Christopher Jencks had a fascinating, learned take on the immigration debate in a recent New York Review of Books. Jencks articulates the contradictions involved in our Catch-22 immigration debate:
The federal government's policy of opposing illegal immigration while refusing to enforce laws against hiring illegal immigrants has had huge costs. It has exacerbated popular distrust of the federal government (as indeed it should have). It has also increased hostility to foreigners, especially Mexicans, who are all suspected of having entered the country illegally. To many Americans Washington's failure to control illegal immigration, like its failure to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is just another example of how out of touch, duplicitous, and incompetent federal officials really are. In the short run such views are good for Republicans who want to discredit government and cut federal spending. In the long run, however, extreme distrust of government also precludes sensible policies that even conservatives should favor.
And then he suggests why the political obstacles to reform are, in the current climate, insurmountable:
Legalization can be implemented within a few years, while penalties for hiring illegal immigrants have to be enforced indefinitely. That means employers get what they want right away, while opponents of illegal immigration have to wait. In view of the federal government's miserable record on enforcement, no sensible conservative--indeed no sensible person of any political persuasion--would now accept mere promises. The conservative mantra is therefore "enforcement first." For many employers that sounds like the road to bankruptcy. They want "legalization first." As long as each side insists on getting what it wants before the other side does, no deal is possible and illegal immigration, with all its unhappy consequences, will persist.
Read the whole thing.