I disagree with Mickey Kaus who says a recent Time Magazine poll on immigration reflects biased wording. The bias occurs in divorcing the question of illegal immigrants already here from the problem of future illegal immigration. This is the cleverest trick in the pro-illegal immigrant arsenal. Time should try asking the question this way:

Do you favor a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the country, if a) effective controls are put in place to prevent future illegal immigration; b) effective controls are not put in place. Unlike Kaus, a majority for a) wouldn't surprise me.

The Kennedy/McCain approach claims to be a), but, like Simpson-Mazzoli (1986) before it, it will fail to prevent future illegal immigration and end up as nothing more than an amnesty. Why? Because, in the absence of effective verification for employment eligibility, people will find a way in -- even if you built the two thousand mile fence, they would overstay Visas etc. Beefed up border patrol is a great way to spend money -- paying off constituents with border patrol jobs and contracts -- while failing to stop the flow of illegal immigrants (paying off a whole other set of constituents: corrupt businesses who want illegal labor).

Note to leftists: who pays the price for the approach you favor? Brown people! They die crossing the border against reinforced security, and the other brown people -- American citizens, who are disproportionately low-skilled -- have to compete with them for jobs in a vastly-expanded labor pool. Wouldn't it be better for Mexico to invest in education, so that's its most ambitious young people don't aspire to menial jobs in the U.S., and for the U.S. to wait until low-skill wages begin a substantial rise before deciding we "need" to import millions of workers? This is starting to look like an unholy alliance between the elites of Mexico and those of the U.S. -- hey, maybe it is! They get rid of exactly those who might demand change, and we get cheap nannies and gardeners.