Michael Barone, who has been the best of the lot in recent months, is preparing for the long haul: “There’s not much hope that Congress will pass a big immigration bill this year or next. But the administration, by charging ahead on border security and setting the stage for a national identity card, can move the public toward accepting a comprehensive immigration bill in the years ahead.”

It might work. The trouble with this strategy (for his side) is that there is no great popular demand for amnesty or a guest-worker program. The late, unlamented bill sought to get those things by attaching them to the immigration-law enforcement for which a popular demand existed. Assuming that the public gets that enforcement, as Barone does, it will have no reason to support his future bill. On the other hand, it will also have less reason to be alarmed by it. The only way Barone’s scenario works, I think, is if some future elite-level coalition still wants to get a guest-worker program and amnesty through and gets its way because the public is no longer paying much attention to immigration issues.