the number of visas: workers could get visas as long as they had jobs waiting for them.

posted by Pence Press Office # 8:10 AM