The freedom tax: the Republican president who's raised fees on exactly the things he wants immigrants to do--work hard, play by the rules, and become citizens.

• Author: Rowe, Jonathan

Let's say you are an excitable partisan of the right, the kind for whom a small tax increase foretells a Stalinist ascent. You have just learned of a government levy that has gone up by over 50 percent in the past four years. This levy hits people at the very start of their entrepreneurial journey. It comes along with a bureaucracy so labyrinthine and inept that those subject to it pay thousands of additional dollars in lawyer fees and other expenses just trying to meet its demands.

Taxes, lawyers, bureaucrats--it is acetylene to your ideological passions. Your outrage is in a white heat. Instinctively your mind sets to work on a polemical weapon with which to hack this beast to bits. The phrases start coming. The federal government is determined to crush the dreams of the honest and hard-working people. The liberals and their bureaucrat buddies want to drown aspiration and kill hope. While brave Americans fight to extend freedom abroad, the liberal taxers want to quash it here at home. They want to impose a Freedom Tax. Quick, get Grover Norquist.

Except for one thing. The tax-and-spenders weren't behind the draconian increases at issue here. They happened on the watch of George W. Bush himself. And the target of this big hike was a demographic group for which the president has expressed his deepest regard--recent immigrants. These are mainly yellow- and dark-skinned people who have come here legally and are trying to live up to their responsibilities in their new land. They are people for whom America truly is the beacon of freedom the president proclaims it to be. Yet in the past four years, the Bush team has rewarded their faith with boosts in immigration fees that amount to a big tax increase.

At the Republican National Convention, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke with eloquence of the dream that draws newcomers to this land. "They come because their hearts say to them, as mine did, 'If only I can get to America.'" President Bush has echoed those sentiments; often he declares that America is a "welcoming" nation.

When the president says such things, people might bear in mind exactly how his administration has chosen to welcome them--by raising taxes on exactly the things Washington supposedly wants immigrants to do: work to support their families, play by the rules, and become citizens.

Jose, take a hike

The nation's immigration bureaucracy churns far below the radar of the national media, but if you are a recent immigrant you know the...