I take Victor’s point that mass deportation is neither practical nor desirable, though it has never even been entertained as an option by a policy maker or analyst of any consequence. But any up-front commitment to amnesty, any sort of “grand bargain,” or package deal, guarantees the failure of the enforcement we all want. It could be that we will end up legalizing some long-term illegals at some point in the future, or maybe we’ll just live with the remaining illegal population as a nuisance.

Extending the offer now ensures that many illegals will stay, rather than leave – but maybe more important, we have no idea how well or quickly the enforcement will work. One of my analysts projected that we could cut the illegal population in half in five years, but we can’t really know until we do it. Maybe in five years we’ll instead have managed to reduce it by only 30 percent, or maybe 70 percent; maybe the ACLU will still be blocking measures to enable employers to verify the identity of new hires. Who knows? The point is that it would be irresponsible policymaking to provide even the prospect of amnesty until after we’ve succeeded in fixing the problem. Only then will it be appropriate to even debate legalization, at which point I may agree with Victor, or I may not, but we shouldn’t be binding ourselves now when we don’t know know what our situation is going to be like in the future.