Immigration Amnesty Fails

I feel that I have forfeited the right to talk about this since I didn't have much to say when it was still a live issue. Even now I can barely bring myself to feign interest in the topic of immigration. But now that the current attempt at looking busy on the Immigration issue has gone down in flames, maybe conservatives will remember that we have more interesting things to talk about. Congratulations are in order for the many people who put pressure on their senators to defeat cloture, especially Allah, Bryan and Michelle at HotAir who have redefined citizen journalism. Though I disagree with both their position on immigration and their general assessment of its importance to national security, I have to admit that they have done a wonderful and responsible job of keeping people informed, mobilizing conservatives and combatting media bias.

An emailer to Kathryn Jean Lopez of The Corner puts his/her finger on what may be the brightest spot of this whole business:

The real victory today for conservatives is that now all the presidential candidates on our side are free to run against Bush — they've just robbed the Dems' of their most potent weapon.

That may well be true. Being strongly pro-immigration myself, I am sympathetic to Bush's sentiments on this issue, but it does seem that he has a serious case of cart-before-horse disease. I have no trouble with amnesty in principle but Mickey Kaus' objection seems irrefutable to me:

Wouldn't it make sense to get an employment verification scheme up and running (for new hires) before we trigger another wave of illegals** by proclaiming a sweeping semi-amnesty? Simon makes it pretty clear that as the bill stands the worksite system won't be ready by the time that new wave of undocumented jobseekers hits.

As I think I've said before, I'm not worried about the 12 million already here. I'm worried about the next 12 million. And the next. ...

It may be that there simply is no way to ease the process of immigration while simultaneously strengthening its security. I think there is, but it will be difficult and I don't see much evidence that anyone currently in power has the will to tackle difficult problems. But that doesn't mean you give up and take the symbolic-but-meaningless easy way out of declaring amnesty before the problem is solved. Beating swords into plowshares, though inevitable, is a result of peace and justice, not its cause.

Update: As an example of that "combatting media bias" that I mentioned above here is a hilarious example. The Wall Street Journal asks, disingenuously:

Just who sponsors Hot Air’s ad, and other similar ads popping up across the Internet, is unclear.

Even the most ignorant MSM reporter ought to know that HotAir is run by Michelle Malkin and that most of their video is homemade. Maybe Mary Lu Carnevale should ask her colleague Peggy Noonan for some tips on how this whole blog thing works.