The Washington Times’s front-page story on the problems with the “virtual fence” prompts a couple of thoughts. First, it is clear that all the talk of a virtual fence was political theater designed to get Congress to pass an amnesty; to quote Dick Jones from Robocop, “Who cares if it worked or not?!”

But even assessing motivations more charitably, there’s the fact that complicated projects like this (and like E-Verify) always hit snags and take longer to implement than originally thought. Even supporters of amnesty and massive guestworker programs and opponents of fencing acknowledge the need for a high-tech network of sensors, cameras, and the like to keep an unblinking eye on our borders. In fact, they offered such measures as the trade-off for amnesty. But if enhancing security is going to take a long time, how can we justify having the amnesty first? Won’t more illegal aliens just come across the border during the years it’ll take to secure it?

The conclusion is hard to avoid — enforcement measures need to be fully implemented and working (and survived the inevitable lawsuits) before we even begin discussion of legalizing the illegal aliens already here. Otherwise we’ll just end up with the same bait and switch as we saw in 1986.