VDH: I’ll allow you have a point in your post about deportation of illegals. However, you have misunderstood the “attrition” strategy.

Attrition does not mean “slowly and incrementally rounding up illegal aliens as they come in contact with government agencies and need various licenses, papers, statements.” That would be a good thing to do, and we ought to do it. The main thrust of an attrition policy, though, is to cause illegal settlers to self-deport by making it as hard as possible for them to find paid employment.

There are many ways to do that, and there are objections that can fairly be raised to all of them. That’s what I have always understood “attrition” to mean, though.

The point that I’ll allow you have is, that appeals by distressed individuals, like your 60-year-old landscaper, will be very potent weapons in the armory of the open-borders people, and will be ruthlessly deployed. Not only will the U.S. public at large not stand for any really harsh measures against illegals, they will not even stand for mild measures that, by picking on the odd extreme case, can be spun as harsh by race rackets like La Raza and the SPLC (who, I am told, recently featured me in their newsletter as a purveyor of “hate” — a distinction I wear with pride).

I think you are also being irrationally optimistic in saying that: “… should illegal immigration cease at the border, the pool of illegals here, properly screened, would become static, and not be replenished, and, if the past is any guide, within a generation melt into the American pot.” Unfortunately, the present is utterly unlike the past, and the pool of illegals, and their connections, are utterly unlike previous immigrant groups. To assert that they will “melt into the American pot” is a hope, not a known fact. It might come to pass: but there are strong reasons to think it won’t, and the American people ought to be asked whether they are willing to take the chance.