Their Himno, and ours.( illegal-immigration bill )

CONGRESS wants to pass an illegal-immigration bill before Memorial Day, in the face of the confusion of the White House, and the self-confidence of lawbreakers.

President Bush, deep in the hole of bad premises and sentimentality, keeps digging. In a speech in Irvine, Calif., he tried to blur the issue by beating a straw man. "Massive deportation of the people [already] here is unrealistic.... You can hear people out there hollering it's going to work. It's not going to work." What Bush refuses to hear are the sensible calls, not for a roundup of 11 (or 16, or who knows how many) million illegals, but for a strategy of attrition. Secure the borders, crack down on employers, and the cost of being illegal in America will rise. As that happens, the inflow will diminish, until it falls below the natural rate of outflow. Illegal aliens are not ordinary contraband, like drugs, or booze during Prohibition--inert substances made to be consumed. The illegal immigrant must survive over time in a foreign environment. The more unfriendly it becomes, the less incentive he has to make the attempt.

Even as Bush sowed confusion, he had a specious moment of clarity. Reacting to "Nuestro Himno," the Spanish-language "Star-Spangled Banner" that has become the unofficial fight song of illegal immigrants, the president said, "I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English, and I think people who want to be ... citizen[s] of this country ... ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English." Why? Aren't they only singing songs Americans will not sing for themselves? Bush falls back on the rhetoric, high-sounding but witless, of open-borders assimilationists: Let everyone come to the party, but make them all Americans. Some illegals no doubt have that desire, and much assimilation occurs willy-nilly. But the goal of a common culture, or even common cultural landmarks, becomes unreachable in times of sustained mass immigration, much of it the work of lawbreakers.

As Bush floundered, illegal ...