Powerful bipartisan majorities of Americans have repeatedly told pollsters that our top priority in immigration is to reduce the illegal inflow and enforce the border. Rasmussen found that 72 percent of voters said it was "very important" for "the government to improve its enforcement of the borders." Just 29 percent think it's very important to address the legal status of people already here.
By a margin of 68 percent to 20 percent, Americans believe it is possible to reduce illegal immigration. But just 16 percent of Americans believed the Senate bill will do so.
By contrast, the political class obsessed about changing the legal status of the people already here -- i.e. the way to end illegal immigration is to legalize it. The arguments they've made either insult the American people or sound self-serving and, in many cases, downright incredible. (For me the low point was hearing The Wall Street Journal's Tamar Jacoby argue we need more low-paid, low-skilled workers to "grow the economy." Gee, you mean our public schools just aren't doing a good enough job of producing those on their own?)
The political class is just not leveling with the American people about what they are trying to do, or why, and the American people know it.
This is a failure of democracy of a massive order, and the American people chose immigration as the issue on which to throw a gigantic hissy fit of historic proportions. Will Washington even notice?