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Cato Daily Dispatch for May 27, 2003

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Washington Looks to Turn Up Heat on Iran
Mexican President Calls for U.S. Immigration Reform
Candidates Bring Back Universal Health Care

Washington Looks to Turn Up Heat on Iran

"Tehran Tuesday told Washington to stay out of its internal affairs as U.S. policymakers prepared to discuss whether to take a tougher stance on Iran aimed at destabilizing its clerical establishment," reports Reuters.

"Washington has stepped up its criticism of Iran in recent days, accusing the Islamic Republic of harboring senior al Qaeda members and developing a secret nuclear weapons program. Iran denies the charges."

In "Is Iran Next on Washington's Hit List?", Charles Peņa, Cato Institute director of defense policy studies, writes: "It would be folly for the United States to wage another war against another Muslim nation after Afghanistan and Iraq. Such action would be interpreted as a war against Islam by the rest of the Muslim world. If anything, the United States needs to avoid turning the war on terrorism against al Qaeda into a larger holy war against Islam and the more than one billion Muslims around the world. Yet this seems to be the course the administration is steering by putting Iraq and Iran in its sights.

"It's important to consider one other potential unintended consequence of the administration taking a hard line with Iran and having engaged in increasingly heated rhetoric against that country. The Iranian government might not support al Qaeda at present, but it could find a use for it under certain circumstances. If Iran is the next target after Iraq, then...perhaps the Iranian government would have nothing to lose by employing al Qaeda operatives to engage in terrorist acts against America in response to U.S. military action."

Mexican President Calls for U.S. Immigration Reform

"President Vicente Fox appealed yesterday for action on a long-delayed immigration accord with the United States, now that the Iraq war is over and more than 20 months have passed since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks," reports The Washington Post.

"Fox said the deaths earlier this month of 19 illegal immigrants in a sweltering tractor-trailer in Victoria, Tex., the worst such tragedy recorded in the United States, are testimony to the urgent need for a new immigration agreement. In an interview, Fox urged Washington to broaden its focus from security issues and start increasing the number of work visas for Mexicans, which would help the United States 'avoid having to deal with problems like Victoria, with people dying on their territory.'"

"President Bush and Congress should work together to create a legal channel so that Mexican workers can enter the United States temporarily to fill jobs that native-born American workers typically shun," says Dan Griswold, associate director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies. "We should concentrate our border-security efforts on identifying and apprehending terrorists, not peaceful and hardworking Mexican immigrants who appreciate the freedom and opportunity of America."

Griswold is the author of "Willing Workers: Fixing the Problem of Illegal Mexican Migration to the United States", a Cato Trade Policy Analysis.

Candidates Bring Back Universal Health Care

"Democratic presidential candidates have resurrected universal health care--an issue that produced one of the low points of Bill Clinton's presidency--in a calculated gamble that the voters are ready for a new debate over providing access to health care coverage to all Americans," according to The Washington Post.

"Four Democratic candidates have come forward with proposals to bring most of the 41 million Americans without insurance into the health care system, and others are in the process of refining theirs. Although the plans differ in some significant ways, they have two things in common: All are big and ambitious, and are far costlier than anything that has been proposed since Clinton."

"All the various 'list prices' for the plans are steep enough, but their full economic costs are sure to be higher," says Tom Miller, Cato's director of health policy studies and author of the chapters on private and public health care in the Cato Handbook for Congress. "The plans continue to rely on rearranging, expanding, and disguising the current complex array of tax subsidies and regulatory burdens that have made private health care less affordable and less available. They offer more of the same mix of made-in-Washington, top-down directives that will keep delivering less value, at a greater cost."

Wyatt Dubois, editor, wdubois@cato.org