I’ve been reading through it. (Here.) Not bad, but with some holes.

You have to read the thing as if you yourself were an illegal immigrant (which I myself once was ), constantly asking: “Why would I go for that? … What’s the downside if I don’t do that? …” Try this with, for example, the “Acknowledgment” graf in Title VI.

Nothing about the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship. This weakens the whole “temporary worker” scheme. The entire point with such a scheme is to make sure that the temporary workers are here temporarily, and that they return home at the completion of their contracts. This is not easy to do, and the “anchor baby” business just makes it harder.

Allowing five years for people here illegally to pack up and go also seems over-generous to me. Most illegal residents will just shrug and say: “I’ll worry about that four and a half years from now.”

Enforcement provisions look good, though, especially at the employer end.

Machine-readable Social Security cards! This would mean that the feddle gummint is only, oh, 40 years or so behind the private sector in identity verification. As things go in gummint-world, that’s pretty good.

All in all, my verdict on the bill as currently presented is: “Needs work.”

Realistically, though, this bill is probably about as much as we can hope for. The open borders folk are already up in arms about it, gearing up to spread the impression that the bill mandates that Mexican babies be boiled in oil. Frist is saying nothing will be done this year anyway, so these are early days yet.

My hopes aren’t high, but at least the congresscritters are trying to do something.