'Give me the tools': they have them--so use them.(immigration reform in United States)(Cover story)

'IF someone else has a better idea, I'd love to have them give it to us." That was John McCain, challenging his fellow Republican presidential candidates in early June to offer an alternative to the amnesty bill he helped craft with Ted Kennedy. Well, here's a better idea: enforce the law.

Homeland-security secretary Michael Chertoff says it can't be done under existing law: "Give me the tools to do it," he said in a recent pitch for the amnesty bill, which also promises some future improvements in enforcement.

This is a conceit. Many statutory tools already exist to make enormous headway against illegal immigration. But, for his entire administration, George W. Bush has presided over what can only be described as a Silent Amnesty, refusing to enforce the law as it's written today, and even taking steps to help illegal aliens embed themselves in American society.

Were the president to enforce the law, the obvious starting point would be the 850 miles of fencing that Congress mandated last year. Only a few miles have been completed, and less than half is projected to be finished by the end of next year. Speeding the fence's construction would signal the seriousness of enforcement, given the resonance of the issue with the public and the political class's transparent contempt for the idea (captured by McCain's concession to Vanity Fair: "I'll build the goddamned fence if they want it").

Controlling the border isn't just about physical barriers. The administration also can change how it deals with those illegal immigrants who make it past the border. Starting about a year and a half ago, all illegal aliens apprehended near the south Texas town of Del Rio have been prosecuted for illegal entry and briefly jailed, rather than immediately returned across the border to Mexico. As one agent put it, "There's nothing we're doing that wasn't already on the books. It's nothing new. We just started enforcing the law."

What it did require, though, was additional detention space, prosecutors, and the other accouterments of criminal justice--in addition to a directive from the top. This initiative has resulted in a 57 percent drop in arrests for the first part of this year in Del Rio, but the area's arrests account for only 3 percent of total illegal-crossing arrests nationwide. Making this policy permanent and uniform is one of those "better ideas."

Beyond the border, the most important component of effective immigration enforcement is to prevent illegal aliens from finding work by making legal status a labor standard--similar to the ban on child labor. A tool to achieve this could be a version of something we have now: the Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS), a voluntary online tool for employers to check whether the people they hire really are who they say they are. About 16,000 employers are currently participating.