Here’s one seemingly small detail in the amnesty deal that would have a big effect and that illustrates a major problem. The deal would apparently increase family-based immigration for eight years in order to admit everyone already on the waiting list to immigrate. People are talking about this as admitting 3.5 to 4 million people over an eight-year period, meaning nearly half a million additional immigrants per year. But actually, the 3.5 to 4 million figure is the number of applications (formally called petitions), but since there’s an average of slightly more than two people coming in under each petition, the total number of actual people would be seven million or more. Which means that, if the eight-year thing is a deadline (even the congressional staffers don’t seem to know), then family immigration would increase by something like 900,000 a year during that time.

What this illustrates is that Sen. Kennedy and his staff know way more about immigration policy and politics than any of the other negotiating partners, leaving the White House and most senators in the position of fourth-grade chess team members playing Gary Kasparov. The enables Kennedy to insert patently absurd provisions (like the numerical cap on parents of citizens, rather than just abolishing the category), knowing full well that the result would be the immediate creation of a large and growing waiting list, which would then prompt him in two or three years (if it even takes that long) to start fulminating about cruel Republicans keeping parents from their children and the imperative to eliminate the evil cap — thus setting things up such that he gets his amnesty but we end up with bupkes.