Enforcement first.(Immigration policy)

IN December, the House of Representatives passed an immigration bill based on the principle of "enforcement first": There should be no amnesty or guest-worker program until real immigration enforcement is in place. The Senate Judiciary Committee under Arlen Specter is trying to reverse that principle by packaging legalization of illegal aliens (a.k.a. amnesty) and guest-worker programs together with promises of future enforcement.

A bit of background: Sen. Edward Kennedy, the Democrats' standard bearer on immigration, joined with Sen. John McCain to promote a broad amnesty for the 12 million illegal aliens already here, plus a large increase in new immigration. Judiciary chairman Specter offered a slightly less sweeping amnesty, but packaged it with an unlimited guest-worker program and an increase in immigration of 1 million people per year.

The Senate's approach to immigration so far might thus be described by Mary Poppins: A spoonful of enforcement helps the amnesty go down. This is the same baitand-switch approach Congress took in 1986, when it passed a large amnesty in exchange for a ban on hiring future illegal aliens, as a way to turn off the magnet that attracted illegals in the first place. Naturally, once the amnesty ran its course, promises of enforcement were abandoned; in 2004, according to the Government Accountability Office, only three employers in the entire country were fined for the knowing employment of illegal aliens.

Although a majority of the Judiciary Committee shares the goal of legalizing the illegal population and providing for large increases in the importation of foreign labor, differences among the members have slowed progress. The McCain-Kennedy approach, for instance, would put illegals on track for ...