I don't understand amnesty's attractions, but I do understand our fecklessness and inability to articulate positions that are easily demagogued as 'mean-spirited'. I do understand that, having judged the other options unpalatable, Bush and others fall on amnesty as the only answer.
Shelby Steele's essay on "White Guilt" in Opinion Journal explained the impulse well. And it is a paradox of Bush, so tough in many ways but helpless when it comes to facing down the evils of multiculturalism and racial/ethnic/religious issues. The man who takes on Saddam and the Taliban is the same man who peddles the soft-hearted lie that Islam is a religion of peace. as the Governor of Texas, Bush consistently battled the hard-edged elements in his own party - Tom Pauken, members of the religious right, etc. "Compassionate conservative" was that triangulation that telegraphed he was a man who wouldn't do those punitive things.
There is a simple solution to our immigration woes. It is simple and workable, just not very easy. It will create hardship cases, whining, protests, and all sorts of counter-currents from those who prefer illegal immigration to legal immigration only. But it will be the one and only thing that will end illegal immigration in the massive levels that we've experienced in recent years: ENFORCE THE LAW. RIGOROUSLY.
But enforcing the law requires being punitive, in many cases against job opportunity seekers. So we surrender to illegal immigration by granting the lawbreakers citizenship rather than a ticket to the home country, for the same reason Steele mentions in how we fight 'minimalist' wars. It is a failure of the Will.
That failure leads to a conclusion that will create a policy far worse than our current policy of neglect and the other alternative of levels of increased law-enforcement and deportation. These real alternatives, and not the strawman of mass deportation, are the real comprehensive solutions, for you cannot have "comprehensive immigration reform" without immigration law enforcement, and you cannot have immigration law enforcement without deportation. (And our deportation system is broken).
Amnesty on the other hand, is abdication and surrender. It will not stop future illegal immigration, only induce it further. It will not make America a fairer place, only create an imported underclass of poverty-wage Americans (Latino poverty rates have been going up as latino immigration skyrockets, see David Frum's articles.) It will make America poorer, less able to control its future, and unwittingly will tie our politics to the interests of millions of dual-citizen Mexicans. And in the end, even the cheap-labor-lobby will lose, to the higher taxes and burdens all Americans will pay for this.
There is a cure: It starts with rejecting moral relativism and the axioms of "White Guilt"; recovering moral clarity that right is right and wrong is wrong, gets us out of the 'world-turned-upside-down' situation where malefactors (like terrorists) have right to dictate to us. (Consider the preaching bile of the Iranian Prime Minister.) Once we chase away the ghosts of the Guilt (Success Guilt, Male Guilt, White Guilt, etc.) we can then act with Moral steadiness. We should establish that the United States has the moral right to deport persons here in violation of immigration law.
America can and should act in the best interests of America and Americans. That is an important principle and fact to introduce, in this debate and many others as well. Being gun-shy on being selfish with respect to our own country, culture and citizens is the root of our problems. It is the heart of this impulse to do exactly the wrong thing, i.e., amnesty.
Great post and well thought out.
I agree we are caught between the lack of will to deport and cause hardship and the firm need to stop the bleeding. Part of that lack of will is furthered by the liberals and their efforts to weaken this country by playing on the sympathies. When in reality - they could care less - they just want voters - legal or otherwise.
But, America has always had many wanting to immigrate - but there is no qualm about holding them out. You don't see any "lack of will" there. So - I think a lot of that hesitation is purely the influence of the liberal vote-getting efforts.