The battle over amnesty

A couple of good essays by Debra Saunders:

Does the government think we're stupid?

Washington does not have to pass new laws to beef up border enforcement or punish law-breaking employers. Those laws exist. To the extent that such laws have not been enforced, the cause is not that laws are not tough enough, but that Washington has lacked the will to enforce them.

It's a fight for America's soul:

They won't hear about the legal immigrants whose families spent years waiting and slogging through the system to obtain green cards and apply for citizenship. They won't hear how these immigrants react to the federal government giving a pass to those who illegally jumped to the head of the line.

The New York Times says that Bush's support for amnesty is "testing" his conservative base. If that's the correct term for what Bush's pro-amnesty position is doing to his base (and to the country), then I saw a dog "testing" a fire hydrant the other day.

Parenthetically, I am getting very tired of reading this kind of thing:

White House officials.....expressed frustration at what they described as ill-informed criticism that the bill provided amnesty for illegal immigrants when it in fact traded legal status for fines and fees

Let me explain the fundamental point here in simple language. If a plan offers the existing illegal-alien population any legal right to stay in the US, on any basis, it's an amnesty. Period. Anything else that such a plan does, or doesn't do, is irrelevant to the fact of its being an amnesty.

The Los Angeles Times claims that it's the pro-amnesty coalition in the Senate which is about to be "tested". We can only hope so.