For a new consensus: what our immigration politics sorely needs.

FOR over 40 years, Sen. Ted Kennedy has been making empty promises and wildly inaccurate predictions about the immigration policies he has played a major role in designing. The Bush administration's recent proposed "comprehensive" reform is intended to provide a less liberal alternative to Kennedy's latest disastrous designs on immigration laws. But like all "comprehensive" reform plans, it rests on its own promises and predictions and holds popular, worthy reforms hostage to amnesty for illegal aliens and a large, new guest-worker program. If reformers who oppose amnesty and are serious about securing the border and enforcing immigration laws decide to adopt instead a "consensus" approach to reform, they will be embracing changes that enjoy widespread support--and could split the coalition that backs an unpopular amnesty as the price for desired reforms.

The unintended consequences of past immigration-reform efforts should serve as a controlling caution when the Senate tackles immigration this spring. In 1965, Senator Kennedy chaired the Senate's immigration subcommittee and reassured his colleagues that they could expect only modest effects from the dramatic liberalization of immigration laws he championed. Although he asserted that "under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same," his handiwork created one of the largest waves of immigration in history. Over the following 30 years, there were over 18 million legal immigrants--triple the number admitted during the previous 30 years--and millions of illegal immigrants joined the mass migration. Today, 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants arrive annually and Kennedy, as chairman of the Senate's immigration subcommittee, is again designing an overhaul of immigration laws.

Under the Senate bill approved last year, millions of illegal aliens, along with millions of new guest workers and the extended family members of both, would have qualified for citizenship. The current foreign-born population of over 35 million would have dramatically increased. A majority of Senate Republicans opposed the plan; and this year the Bush administration hopes to provide an alternative reform that a significant number of congressional Republicans could support. The White House has spared no time or attention in behalf of this top priority. Senate Republicans have been attending multiple weekly meetings and engaging in countless cabinet-level discussions over the past few months.

The product of this intense collaboration includes an amnesty program for illegal aliens, with punitive fines and lots of conditions, and a large temporary-worker program. But the detailed outline of the administration's proposal does reflect the fact that the immigration-reform debate has taken a welcome shift to the right over the past year. Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies sees a response to critics of amnesty in the latest reform proposals: "There has been a significant move to a harder position, in direct contradiction of the fantasy that amnesty supporters are spinning about last November's elections." Speaker Nancy Pelosi has implicitly acknowledged the unpopularity of amnesty by insisting on significant Republican support for any such plan in order to provide her members with needed political cover.

And "enforcement first" is now all the rage. Like the leading "comprehensive" reform recently introduced in the House by Reps. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) and Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.)--which Speaker Pelosi and the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have praised--the administration's draft plan includes enforcement "triggers" that must be met before a legalization or guest-worker program could take effect. These "triggers" are designed to increase enforcement resources at the border; create secure, tamper-proof documents; and set up a reliable employment-verification system. But there is no requirement that the effectiveness of these measures be established before the legalization provisions are implemented.

Just before last year's elections, Congress acknowledged the overwhelming public support for strong border security when it passed the Secure Fence Act, which authorized the construction of a 700-mile double-layered fence at the southern border to be completed by the end of 2008. Senator Kennedy opposed the fence, but its supporters included Sen. John McCain and 26 Senate Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and every other presidential contender. The bill also passed the House, on a 283-138 vote, but Congress appropriated only enough funds to build about half of the fence; skeptics wondered whether the popular measure represented mere "border dressing" in an election year.

The skeptics were right. The administration's current plan calls for only a 370-mile fence and another 500 miles of either vehicle barriers or electronic monitoring to cover about half of the almost 2,000-mile border with Mexico. Last year's exercise in "border dressing" is illustrative of politicians' repeated willingness to vote for tough immigration measures they have no intention of seeing enforced.

In addition to increased border-security resources and plans for an employer-verification system with much larger fines for hiring illegal workers, the administration proposes a long-overdue reform in the current visa policy. The 1965 immigration reform phased out the national-origin criteria for immigration in favor of a system based on family reunification and needed skills. In 2005, 58 percent of the 1.1 million immigrant visas issued went to relatives of U.S. citizens, whose spouses, parents, and minor children can immigrate without numerical limits. There are additional limited categories available for citizens' adult children and siblings. Recognizing that "waiting lists for chain migration of extended family members are completely out of control" and that "it will take over 30 years to finish processing them on our current path," the administration proposes reducing chain migration in favor of a merit-based visa system that sorts applicants according to our national needs. Caps and waiting periods would be placed on the preference for parents; the preference for siblings and adult children would be eliminated. These welcome changes would come about only after the current backlogs and waiting lines are cleared out--which could happen rapidly if a large majority of applicants were merely refunded their application fees.

To address the specific demand for seasonal workers, the administration's proposal creates a temporary-worker program that permits entry every year, but only for nine months and without family members. The administration estimates that between 300,000 and 500,000 of the 1.1 million agricultural workers are currently illegal aliens. There would be no cap on the number of such seasonal workers in agricultural jobs under the administration's plan. In the past, proposals for even a modest temporary-agricultural-worker program have been rebuffed for fear that it would relieve the political pressure for a large-scale guest-worker program.

Neither amnesty for illegal aliens nor a guest-worker program should be contemplated until the current chaotic system is reformed and Congress has proven its willingness to see the immigration laws it passes enforced. In negotiations with Senator Kennedy, the administration's flawed plan can only move left and lose any possibility of support from conservative Republicans. Instead of trying to accommodate the senator whose previous reform efforts have been such a colossal failure, conservative reformers should refuse to hold the worthwhile parts of the administration's plan hostage to his more ambitious designs.

With some modifications, the beefed-up enforcement, visa reforms, and seasonal-worker provisions in the administration's plan would represent a politically popular proposal that could satisfy "enforcement first" supporters, businesses seeking skilled workers, and the agricultural community, thereby splitting the coalition currently backing "comprehensive" reform as the only vehicle that will deliver their desired changes. There is a consensus on immigration reform--one that is just waiting for political leadership.