By all rights, I should be in the center when it comes to immigration policy. I’m for all the things the Washington elites claim to want, but the extremism and dishonesty of the bipartisan political elites is destroying the political center.

I’m for amnesty for the majority of our current population of unauthorized immigrants. There is insufficient political support for deporting most of them, and I think that reflects popular wisdom. Many of our unauthorized immigrants have developed strong ties to our country and are embedded in mixed-status families.

I’m also for a path to citizenship. The idea of a seven- or eight-digit population of residents who are permanent but forever barred to representation is abhorrent to me. If we are to keep people in our country (or invite people to settle here in the future), it should be on the basis of full civic equality. Same vote, same access to the welfare state, same everything. One of the most destructive temptations in American history is the greedy hope of using people as laborers while denying them full legal equality. Incidentally, that is why we shouldn’t have guest-worker programs.

The catch is that I favor this amnesty after the implementation of a visa tracking system and universal employment verification. The politicians who most often talk about our unauthorized population demand that we must have legalization before implementing enforcement or else not have legalization at all.

This is the great, hidden cruelty of our immigration debate. The same elites who talk about compassion for the unauthorized population would rather see every illegal immigrant die in the shadows than have immigration enforcement implemented.

There is also the insanity of our actual immigration-reform proposals. The Gang of Eight immigration bill would have sharply increased immigration — and especially low-skill immigration.

This measure was sold as necessary for winning over Hispanics. Well, it turns out that increasing immigration is extraordinarily unpopular — and is especially unpopular among Hispanics. So why do it?

When I bring it up that the allegedly prudent, electorally wise Washington Republicans supported this consequential and politically toxic policy, the reaction I get is people ignoring it, or treating it as some minor detail, or as if it is some lovable foible — like a kindergartener who hasn’t quite learned to tie his shoes. Then they go back to mindless droning about how “comprehensive immigration reform” is supported by 70 percent of the public.

One last point: Yesterday, Donald Trump brought up the families of people who had been killed by unauthorized immigrants. Those were very sad stories, and they should be told, but the vast majority of our unauthorized immigrants are people who live quiet lives of hard work, at taxing jobs, for low wages.

The irony is that, under a conservative populist immigration reform that implemented enforcement before amnesty and restricted future low-skill immigration, most of our current unauthorized immigrants would enjoy higher wages not just relative to the status quo but relative to the abominable Gang of Eight bill that would have vastly increased the competition for low-skill jobs. If only our loathsome political class had even one politician who could make that point.

I trust that I have upset everyone.

H/t to Fred Bauer for the link to the Gallup poll.