At the Weekly Standard, Jamie Fly, policy director at the neoconservative Foreign Policy Initiative, looks at the Obama administration’s attempts to put the brakes on the Senate version of the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (IRPSA), and asks “How serious is the administration about Iran sanctions?”

[G]iven the uncertain prospects at the United Nations, it is somewhat surprising that the administration is not using the Iran sanctions legislation moving through Congress as a lever to influence the Russians, Chinese, and Europeans. Instead, the administration is asking the Senate to significantly modify its version of the legislation (sponsored by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). Even though the legislation was hotlined last week, Sen. Kerry has held it up at the administration’s request. [...]

It is unlikely that either the House or the Senate versions is a silver bullet – questions remain about the impact on the regime even if the current legislation passed and was promptly implemented by the administration. But the administration’s efforts to gut the legislation and its sensitivity about the supposedly robust international coalition they like to tout as a product of their willingness to talk to Tehran raises questions about how serious they and their “partners” are about stopping Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon.

Not “a silver bullet?” That’s like saying Sarah Palin is “not the greatest mind of her time.” There’s really no one who seriously argues that these particular sanctions will do anything to positively effect the Iranian regime’s behavior. As Amb. James Dobbins put it in testimony (pdf) to the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, “A unilateral American ban with extraterritorial application” — such as is contained in both the House and Senate bills — “would seem to offer the worst combination of effects, penalizing the population, strengthening the regime, embroiling the United States in endless disputes with its allies, and thereby disrupting existing international solidarity in opposition to Iran’s nuclear aspirations.” Each of the other three Iran experts testifying voiced very similar concerns.

But, as a congressional aide told The Forward, “the State Department had made clear that it [did] not oppose Berman’s decision to move the legislation forward and bring it to a vote, a move that would enable the administration to prove it is ready to crank up pressure against Iran.” That is, according to the source, the administration is using the legislation in precisely in the manner Fly complains it’s not being used. Indeed, the only conceivable effective use of these sanctions (of which I’m highly skeptical, as I noted yesterday, given the real potential for undermining support for measures that might actually work) is as a riding crop raised over the hindquarters of our international partners.

I think a much better question is: How serious are conservatives about sanctions? At all serious? Or are they just trying to check a box before moving on to the air strikes for which many of them are no longer even bothering to conceal their enthusiasm?

Briefly, on the political-strategic point, I really hope the administration isn’t being too sanguine about its ability to hold up the legislation while leveraging it into cooperation from our international partners. Any way you look at it, this is a tick in the wrong direction, and raises the pressure for “doing something” and then “doing more” when, given the current state of the Iranian regime, doing less might be called for. As we know from very recent history, these measures can and do create momentum that becomes irreversible, until eventually we’ll be told that we have no other choice than to proceed over the cliff.

Last week, the Politico featured a piece by right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan suggesting that rather than talking about a second stimulus package, tax credits, or public works projects, lawmakers should be seriously considering an immigration moratorium during these hard economic times. A few days later, former Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) authored an op-ed calling for a moratorium on legal immigration until “Americans are back on their feet.” ThinkProgress sat down with Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Hilda Solis yesterday to discuss what a ban on immigration, coupled with ramped up deportations, could mean for the U.S. as a whole:

I think we’d have a big shortage of workers out there and I think as we move through this decade, we’re going to see people retiring from different types of jobs…so who is going to help fill those positions?

You would probably see towns shutting down, communities shutting down. You’d see second and third industries being affected – restaurant industries, service sectors industries where immigrants tend to work and be found. It would also impact the current ability to put food on your table because if you don’t have a certain number of people out there doing jobs that others wouldn’t want to do, then how are we going to provide the sustenance we need for all our American families?

Watch it:

What Buchanan, Goode, and all the others advocating an immigration moratorium fail to note is that, because of the recession, both legal and undocumented immigration are at record lows. And while it’s true that many immigrants work side-by-side American workers, that doesn’t serve as credible evidence that there is a significant number of American workers who have pursued those jobs and lost a job opportunity to an immigrant. In fact, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), has found that “despite the controversy it generates, illegal immigration has no significant impact on the overall U.S. economy.” MPI has also pointed out that, as of November 2009, immigrants are facing higher unemployment rates than American-born workers due to the fact that they are more likely to work in sectors that rise and fall with the business cycle.

As Solis points out, immigration policies should also take into account the future needs of an aging population. University of Southern California professor Dowell Myers recently pointed out that “as baby boomers become seniors, immigrants can fill the roles vacated by boomers shifting modes within the economy.” If the U.S. cuts future immigration, it could be in for a rude awakening when the recession is finally over. In an event at the Center for American Progress yesterday, Solis and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said today that comprehensive immigration reform would do a better job of strengthening the U.S. economy by improving pay, benefits, and working condition for all workers, along with adding billions of new tax dollars to the nation’s coffers.

Unemployment probably isn’t Goode and Buchanan’s only concern. In 2006, Buchanan called for an immigration moratorium to preserve the dominance of the white race in America. “If we do not get control of our borders, by 2050 Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built,” wrote Buchanan. That same year, Goode also warned that “we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States.”