Bob Samuelson’s column column today slams Arlen Specter’s immigration bill, especially the unlimited guestworker program that would, in Samuelson’s words, ” ’solve’ that problem merely by legalizing these huge inflows.” But in addition to arguing for a border fence and serious enforcement in general, Samuelson says we’ll have to amnesty the illegals already here; he writes “It is not desirable or ethical to force most illegal immigrants to leave. Yes, they broke the law, but we were complicit by making the law so easy to break.” Maybe–but that’s not a topic we can even discuss until after we control immigration. With real enforcement, we can force a large share of illegals to leave, shrinking the problem so we can later debate what to do about the smaller pool of remaining illegals.

And the new Pew Hispanic Center report that Kathryn mentioned earlier, estimating that there are currently 11.5 to 12 million illegals here, actually buttresses the case for a strategy of attrition through enforcement. Among its findings are that fully two-thirds of illegals have been here less than 10 years and 40 percent less than five years, meaning that their roots here are shallow and real interior enforcement–denying them jobs and the ability to live a normal life here–can result in significant levels of self-deportation, dramatically reducing the size of the problem.

From the standpoint of both policy and politics, there’s really only one way to address this–enforcement first.