Kathryn has already posted about the Journal’s criticism of NRO for opposing the immigration bill (I refuse to call it a “reform”). The most interesting thing about the video clip is not Stephen Moore’s assertion that we are “foaming at the mouth” over the bill–a shot that really isn’t worth taking seriously. Rather, it’s Gigot’s judgment that the bill is in serious trouble.

The Journal-ists make some serious arguments, but they also make some dubious factual assertions and mischaracterize some of our views. In the dubious-assertion category falls Moore’s claim that Republicans “got creamed with the Latino vote in 2006. . . . It was one of the big factors why they got crushed.” Latinos, like other categories of voters, did indeed turn against Republicans in 2006. But the distribution of those added Latino Democratic votes meant that, for the most part, they didn’t make a difference to the election results.

Gigot claims that NR wants to “harass” businesses as part of our “enforcement first agenda.” Actually, we want to make it easier for businesses to know whether the people they are hiring are legal or illegal, so that they know whether they are on firm legal ground or not–and then, yes, punish those who knowingly hire illegals. That punishment constitutes harassment only on open-borders premises.

Daniel Henninger* says that the bill’s opponents’ objection to illegal immigration “is fundamentally cultural and they can’t say that.” Kathryn objected to that idea, and it does paint with too broad a brush, but I do think that Henninger is on to something important. A very big part of what we mean by assimilation is that newcomers will adopt the native culture (while also, of course, changing it in some respects). A major reason for popular anxiety over current immigration policies is the fear that this assimilation is not taking place, or not taking place fast enough, and that as a result the country runs the risk of cultural balkanization. I don’t know why that should be unsayable.

At this point in the clip, Moore jumps back in to say that people who don’t want illegal immigrants here “don’t want people legally here either.” As stated, that claim is ridiculous. But I will plead guilty to thinking that we need to reform legal immigration, too. (And to thinking that the distinction between legal immigration and illegal immigration is overstated by all sides in the argument.)

Finally, Gigot closes the segment by saying that it’s a mistake to make straight-line projections about the voting proclivities of immigrants. “There is absolutely no reason to believe that [Hispanics’ current Democratic voting patterns] will hold in the future” any more than it did for immigrants from Italy or Ireland. But at the very least, the example of Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans suggests that second- and third-generation immigrants are more likely to vote Republicans than the first generation. So if we’re looking narrowly at the partisan implications, Republicans are better off maximizing the proportion of an ethnic group that has been here a while–which means cutting back on the number of new arrivals. It may also be that the assimilation of those earlier immigrants was aided by the cutoff in immigration from 1924 to 1965. I think that was almost certainly the case.

*Originally misidentified as James Taranto; sorry about that.