Immigration endgame: a high price to pay for the president's legacy.

PRESIDENT BUSH is facing a number of endgames in the next few weeks and months. His principal endgame is slightly farther out--namely, the end of his presidency. But that is causing him to seek, somewhat desperately, to construct a praiseworthy "legacy" by which to warm himself during the long winter of retirement.

What he would most like, presumably, is the success of the surge in Iraq. Iraq is the central issue of his presidency--and the second endgame in sight. If his intervention there is thought to have failed, that failure will overwhelm any other success he might achieve. At present the surge shows signs of beginning to succeed.

Unfortunately, the more those signs accumulate, the more Democrats and the establishment media will cry havoc and let loose the dogs of "peace." Still more unfortunately, even if the Iraq venture does succeed to the extent of establishing a stable, moderate, and decent pro-American government--one closer to democracy than most of its neighbors--that fact is likely to become generally accepted only several years after Bush has left office. So the search is on for other issues to decorate the legacy in the meantime.

Here an obstacle is immediately apparent: The Democrats are now in charge of both houses of Congress. Any legacy issue must be minimally acceptable to them. All those conservative hopes of yesteryear--Social Security reform, in particular--have turned into mist in the chill air of opposition. Their disappearance leaves disappointingly little behind: more money for the "No Child Left Behind" nationalization of education, an "energy independence" measure that (combined with bows to Kyoto) is likely to raise costs for U.S. industry without achieving energy independence, and--oh yes--comprehensive immigration reform.

Comprehensive immigration reform is what the Beltway calls a bipartisan issue--namely, one supported by almost all Democrats and a minority of Republicans. On this particular issue, moreover, Bush is a passionate member of that minority. Outside the Beltway, more or less open immigration is supported by corporate and cultural elites and opposed by more than 70 percent of voters. But the elite support is so strongly felt that the issue is falsely presented in the media as a dispute between most (enlightened) Americans, on one hand, and bigots, xenophobes, and the Republican "base" on the other.

When the last round of immigration reform was presented shortly before the midterm elections, the establishment media explicitly called for a speedy vote on the wonderfully disingenuous grounds that any debate on the proposed legislation risked spreading falsehoods about it. For "falsehoods," read "truths"--truths of which many legislators were ignorant until debate exposed them. When Sen. Jeff Sessions merely listed the legal, fiscal, and economic consequences of the "amnesty plus guest worker" bill in the opening Senate debate, he consigned it to defeat. The Bush-Democrat coalition made attempts to revive it under different names and sponsors, but they foundered on rock-ribbed Republican opposition. Most Republican senators and almost all House Republicans rejected the measure. And the bill died with the last Congress.

Since the election it has reemerged as a joint project of Bush (seeking a legacy), the Democrats (seeking long-term political advantage), and Sen. John McCain (seeking to position himself for the 2008 presidential election as a non-Republican Republican). But the Democrats are divided in an interesting way on how to proceed.

Democratic senators under the leadership of Ted Kennedy, who are writing the first version of legislation with help from ethnic interest groups and immigration lawyers, have largely excluded Republicans from their legislative planning. This has prompted Republicans who supported last year's proposed reforms, such as Sen. Sam Brownback and even Sen. Arlen Specter, to object that they might well oppose legislation crafted to undercut the GOP in the guise of reform. Even McCain has asked that his name be removed from the legislation (though he will probably support it). Senate Democrats are presumably banking on White House pressure--which will undoubtedly be forthcoming--to whip GOP waverers into line when crucial votes come up. Reportedly the White House already has Sen. Jon Kyl in its sights as a potential ally.

All this, however, suggests that Sessions, now leading the opposition to the bill, will be able to call on substantial GOP support when he takes the field. That support may well include Kyl, a swing figure who helped defeat last year's bill. Here the Senate Democrats may have weakened their hand by overplaying it. Their bill looks likely to be tailored to their partisan interests rather than to bipartisan compromise.

If substantial Senate opposition to the Bush-Democrat bill materializes, it will raise the stakes in the House. House Democratic strategist Rahm Emanuel has reportedly told the White House that the Democratic leadership will throw its full support to the bill only if the GOP delivers between 80 and 90 House votes in its favor. Such crossover support in the House is unlikely if Senate Republicans show anything more than token resistance to White House pressure. It is doubly unlikely if Kennedy, seeking to exploit the president's political weakness and desperate need of a legacy, decides to load up immigration reform with all manner of Democratic gewgaws.

After all, resistance to illegal immigration is one of the few remaining issues where the GOP now enjoys a clear lead over the Democrats. Hence Emanuel's caution. Why should Republicans throw such an issue away to help a lame-duck president who is friendlier to the Democrats than to themselves on many other issues? And if the GOP keeps immigration in play by opposing legislation proposed by Ted Kennedy, why should Emanuel risk the Democrats' new House majority?

If the politics of immigration reform are dangerous to both parties, but more so to the GOP, how about its economic merits? Though there are many aspects to the debate over immigration, the one that most briskly summarizes its overall economic impact is that its benefits to the native-born American population are equal to between $1 billion and $10 billion. That figure has doubtless changed in the decade since the National Academy of Sciences calculated it for the Jordan Commission on immigration reform. Let's be generous and estimate that the net economic benefits of immigration to native-born Americans are now three times as high as the original NAS calculations--thus, between $3 billion and $30 billion. That is a nugatory sum in a multi-trillion dollar economy. It is swamped by the far-higher fiscal costs of immigration to the U.S. taxpayer. And it has an inegalitarian impact on income distribution, transferring wealth from poorer to richer Americans, which in turn enables the Democrats to win votes on the grounds of wealth inequality. All this--plus the social tensions that uncontrolled immigration inevitably brings in its wake--is a high price to pay for George W. Bush's legacy.

In his second gubernatorial campaign in Texas, Bush ran a Spanish-language ad that proclaimed the benefits, mainly liberal ones, that his first term as governor had brought to Hispanic Americans. It ended with the ringing appeal "Vote Bush--it doesn't matter that he's not a Democrat."

No indeed, not at all.