Animosity and amnesty: a grand failure.

WHEN addressing immigration reform, President Bush repeatedly admonishes, "We need to do this without animosity and without amnesty." The comprehensive bill he strongly supports and the contentious Senate debate it launched provide both, in abundance. The grand-compromise reform fails his stated desire--and also fails to deliver on its stated promises.

Independent analyses of the bill find it unworkable, and recent Senate votes reveal its phony premises. Under the bill, millions of aliens will remain illegal. According to a recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), 8.4 million of the estimated 12 million illegal aliens can be expected to gain legal status. The remaining 3.6 million illegal aliens would presumably either voluntarily return home, thereby proving that an attrition strategy works, or remain "in the shadows" while attempting to evade the kind of "mass deportation" the bill's supporters maintain is wholly impractical.

President Bush notes that the 1986 immigration reform failed because "it encouraged more people to come to America illegally." But if this sweeping reform is enacted, millions more will be coming illegally: CBO estimates that the enforcement and worker-verification provisions of the legislation will reduce the net annual flow of illegal aliens by only 25 percent in the short term, and by only 13 percent over the next 20 years.

Experience suggests that newly legalized aliens encourage illegal immigration on the part of their friends and relatives by providing access to jobs and housing. The 1986 immigration reform granted amnesty to almost 3 million illegal aliens. Over the past 20 years, the number of green cards for permanent residency has almost doubled and guest-worker programs have been expanded. According to the grand-compromise bill's theory, these reforms should have reduced the illegal immigration that has dramatically increased in recent years.

Current enforcement loopholes--which the bill fails to address--also contribute to the ongoing illegal-immigration problem. For example, about 40 percent of current illegal aliens overstayed their visas. In 1996, Congress mandated the U.S. VISIT system, a biometric border program that would track entries and exits. Despite the mandate and a scheduled 2005 implementation date, the exit portion of the program has not been implemented. An amendment to the current bill that would have required the full implementation of the system as part of the new reform's enforcement "triggers" was defeated. Without the program in effect, there is no way to know whether visitors and workers have remained in the country illegally.

The illegal aliens who meet the requirements of the bill and are ushered on a path to citizenship would have "prove[d] themselves worthy of a great land," according to President Bush. Of course, only aliens who have violated our immigration laws qualify for the amnesty, but even on its own terms the comprehensive reform's amnesty isn't limited to the worthy. Sen. John Cornyn proposed an amendment to bar the unworthy from legalization--including known gang members, sex offenders, those convicted of felony identity theft, and felony drunk drivers. Sen. Ted Kennedy objected because the proposal "would exclude hundreds of thousands from the benefits in this bill and undermine the bipartisan compromise that [senators] worked so long and so hard to produce." The Cornyn amendment was defeated.

The bill provides legal status to millions of aliens, premised on a showing that they have violated our immigration laws, before any improvements in enforcement are made. In a recent speech, President Bush wrongly claimed that "this bill sets clear benchmarks for border security that must be met before other elements of this legislation are triggered." Within months of the bill's enactment, millions of illegal aliens will qualify for probationary legal status and Social Security numbers. They need only pass a mandated one-day-only background check.

CBO estimates that it will take three years to meet the bill's enforcement benchmarks, which would "trigger" the availability of "Z" visas (which would allow the illegals to apply for permanent legal status). Only then would aliens be required to pass a more complete background check. If the "triggers" aren't met, probationary legal status would continue indefinitely.

Although the bill is promoted as a crucial improvement in national security, the millions who will be unaccounted for will be joined by millions of the newly legalized with documents permitting work and travel that rest on a 24-hour review of their identities and backgrounds.

The manifest problems with the bill will be compounded by the well-documented problems with the dysfunctional immigration system expected to deal with its demands. Multiple government studies and recent news accounts depict government agencies unequipped to meet even their current immigration responsibilities.

A February report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticized the Department of Homeland Security for the delays in implementing the U.S. VISIT system. It questions a DHS solution that would rely on new technologies that may or may not be available in the next five to ten years.

Since 2005, according to a recent Washington Post account, the backlog of legal immigrants awaiting FBI name checks has doubled to 329,160. A government ombudsman noted that the backlog could prolong "the time a potential criminal or terrorist remains in the country." The FBI receives 1.5 million new names from immigration authorities each year. Millions more would be added to the workload under the immigration bill. In 2002, a policy change caused immigration authorities to re-submit 2.7 million names to the FBI for added scrutiny; it took five years to complete the reviews.

Last year, the GAO reported that its agents "were able to easily enter the United States from Canada and Mexico using fictitious names and counterfeit driver's licenses and birth certificates" during investigations in 2003 and 2004. In a follow-up investigation in 2006, GAO's agents used fictitious documents with similar ease and--at two border crossings in Texas and Arizona--gained entry into the U.S. without showing any documentation.

Beginning next year, passports will be required for all land and sea travel between Canada or Mexico and the U.S. Maybe. Air travelers were required to have passports by June of this year, but the requirement has been postponed because the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department were so inadequately prepared for the predictable increase in passport applications. The system was overwhelmed by 6 million new applications--but government officials continue to maintain that they will be ready to handle an estimated 27 million new passport applications by the end of the year.

Another GAO report last year found that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, responsible for the amnesty and guest-worker programs in the reform, has a "serious problem" with fraud and won't have a fraud-management program in place until 2011.

Customs, border, and immigration responsibilities belong to the Department of Homeland Security. A GAO report from earlier this year calls into question the department's viability as a new organization attempting to consolidate 22 agencies. The report concludes that the department's transformation into an effective whole remains "high risk."

The public's animosity to such a falsely advertised, unworkable bill is evidence of a welcome realism in short supply in Washington this season.