June 11, 2007

Immigration "Reform" Killed By A Flash Mob

New York Post writer John Podhoretz says the defeat of the immigration reform bill was a revolutionary moment in American political history.

But there's something else notable here - something that should gladden the hearts of libertarians and all those who are suspicious of big government. The takedown of this bill is a template for future actions against major pieces of legislation. And like so many templates for action these days, it was made possible by the Internet. Here's how.

This was a "comprehensive" bill, designed to thoroughly "take care" of a thorny problem. It sought to address every important issue relating to immigration - border and employer enforcement, guest workers, legalization and the means by which immigrants can become citizens.

The bill runs more than 400 pages. In its many sections are many innovations and many revisions of existing law. For almost any lay person outside of government, it might as well be written in Urdu - so indecipherable is the drafting language.

That is by design. These bills aren't written by the senators who negotiate them, but by the staffers who work for the senators. And since the bill seeks to "reform" existing laws, a lot of it simply makes reference to those laws and says Word A should be changed to Word B. All of this shields the actual meaning of the legislation from the public, which must rely only on the general summaries of the legislation from politicians.

There was almost no way in the pre-Web era to piece together the actual provisions of reform legislation before it became law. Lobbyists were paid millions of dollars to do just that for panicked business clients - and to get their friends to stick in a few words here or there that would tilt the balance of the new law to benefit them and their clients.

... Now consider what happened with the immigration bill. It was released within minutes of its completion - and it was quickly hacked to bits by paid experts, think tankers, lay thinkers, lawyers and logicians.

He doesn't say it, but what happened to the immigration reform bill at the national level can just as easily happen to legislation at the state level - if enough people are paying attention, using the Internet to monitor legislation, and applying their own knowledge to track and decipher legislation, identify its weak spots and objectionably provisions, and then distribute their findings via the Internet.