Damned if You Do? Couric Questions How To Get Illegals "To Do These Things?"

The quintessential item of conventional wisdom on immigration is the impracticality of deporting the estimated 11-12 million illegal aliens already in our country. Yet there are dissenters. Conservative columnist and former Reagan aide Jim Pinkerton has said "I think actually you could if you wanted to."

I've suggested that deporting illegals seems at least as practicable as administering the amnesty program. In the same piece in which Pinkerton's quote appears, I put it this way:

"[D]eporting illegal immigrants is much more feasible than the elaborate process the amnesty crowd proposes. Under the amnesty plan, the same 11-12 million illegals would have to be identified and located. They would have to be tested to determine if they had attained English proficiency, monitored for over a decade to see that they sought and maintained jobs, paid their fines, etc. If we can do all that, why couldn't we put the same people on buses to the border or planes to overseas locations?"

Yesterday, we suggested here that Matt Lauer might be a secret NewsBusters fan. Katie Couric's comments this morning makes one wonder whether she too is checking us out. For when Sen. Bill Frist proposed an amnesty plan for illegals of long-standing, Couric expressed skepticism very much in line with that delineated above.

Here was Frist's proposal:

"People here less than two years need to go back home. Two-to-five years you can go back home and come back as a temporary worker. Greater than five years you have legal status if after a probationary period you can eventually earn citizenship."

That's when Couric offered her critique:

"Some criticized that plan saying it would create chaos on the southern border. Many people would have to pay back taxes. How do you enforce this or ask illegal immigrants to do these things?"

Precisely! But is this real opposition to amnesty on Couric's part, or just another MSM damned-if-you-do moment? If a Republican were ever to propose a sweeping deportation program, one could easily imagine Katie shifting into DefCon 1 hand-wringing mode.

Finkelstein lives in Ithaca, NY, where he hosts the award-winning public-access TV show 'Right Angle'. Contact him at: mark@gunhill.net