They're here to stay, and Congress knows it

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/steinberg/cst-nws-stein01.html

Unlike you or I, who feel forward-looking if we make plans for lunch, politicians think ahead, far ahead: to this fall and 2008 and beyond. They have to, if they want to stick around. They must raise gobs of money. They must test the wind.

That's why all this tough talk in Congress about cracking down on immigration will come to nothing. There will be no security wall built along the Mexican border. The 12 million illegal immigrants will not be rounded up and deported, nor interned in concentration camps, nor any of the other fever dreams of the Minutemen, with their snazzy windbreakers and powerful binoculars, scanning the horizon for people who are already here.

What will happen is those immigrants will become citizens and voters, and their children will become citizens and voters. Both parties know it, and rather than risk turning off a slice of the country for generations, our leaders are instead coughing into their fists and praying their constituencies figure it out sooner rather than later. snip

2. We need the taxpayers. Right now, Social Security collapses a week from Friday because the baby boom is about to quit working. We need more, not fewer, immigrants, because they will be paying for your retirement. snip

8. We can't send them back. It isn't an option. Just imagine the process. The cost. The human tragedy. We'd be turned into a police state overnight.

9. Because we'll regret being opposed to it later. This nation has a long history of lock-the-gates movements -- anti-Irish riots, anti-Chinese laws, anti-Eastern European quotas. They always, always, always are seen as a badge of shame -- in retrospect. The anti-immigration movement today will be no different.

[brokensymmetry]

1. Umm...sorta.

Much of what you say is true. Actually, I'm not at all sure that
the "Powers That Be" want any large numbers to become citizens; or,
for that matter, be deported. A population of illegal aliens equates
to cheaper labor. If they believe they might become citizens, they
become easier to control.

Truth be told, I think the elephant will labor mightily to
bring forth a gnat (pun intended). Things will rock on, much
as they have before.

But the debate about immigration has done a great job of
diverting attention from many other things, hasn't it?