Defeat it.(PUBLIC POLICY)

WHAT makes "comprehensive immigration reform" comprehensive is that it would not only strengthen enforcement at the border and the workplace. It would also reduce the demand for illegal-immigrant labor by giving employers access to all the legal immigrants they need. It would improve our security, as well: As illegal immigrants registered with the government to become legal, and possibly to become citizens, the government would know who was in this country. And the illegal immigrants would come "out of the shadows" and begin to assimilate into the mainstream of American life.

It is this happy theory that animates the bipartisan immigration bill before the Senate. But the details of the bill draw out three flaws of the theory. The first flaw is that the government's capacity to track millions of people is quite limited; the second flaw is that employers' "need" for cheap labor is practically inexhaustible; and the third flaw is that the theory forgets that workers are people.

The first flaw causes the national-security argument to explode: Immigration bureaucracies that cannot manage current policy are not going to be able to enforce new laws and process 12-20 million illegal immigrants on their path to citizenship.

The second flaw will manifest itself as businesses that rely on unskilled labor exert constant pressure on governments not to enforce the immigration laws. The new bill has tough-sounding enforcement measures, but most of them can be waived if that pressure builds. Just as bad, the illegal immigrants would be legalized whether or not those enforcement measures worked. The result of this bill could thus very well be legal status for millions of currently illegal immigrants, plus millions more illegal immigrants waiting for the next round of "immigration reform."

The third flaw is that it will be impossible ...