Washington PAC, Israel Elections, Immigration and more

Thanks to a connection through TheSolidSurfer.com's Washington correspondent "K-Swiss", I had the pleasure of recently meeting with pro-Israel lobbyist and former AIPAC executive director Morrie Amitay. Mr. Amitay now runs his own organization, Washington PAC, which functions similarly to AIPAC but with more of a grassroots focus.

On the topic of Israel, meanwhile, the Kadima party has garnered the most Knesset seats in the just-completed election, with Labor, Shas, Israel Beitenu, and Likud following in decreasing order. Overall, center-left parties, excluding Arab parties, have gained 52 seats, while center-right parties have gained 51.

What does this mean? Most likely, Kadima leader Ehud Olmert will be able to form a majority government, but the coalition could be weak if the center-right opposition unites against it. Assuming this occurs, Olmert will likely face great difficulties in implementing his planned West Bank disengagement, which, as the Washington Times' Frank Gaffney notes, is a terrible idea based on faulty wishful thinking. Olmert wants to finalize the plan by 2010, but if enough opposition gridlock occurs, Kadima just might be forced to scrap the plan and declare new elections sometime in 2007. This party needs to learn very quickly that, just as with Gaza, withdrawing in the face of a hostile enemy (i.e. Hamas) never works.


In other news:

An estimated 500,000 people marched in Los Angeles over the weekend to protest a proposed federal crackdown on illegal immigration. National reaction has been mixed; the protestors have garnered significant support among some quarters, while others have vehemently opposed them.

Personally, I feel somewhat split on the matter. In the illegals' favor, most are good people who have moved to America simply to pursue better opportunities. No one can fault them for such aspirations, and indeed apart from Native Americans, we all have ancestors who arrived seeking the same thing. A large majority of illegals most certainly would prefer to reside lawfully, but obtaining official permanent residency is often difficult and frustrating (something I can verify firsthand, as my wife immigrated here and went through a 10-year green card process), and many quite logically choose to circumvent the system altogether.

On the other hand, though, as much as America prides itself as a land of immigrants, we still possess finite carrying capacity and would be overwhelmed to unconditionally accept everyone who wishes to enter. Furthermore, illegals benefit from our public services without paying taxes (which unfairly hurts all tax-contributing citizens), and a small number are even hostile to our government and wish to reconquer the Southwest states for Mexico. (Yes, as unbelievable as that sounds, you heard it correctly.) Clearly, we must control the general immigration flow, while absolutely keeping out would-be revolutionaries along with criminals and terrorists.

On that note, I support the government's proposed bill to accept most of the current illegals while taking stronger measures to keep new ones out. The plan may not be ideal (these people did break the law, after all), but deporting 12 million people (their estimated number) would be difficult beyond belief, and apart from a few bad apples (who will indeed have to leave), most are proud to reside here and should willingly become fine, productive, taxpaying Americans. At the same time, resticting new illegals from this point forward will give America the breathing room necessary to fully integrate the new citizens. This is how immigration successfully functioned for most of our nation's existence, and hopefully we can repeat the model par excellence.