Huckabee Gets Mean

War of attrition on illegals, so says the ex-fat preacher. I'm kinda like the sound of that.

I'm defensive about this country, protective, and I don't think admitting wave after wave of poorly educated, poorly assimilated, and just plain poor Third World immigrants is a wise choice. Given that we're a post-industrial information society, that's simply a recipe for disaster. It'd mean the erosion of our Anglo-Saxon character, and our descent into a balkanized banana republic. No thanks to that.

That said, the logistics of what amounts to mass deportation are challenging, and the scope of the project is, to sell it short, daunting. There are tens of millions of illegals in the country, many of them deeply ingrained in the fabric of American labor and, to a lesser extent, American society.

As Ramesh Ponurru, one of National Review' brighter bulbs, writes:

I can just imagine some 60-year-olds in my home town, still at work in landscaping after 40 years, who have never been arrested, own homes, and haven't a clue what Oaxaca looks like after 40 years, suddenly put on a bus back there. So while it is easy to say, "I oppose amnesty in all its forms," note apparently how difficult it is for the candidates to make the next intellectually honest and logical corollary, "Thus I am for the mass deportation of all illegal aliens."

It is fine and good to talk of "attrition" by slowly and incrementally rounding up illegal aliens as they come in contact with government agencies and need various licenses, papers, statements, etc., but you are still talking about deporting millions, who are currently working and crime-free, rather promptly.

The odd thing is that should illegal immigration cease at the border, the pool of illegals here, properly screened, would become static, and not be replenished, and, if the past is any guide, within a generation melt into the American pot.So it seems that while "amnesty" is a political death sentence, so is mass deportation-the only element of the immigration debate that would play into the hands of the Democrats who otherwise lose big on the issue.

Lock down the border. Kick out any illegal picked up with a serious criminal record. Lower the quotas for Third World immigrants, even legal ones. That much is common sense, but more exteme measures require careful consideration. Not to mention delicate, humane handling.

We could have avoided this problem by locking down the border decades ago, but . . .