The White House is working overtime to persuade the gullible that the new immigration plan, to be announced this afternoon, is not an illegal-alien amnesty. But the deception doesn’t seem to be working as well as they’d like. True, the Wall Street Journal story, appropriately enough for that apostle of open borders, never once uses the word “amnesty,” even to debunk it. And the Washington Post story uncritically reports the White House denial that the plan includes an amnesty.

But Elizabeth Bumiller, in today’s New York Times front-page story, writes with refreshing frankness that is uncharacteristic of that paper’s immigration coverage, that the Bush proposal “effectively amounts to an amnesty program for illegal immigrants with jobs in the United States.” The Washington Times quotes “one immigration critic” (okay, it’s me) calling the proposal a “two-step amnesty.” And the Boston Globe writes that the plan, if passed, “would be a major victory for Latino leaders, who have called for some sort of amnesty program for many years.”