Opinion: Every sensible immigration policy has two objectives: (1) to regain control of our borders so that it is we who decide who enters, and (2) to find a way to normalise and legalise the situation of the 11 million illegals among us.
Start with the second. No one of good will wants to see these 11 million suffer, but the obvious problem is that legalisation creates an enormous incentive for new illegals to come. We say, of course, that this will be the "very last, very final, never again, we're not kidding this time" amnesty. The problem is that we say exactly the same thing with every new reform. And everyone knows it's phony.
What do you think was said when in 1986 we passed the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration reform? It turned into the largest legalisation programme in American history - nearly three million got permanent residency. And we are now back at it again with 11 million new illegals in our midst.
How can it be otherwise? We already have a river of people coming every day knowing they're going to be illegal and perhaps even exploited. They come nonetheless.
The newest amnesty - the "earned legalisation" now being dangled in front of them by proposed senate legislation - can only increase the flow.
The irony of this whole debate, which is bitterly splitting the country along partisan, geographic and ethnic lines, is that there is a silver bullet that would not just solve the problem, but also create a national consensus behind it.
My proposition is the following: a vast number of Americans who oppose legalisation and fear new waves of immigration would change their minds if we could radically reduce new, ie future, illegal immigration.
Forget employer sanctions. Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won't do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put cameras. Put sensors. Put out lots of patrols.
Can't be done? Israel's border fence has been extraordinarily successful in keeping out potential infiltrators who are far more determined than mere immigrants. Nor have very many North Koreans crossed into South Korea in the last 50 years.
Of course it will be ugly. But sometimes necessity trumps aesthetics. When you build a wall to keep people in, that's a prison. When you build a wall to keep people out, that's an expression of sovereignty. The fence around your house is a perfectly legitimate expression of your desire to control who comes into your house to eat and sleep. It imprisons no one.
Of course, no barrier will be foolproof, but it doesn't have to be. It simply has to reduce the river of illegals to a manageable trickle. Once we can do that, everything becomes possible - most especially, humanising the situation of our 11 million existing illegals.
If the government can demonstrate that it can control future immigration, there will be infinitely less resistance to dealing generously with the residual population of past immigration. That may require that the two provisions be sequenced. First, radical border control by physical means. Then shortly thereafter, radical legalisation of those already here. To achieve national consensus on legalisation, we will need a short lag time between the two provisions, perhaps a year or two, to demonstrate to the sceptics that the current wave of illegals is indeed the last.
This is no time for mushy compromise. A solution requires two acts of national will: the ugly act of putting up a fence and the supremely generous act of absorbing as ultimately full citizens those who broke our laws to come to America. If we do it right, not only will we solve the problem, we will get it done as one nation.
© 2006, The Washington Post Writer's Group.