Efficiency and Immigration

Today’s Times editorializes that the Social Security bureaucracy (you know, the same folks that the Left tells us administer Medicare for a minuscule fraction of what it costs the private sector to administer private health insurance plans) lacks the means to expand E-Verify to ensure that all employers in the county possess the ability to immediately check the employability of their workers. Immigration enforcement, the Times opines, would constitute a "harmful diversion" from the agency’s "core mission", thereby compromising the well-being of – of course, who else? – the poor, the elderly and the disabled.

The editorial points out a huge backlog in disability cases: 500,000 pending cases as well as three-quarters-of-a-million pending appeals and opposes imposing any additional responsibilities.

Apparently, these exemplars of governmental efficiency (1% administrative costs at Social Security, 2% at Medicare, according to The New Republic) are so incompetent that they can’t handle their present responsibilities in a timely fashion and, faced with the task of ensuring that people who are contributing to the system actually exist, would completely fall apart.

Oh, and there would be costs, too: $40 billion per annum, the Times avers, a combination of actual administrative costs "... and falling tax revenue as workers are driven off the books". Come again? About what group of "workers" does the Times speak? Presumably the only folks "driven off the books" would be illegals; if they’re paying a paltry $4 billion per annum in taxes, the sooner they go "off the books" – and home – the better for the taxpayers. In New Jersey alone, some estimates of governmental expenditures on illegal aliens run into the billions of dollars.

Or consider this gem:

"Because the Social Security database is rotten with errors, the crackdown could force millions of Americans to battle a computerized bureaucracy that tells them, unjustly, that they cannot work."

Hmm. The IRS seems to make do with the same information. But take the assertion at its face value: if this model of governmental efficiency presides over a data base "rotten with errors", are these the folks to whom we should be considering entrusting the entire national health care system?

Amusing, isn’t it? To a Leftist, Government is, at once, wholly incapable of policing the borders, checking employment status, or discerning who might properly register to vote. (Another Times editorial ... , er, news story, today reports on the baleful effects that keeping non-citizens out of the voting booth would have upon (yup, you guessed right again), the poor, the elderly, and minorities) and, yet, this same government is fully competent to handle the entire health care system. There would, of course, be no "battles with a computerized bureaucracy" when government takes over health care; everything would run smoothly and efficiently.

Indeed, per the Times, enforcing the law as it presently exists constitutes a grave error. The Gray Lady harumphs:

"Such a system cannot be imposed without other immigration reforms, including a path to legalization for undocumented workers who would otherwise be pushed permanently into the shadows by a plan that gives them no way to work or to get right with the law."

Illegal aliens always possess a simple way "to get right with the law": go home. A "path to legalization" already exists: go home and apply to come here legally.

As it happens, the Times is (partially) correct: government does nothing efficiently. The idea of entrusting the entire national health care system to the same folks who presided over the spectacularly successful Hurricane Katrina relief efforts ought to terrify any rational adult.

But while private folks can, and, do, easily attend to their own health care, they cannot police the borders. As bad and inefficient as government might be, no alternative exists to reliance upon it for law enforcement. The fact that some folks might have to wrestle with this "efficient" bureaucracy before they receive their taxpayer subsidies should not preclude using the best means possible to exclude those who don’t belong here.