For a New Consensus

FOR over 40 years, Sen. Ted Kennedy has been making empty promises and wildly inaccurate predictions about the immigration policies he has played a major role in designing. The Bush administration’s recent proposed “comprehensive” reform is intended to provide a less liberal alternative to Kennedy’s latest disastrous designs on immigration laws. But like all “comprehensive” reform plans, it rests on its own promises and predictions and holds popular, worthy reforms hostage to amnesty for illegal aliens and a large, new guest-worker program. If reformers who oppose amnesty and are serious about securing the border and enforcing immigration laws decide to adopt instead a “consensus” approach to reform, they will be embracing changes that enjoy widespread support-and could split the coalition that backs an unpopular amnesty as the price for desired reforms.

The unintended consequences of past immigration-reform efforts should serve as a controlling caution when the Senate tackles immigration this spring. In 1965, Senator Kennedy chaired the Senate’s immigration subcommittee and reassured his colleagues that they could expect only modest effects from the dramatic liberalization of immigration laws he championed. Although he asserted that “under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same,” his handiwork created one of the largest waves of immigration in history. Over the following 30 years, there were over 18 million legal immigrants-triple the number admitted during the previous 30 years-and millions of illegal immigrants joined the mass migration. Today, 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants arrive annually and Kennedy, as chairman of the Senate’s immigration subcommittee, is again designing an overhaul of immigration laws.

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Kate O'Beirne

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FOR over 40 years, Sen. Ted Kennedy has been making empty promises and wildly inaccurate predictions about the immigration policies he has played a major role in designing. The Bush administration’s recent proposed “comprehensive” reform is intended to provide a less liberal alternative to Kennedy’s latest disastrous designs on immigration laws. But like all “comprehensive” reform plans, it rests on its own promises and predictions and holds popular, worthy reforms hostage to amnesty for illegal aliens and a large, new guest-worker program. If reformers who oppose amnesty and are serious about securing the border and enforcing immigration laws decide to adopt instead a “consensus” approach to reform, they will be embracing changes that enjoy widespread support-and could split the coalition that backs an unpopular amnesty as the price for desired reforms.

The unintended consequences of past immigration-reform efforts should serve as a controlling caution when the Senate tackles immigration this spring. In 1965, Senator Kennedy chaired the Senate’s immigration subcommittee and reassured his colleagues that they could expect only modest effects from the dramatic liberalization of immigration laws he championed. Although he asserted that “under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same,” his handiwork created one of the largest waves of immigration in history. Over the following 30 years, there were over 18 million legal immigrants-triple the number admitted during the previous 30 years-and millions of illegal immigrants joined the mass migration. Today, 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants arrive annually and Kennedy, as chairman of the Senate’s immigration subcommittee, is again designing an overhaul of immigration laws.