Yes, Boston matters for immigration policy

Senator Lindsey Graham and other partisans of the Gang of Eight bill argue that its security provisions would help to ferret out threats. In practice, that is unlikely to be the case. Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s file should have had more red flags on it than a May Day parade, but that was not enough for the FBI to revisit his case or question his travel to Chechnya. As the 11 million illegals testify, our federal bureaucracy and law-enforcement agencies either cannot or will not enforce the immigration laws we already have on the books. The Gang of Eight bill would have them start enforcing our immigration laws — and administer a guest-worker program, and evaluate and process 11 million illegals, and improve the vetting of new immigrants. That is unlikely to prove successful. Senator Graham’s endless infomercial promises to the contrary are either cynical politics or sloppy thinking — both of which are in varying degree characteristic of the Gang of Eight’s overall approach. We would not be surprised if Senator Graham also promised that his bill would relieve lumbago and get rid of hard-to-clean grass stains…

While our piecemeal enforcement at the borders is a national scandal, those who enter the country illegally but overstay their visas account for some 40 percent of illegals. The Gang of Eight bill would require the executive to establish a system of visa controls to address this problem. The problem is this: Congress passed a law requiring that very thing 17 years ago, and has on multiple occasions restated its demand that the law be enforced. So far, nothing doing. That pattern is characteristic of our immigration system in toto: a very fine collection of laws enforced in the most desultory fashion by a government beholden to business interests and ethnic lobbies hostile to the law as written. A government that was serious about restoring its credibility on the issue would at the very least get control of the border and fulfill Congress’s 17-year-old visa-control mandate without attaching a destructive amnesty to the package. Likewise, Janet Napolitano’s proposal for using improved passport technology to track those who come and go across our borders is a very fine idea on its own, no amnesty necessary. But the amnesty is the centerpiece here: To the bill’s proponents, everything else is an afterthought.