I used to think that too, but it seems like the more we question, the more the administration sends us statements and spokespeople who mouth the complete opposite of what most Americans want done with the border situation. Somebody must be buying it or there would be a revolt? Or else, we are all too busy working in order to pay high taxes to support the illegals and the businesses that profit from them.
I think its a number of things:
Bush really believes in his "guest worker" program
Certain industries want cheap labor they can exploit and they contribute to both parties
Nobody wants to appear to be anti-Hispanic or racist.
People are afraid not to pander to certain racist groups like the Aztlan bunch.
There are religious groups which provide these people with "safe houses" and support open borders.
The general public although they oppose this stuff, simply have not made a loud enough roar over what should be a national scandal.
There are people (Rove?) who believe that by pandering to illegal aliens, who can't vote, the Repubs will pick up votes from Hispanic Ameican citizens - who have consistently indicated in polls they oppose, by a significant majority, special teatment for illegal invaders.
We have to a better job of communicating to those cretins in Washington that border defense is a significant responsibility of ANY government and this situation will simply not be tolerated in the future - regardless of what the Los Angeles Times, or New York Times, or MacDonalds thinks. If that doesn't work, the Minuteman project should be escalated.
The Feds could EASILY stop this by simply cutting off all federal funds to any local jurisdiction which directs its law-enforcement personnel not to cooperate with INS when an illegal is apprehended or detected, by moving U.S. military units to our southern borders (The Mexican military has actually violated OUR border) to stop this, and by enacting laws so onerous that they will assure any corporation which knowingly emplyes illegals is put out of business.
We could also stop this by ending the mindless, insane, suicidal drive twoards a bi-lingual society by adopting English as our official alanguage, requiring all new citizens to have a working knowledge of and stop requring government forms on any level to be written in Spanish and English.
If there IS a ganuine need for more owrkers from overseas, we should raise our immigration quotas across the board for ALL countries instead of providing one ehtnic group - the Hispanics - with a monopoly on admissions. By doing so, we would encourage assimilation, prevent the creation of a bifurcated society and culture, and recruit individauls who want to be American citizins for reason other than attaching themselves to a milch cow which permit them to route American dollars to some foreign rathole.