Bill Steigerwald’s question and answer interview of Mark Krikorian is worth a read. Here is a sample and a link:

Q: Let’s pretend it’s 2009 and we have a new president. What’s your solution to the immigration crisis?

A: The way this is often presented is that there are only two choices: One is deport 12 million people tomorrow, which we couldn’t do if we wanted to, and the other is amnesty, one way or another. In fact, those aren’t the options we face. The only thing that will actually work is the third way, which is attrition through enforcement — reducing the number of new illegals coming in and compelling a large number of illegals to give up and deport themselves because they can’t find a job, they can’t live a normal life here. What that does is reverse the trend. Instead of seeing the illegal population grow every year, we can — realistically — change things so that it starts declining every year. And after a few years, then we can talk about what we do. Do we live with it as a manageable nuisance — the smaller illegal population — or do we then maybe want to talk about legalizing some people? I don’t know. But that’s a debate we can have in the future. It’s not even an appropriate subject for discussion now.

I disagree with Mr. Krikorian on one major point. Let’s stop saying we can discuss parts of the problem later.

Let’s do now what we should have done in 2002, when there were “only” 9 million illegal immigrants: secure our borders immediately to stop the tide; treat the really good and decent illegal immigrants humanely and with respect; and round up the gang members, convicted criminals, and terrorists among them and deport them without appeal.

BTW: I know some who read this will ask: what about due process? Like enemy combatants, I think we owe illegal immigrants no ‘due process’ 14th Amendment protections.

Cal Thomas asks an interesting question after writing in the NY Sun this morning:

A former senator and probable Republican presidential candidate, Fred Thompson, brought Virginia Republicans to their feet last Saturday night in Richmond when he said the public no longer believes in politicians who promise to secure the U.S. border as part of a bipartisan immigration bill.

“You’ve got to secure the border first, before you do anything,” Mr. Thompson said. “The members (of Congress) say it’s right here in this bill: the border. The response is, ‘We don’t care what’s on a piece of paper — secure the border.’ The piece of paper doesn’t secure the border.”

Mr. Thompson claimed the bill now being debated in the Senate is “the same deal” offered in the 1986 amnesty: legalization of aliens in exchange for border security. He said the public won’t be fooled again.

When Mr. Thompson speaks of distrusting Washington politicians, he is including Republicans and President Bush, who in recent weeks — in company with members of his administration — have taken to labeling opponents of the bill xenophobes and nativists, even suggesting some are racists.

Read the rest and his question then ask yourself the same thing.

I agree that the public will not be fooled again. Yet it remains to be seen if they just stand on the track announcing a train is coming until it passes or step off in sufficient numbers to derail it.

[Ed. — A later thought: Better still, every state holds a primary and there are 520 days until Election Day. I think we need to stop voicing our displeasure and send something a whole lot larger back down that track.]