Shannon O'Neill calls for: "More attention to functioning bureaucracies and less attention to walls will better address current policy failures." She says the US Citizenship and Immigration Service hasn't been able to process its current workload and won't have the ability to handle workload resulting from the proposed new system. (She also has some points about the Mexico population and its birth rate.
She's right that, for laws to be implemented, the bureaucracy that gets handed the law has to be capable. ( The Farm Service Agency for most of its history for some of its programs was capable.) Give Bush his due, HHS and Mr. McClellan (I think it was) ended up doing a good job implementing the drug benefit program. They got lots of flak along the way, but having been in their shoes (not as big) I salute them.
I still haven't researched the legislation--understand it's 400 pages. My guess is that it may be too black and white, which can be a big problem, particularly if there's interdependencies. My own leaning would be to a loosely coupled system, openly acknowledged, that gets tighter as we go. (Sort of like Clinton with the welfare reform package he was handed--he signed on the basis he and Congress could tweak in later years, which they did.) So now we should acknowledge we aren't agreeing on an ultimate system, simply signaling a change of direction.
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