Bureaucratic Pathologies

Friend of Postmodern Conservative Ken Masugi writes over at the Liberty Law blog  that the biggest problem of the IRS scandal is not corruption within the Obama administration as such, or even problematic management by Obama and his political appointees. The problem is that elements of the career federal bureaucracy so indentify with one of the two major political coalitions that they will abuse their authority to harass those they perceive as the political opposition.

This has implications beyond the IRS scandal. Take immigration. Any amnesty is going to have some kind of cutoff date for who is eligible (you must have been living in the US since . . . ). Immigration officials could undermine this by choosing to accept obviously fraudulent documentation. That isn’t even my biggest concern. If we were to move to a Canadian-style system in which immigration policy favors higher-skill and language proficient applicants, implementation could be foiled by immigration officials who accept obviously fraudulent credentials and/or who turn language proficiency tests into a farce. I’m not saying that is going to happen, but it is something that lawmakers should take account of in creating verification procedures

Hat tip to my old blogging colleague Julie Ponzi for the link.