Comprehensive immigration reform: what is it?

Victor Davis Hanson writes:

Comprehensive immigration reform — rarely has a catchphrase been so widely invoked and yet so little defined. Why?

If proponents of so-called reform detailed exactly what they wanted, American voters would never support their self-interested agendas.

So what is the agenda Obama wants to put in place after the fall elections?

The effort is instead fueled by an agenda of perpetual big government and a concern to expand future constituencies, allay the anger of Latino activists, and accommodate wealthy business donors.

The great unspoken fact of illegal immigration is that it is utterly anti-diversity and ethnically chauvinistic, outsourcing immigration policy to the Latino-Democratic-employer lobby, and dubbing any who object to such racialist criteria as racist.

Supporters of comprehensive immigration reform should delineate exactly what they mean and do not mean by their vague rhetoric. They need to be exact in ascertaining who would deserve legal residence, and who by past misbehavior would not. They must bring these proposals to the Congress, have an open debate, seek to pass the necessary legislation and then have it signed by the president.

If they insist on smearing skeptics who are appalled at the present chaos on the border, they should remember that diversity, legality, meritocracy, integration, assimilation and the irrelevance of race once upon a time used to be liberal ideals.

Not anymore.

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