The Republican answer to illegal immigrants is now being called "attrition". Build a double wall fence 2000 miles long with a gigantic multi-faceted police force breaking in homes and business at their whim. And of course the impossible task of rounding up 12 million people to detain and deport. The point of the following New York Times editorial is to plead with the Democrats to stop running scared, step up to the plate and deal with this issue in a sane manner.
Under the normal, colloquial definition, Mr. Romney is talking
through his hat. But he isn’t alone. Except for Mr. McCain, the
Republican candidates have skirted the issue or, worse, embraced the
restrictionist approach known as “attrition.” That amounts to
relentlessly tightening the screws in workplaces and homes until
illegal immigrants magically, voluntarily disappear.Making it
work would require far more government intrusion into daily lives, with
exponential increases in workplace raids and deportations. It would
mean constant ID checks for everyone — citizens, too — with immigration
police at the federal, state and local levels. It would mean enlisting
bureaucrats and snoops to keep an eye on landlords, renters, laborers,
loiterers and everyone who uses government services or gets sick.Worst
of all, it’s weak on law and order. It is a free pass to the violent
criminals we urgently need to hunt down and deport. Attrition means
waiting until we stumble across bad people hiding in the vast illegal
immigrant haystack. Comprehensive reform, by bringing the undocumented
out of the shadows, shrinks the haystack.Fred Thompson has been
perhaps the most vocal defender of attrition. But on Wednesday, the
newly restrictionist Mike Huckabee one-upped him by signing the “No
Amnesty” pledge of the nativist group NumbersUSA, formally committing
to the principle that all 12 million illegal immigrants must be
expelled. Americans, naturally, have no earthly idea how he would
accomplish that. Full New York Times Editorial