The following Charles Krauthammer column sums up my views on the current immigration bill which just recently cleared the Senate. I’ve copied it below as the link requires registration.

The Amnesty Compromise Needs a Caveat

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, May 25, 2007; Page A19

As the most attractive land for would-be immigrants, America has the equivalent of the first 100 picks in the NBA draft. Yet through lax border control and sheer inertia, it allows those slots to be filled by (with apologies to Bill Buckley) the first 100 names in the San Salvador phone book.

The immigration compromise being debated in Congress does improve our criteria for selecting legal immigrants. Unfortunately, its inadequacies in dealing with illegal immigration — specifically, in ensuring that 10 years from now we will not have a new cohort of 12 million demanding amnesty — completely swamp the good done on legal immigration.

Today, preference for legal immigration is given not to the best and the brightest waiting on long lists everywhere on Earth to get into America, but to family members of those already here. Given that America has the pick of the world’s energetic and entrepreneurial, this is a stunning competitive advantage, stunningly squandered.

The current reform would establish a point system for legal immigrants in which brains and enterprise count. This is a significant advance. But before we get too ecstatic about finally doing the blindingly obvious, note two caveats:

(a) This new point system doesn’t go into effect for eight years — eight years of a new flood of immigrants chosen not for aptitude but bloodline. And who knows if a different Congress eight years from now will keep the current bargain?

(b) It’s not enough to just create a point system in which credit is given for education, skills and English competence. These points can be outweighed by points given for — you guessed it — family ties, which are already built into the proposed point system. There are already amendments on the Senate floor to magnify the value of being a niece rather than a nurse. ( Barack Obama is proposing to abolish the point system entirely in five years.) A point system can be manipulated to give far more weight to family than skills — until it becomes nothing but a cover for the old chain-migration system.

As for the bill’s provisions about illegal immigration, let’s not quibble: It grants the essentials of amnesty. True, there is a $5,000 fine (for a family of five!) attached to registering for legal status in the United States. But the truly significant penalty for illegal immigration is deportation — which undoes everything the immigrant has built in America. When the feds raid a sweatshop, the fear is not that the agent will grab you and yell, “We are here to collect a fine.” The fear is that he will yell, “We are here to deport you back to the subsistence and misery you fled in China.”

From the moment this bill is signed, every illegal alien who does not have a criminal record can register with the U.S. government for temporary legal status. Moreover, as soon as the president certifies that certain border enforcement triggers have been met, this cohort of 12 million becomes eligible for the new Z visa — renewable until death– which allows them to stay and work and travel and reenter.

This is amnesty — and I would be all in favor of it if I believed in the border enforcement mechanisms in this bill. If these are indeed the last illegal immigrants to come in, let us generously and humanely take them out of the shadows. But if we don’t close the border, that generous and humane gesture will be an announcement to the world that the smart way to come to America is illegally.

In this bill, unfortunately, enforcement at the border is all bureaucratic inputs and fancy gadgets: principally, a doubling of the Border Patrol to 28,000, lots of high-tech sensors and four unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). And 370 miles of fence — half of what Congress had mandated last year.

Does anyone imagine these will stop the flood? Four UAVs? And how does 370 miles of fence close a border of 2,100 miles? And if fences work (of course they do: look at the San Diego fence), why not build one all the way?

The amnesty is triggered upon presidential certification that these bureaucratic benchmarks are met — regardless of what is actually happening at the border. What vacuous nonsense. The trigger must be something real. I propose a single amendment, short and very concrete: “The amnesty shall be declared the morning after the president has certified (citing disinterested studies) that illegal immigration across the southern border has been reduced by 90 percent.” That single provision would guarantee passage of this comprehensive reform because most Americans would be glad to grant a generous amnesty — if they can be assured it would be the last.

Borrowing from the title of Al Gore’s new book, and perhaps continuing yesterday’s rant on the decline of critical thinking skills in this country, I am focusing today on the decline of gray in this country. No, no… I know we’re all getting older and there is no shortage of gray hair. I won’t even argue the shortage of gray matter, since I think there’s plenty of it about – albeit often overly focused on Gamecube strategies and the fate of Anna Nicole’s baby.

Rather, I think we we need to regain the ability to see issues and arguments in shades of gray. The world is far too complex a place to see in black and white. Yet this is what we seem to demand, especially of public figures. Pick a side of the fence and stand firmly there. You’re either with or against us; so choose. Further, we seem intent on trying to interpret gray area positions as polar so that we can stand against them. The latest evidence comes courtesy of Mitt Romney.

John Edwards, who supports a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq, said he would keep the country safe by going “after terrorists where they are.”

Mitt Romney retorted,

“Remember that old Edmund Burke quote, it’s a famous quote, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ And that, I am afraid is the boiled down version of what John Edwards said, is that good men should do nothing. Put their head in the sand and hope it all goes away,”

This is clearly not what Edwards said. Edwards is taking a pretty rational middle of the road position. Yes, terrorists are a threat. Yes, we need to be vigilant against them. We need to continue and even increase efforts to take out terror cells at their roots. But he’s acknowledging the reality that the Iraq war has nothing to do with the war on terror and is in fact, defocussing what should be highly specific and direct action against actual terrorists.

Is Al Qaeda in Iraq? Yes, they are now. And they still will be once we pull back and stop trying to mitigate what is largely a civil war. Which is part of way we can’t just pull out entirely and go home. Al Qaeda is also in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and probably many other places. We can’t reasonably take on the government of every country in which they set up operations. Al Qaeda is opportunistic, and will exist where ever it’s easy and fruitful for them to be. Is our presence in Iraq focusing the Al Qaeda operations? Probably. But is it rational to hold a war in what was arguably a neutral 3rd party country just so we have a battlefield of operations with Al Qaeda? That’s more than a bit nuts. We could do them much more damage through covert activity, intelligence work, black ops, and surgical military strikes then we are doing with our massive and expensive efforts in Iraq. This is what Edwards is proposing.

However, Romney polarizes the issue. He wants to stay the course in Iraq. He positions the opposite as running home and sticking your head in the sand and doing nothing. Then asserts that if you are not with him, then you are obviously the polar opposite. This is like saying that I like to play Volleyball. If you don’t like to play volleyball, then you sit on the sofa all day and pick your nose. Then when I meet you, I can ask if you like to play volleyball. If you say no, I feel justified in my assertion that you are a nose-picking couch potato.

We’ve had enough of this sort of demonizing polar logic over the last 6 years. It’s time to recognize that the world is a pretty complicated place – way more complicated than can be conveyed in a 30 second TV spot. It’s high time we start acknowledging the people who do think deeply through the complexities. And it’s time we start showing the ones who pander to the sound bite to the door.

We report… you decide…

Maybe they should make a Seqway with a sidecar??