The Onion now has a box in front of my building, and I thought I’d picked one up by mistake instead of the Wall Street Journal, because when I read today’s Journal editorial on immigration, it seemed like a joke. In opposing possible limitations on future chain migration of adult relatives (as some have suggested as a trade-off for amnesty), the Journal says “this would have a damaging impact on immigrant entrepreneurs, who typically rely on relatives–think of your dry cleaner or the corner bodega–to help run their small businesses.” So, we need to keep giving special immigration rights to the grown siblings of naturalized citizens to secure cashiers for mom-and-pop groceries? I couldn’t have made that up, though it makes a kind of sense if you realize that part of the mission of the Journal editorial page is to serve as a bridge between the two sides of the open-borders coalition — the cheap-labor lobby, on the one hand, and the racial-identity groups on the other.

The serious point in the editorial is its assertion that no amnesty bill at all would be preferable to one that strays too far from Ted Kennedy’s agenda by including too many enforcement measures, as may be the case with what is now being negotiated between the White House and Senate Republicans. The odds of an immigration bill this year are getting longer and longer.