So why is the Trump administration sitting on its hands when it comes to illegals but assertive when it comes to legal immigrants and would-be legal immigrants?

The answer is: For the same reason the gun-grabbers concentrate their efforts on federally licensed firearms dealers and the people who do business with them — the nation’s least-criminal demographic — rather than prosecuting real-life straw-buyer cases or making sure that offenders do real time for weapons charges. It is pretty easy to police law-abiding people who are voluntarily submitting themselves to a legal process (whether that is immigration or buying a gun), filing paperwork, and undergoing background checks. Chasing actual lawbreakers around? That’s work.

Changing the law is work, too — signing an executive order is pretty easy.

But it is not much of a policy strategy. The Trump administration has not even managed to secure such elementary reforms as mandating the use of E-Verify or a similar system to cut off the main lure of illegal immigration at the source. Even when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, President Trump could not be bothered to negotiate even a modest legislative package on his signature issue.