Something funny is going on inside the Bush administration on the issue of 大规模移民 和 怎么办.

A couple of weeks ago, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge 喃喃自语 some cryptic, unrehearsed and rather ambiguous noises that sounded like an endorsement of amnesty for illegals. His spokesmen immediately 否认 that amnesty was what he meant.

几天后， 华盛顿时报 据悉， “The White House yesterday said a new immigration review is underway that could lead to amnesty for millions of illegal aliens living and working in the United States.”

Last week the same paper quoted President Bush himself, still chortling over the nabbing of Saddam Hussein, that “This administration is firmly against blanket amnesty.”

So what exactly is going on? It’s not clear that even those in the administration who are making it go know what it is, but my own bet, hunch, educated guess, or wild surmise is that for all the denials of amnesty, amnesty of some kind is what is 继续 and is what we will eventually get.

It is indisputable that before the 9/11 attacks, amnesty was being peddled by the president, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft. The plan was to allow some 3 million illegal Mexican aliens in the country to apply for permanent residency. This was not called amnesty either, and certainly not “blanket amnesty,”but rather by the brazenly mendacious 一个的名字 “temporary workers plan.”

Since it offered permanent legal status to illegal aliens, there was nothing “暂时的” about it whatsoever. It was amnesty under 另一个名字。

So when Mr. Bush pronounces with a straight face that he is “firmly against blanket amnesty,” he is probably telling something like the truth. Mr. Bush and the rest of the administration know that “blanket amnesty” would be as suicidal politically as it would be for the nation. Therefore, what you do is resurrect the amnesty plan under another name—smuggle it in under the blanket, as it were. The whole art of democratic politics consists largely of selling unpopular ideas under another name.

What the president did suggest last week was a vague statement that “we need to have an immigration policy that helps match any willing employer with any willing employee.” In other words, the main problem for Mr. Bush seems to be an economic one, rather than political or cultural.

Moreover, as with the old “temporary workers plan,” if illegal aliens have or can get 工作 American employers, then they would be eligible for legal residency. It’s not “blanket amnesty” because it does require some conditions for becoming legal, but it is still very clearly amnesty because it makes legal what is illegal.

It’s also a bad idea that merely recapitulates all that is wrong with amnesty period, blanket or under the blanket.

Amnesty under any terms rewards illegal activity 和 encourages more of it.

Amnesty under any terms insults and creates disincentives for law-abiding conduct.

Amnesty under any terms makes such ideals as the rule of law and the enforcement of law a sick joke, a joke that in the midst of the ballyhoo about the “war on terrorism” is not at all funny.

Moreover, as happened during the discussion of the temporary workers plan, the limited amnesty the administration and some congressional allies are pushing won’t stay limited. In 2001 the Democrats denounced Mr. Bush’s plan as discriminatory against non-Mexican illegals and proposed their own amnesty for all illegal aliens—some 12 million people.

That remains the position of all the Democratic presidential candidates. It’s also the logical step once the acceptability of any amnesty for any group has been granted, and there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t be adopted sooner or later.

If Mr. Bush, Mr. Ridge and other administration leaders really favor serious immigration reform, they need to forget about amnesty of any kind. They need to consider that massive illegal immigration is not only a threat to the integrity of the nation itself and its citizenry but also a physical threat to the nation’s security, and they need to treat illegal immigration not as a sensitive political problem to be massaged with 委婉语 or an economic problem for American businessmen 或者 diplomatic bargaining chip with Mexico but as a problem of 国家安全 和 执法。

Having created the massive Department of Homeland Security under Mr. Ridge and enacted stringent legislation in the Patriot Act and similar laws to protect our security, the administration should start thinking about the most effective way to stop or drastically reduce illegal immigration now and in the future and how to 理解 和 回报 the millions of illegals who are already here.

That—not amnesty and not fake “改革”—is what we need.