A reckless bill.

OF course it's an amnesty. Supporters of the immigration bill that passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee go to great lengths to deny that the bill offers an amnesty to illegal immigrants. It is true that the bill does not confer automatic citizenship on illegal immigrants. But a bill does not have to make illegal immigrants citizens, or arrange a ticker-tape parade for them, to be an amnesty. Illegal immigrants broke American law to be able to live and work here. The Senate bill would allow them to keep living and working here. The threat of deportation, mostly a hollow threat already, would be formally abandoned. Ade facto amnesty would be replaced by a de jure one. Anyone who wants to argue for this policy should not insult our intelligence by pretending that it is not an amnesty.

But insults to our intelligence are all we are getting. We are constantly told that the American economy depends on the arrival of more than a million new low-skilled workers every year--that they fill "jobs Americans won't do." Thus we must implement a guest-worker program and refrain from enforcing our immigration laws. Yet no other economy in the world has required such large-scale immigration to avoid collapse. Almost every job category in America is already filled mostly by native-born Americans. Curbing illegal immigration, and curbing low-skilled legal immigration for that matter, would cause some industries to raise wages, others to substitute machines for people, and still others to move some work abroad. Markets would clear. Our GDP would do fine. Slightly higher wages for America's high-school drop-outs would not be the worst thing in the world. (It's a sad day when Paul Krugman has a clearer view of the economics of an issue than the editors of the Wall Street Journal.)

We are told, as well, that amnesty is the only solution because "we're not going to deport 12 million people." That's a straw man. No one is seriously proposing to deport 12 million people. We believe that the country should follow a strategy of attrition. By deporting more illegals than we currently do, and stepping up enforcement of immigration laws at the border and at worksites, we can shrink the illegal population over time. The amnesty crowd has never bothered to argue against this actual alternative.

Supporters of the Senate bill would have us think that the way to control the border is to loosen our policy there; that the way to fight illegal immigration is to legalize it; that the key to our economic future is to have as many low-income, poorly educated workers as possible; and that if our schools do not do a good enough job of producing such workers we must import them from elsewhere. These propositions tax the capacity for belief. Yet four Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee supported this travesty of a bill: Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Mike DeWine (Ohio), Sam Brownback (Kan.), and Arlen Specter (Pa.).

The House passed a bill to enforce the immigration laws. That bill sparked massive protests by illegal immigrants, many of them waving Mexican flags. Apparently those protests moved some senators to support the amnesty bill. Is this really what we want more of?

The Senate bill should be filibustered. Congress should enact a bill that enforces our immigration laws. If, after a serious effort to reduce illegal immigration, some employers find that they need additional workers from Mexico, we can debate whether to increase or restructure legal immigration to accommodate them. But first the law should be enforced.