Immigration Ambivalence

Do these poll results on the illegal immigration issue make as little sense to you as they do to me?:

Most Americans believe illegal immigrants should be allowed to become guest workers and eventually U.S. citizens, but Congress should do more to close the border to stop more illegals entering the country, according to a new poll published Tuesday.

The nationwide poll, conducted by Quinnipiac University, found that by a margin of 69% to 27%, American voters say illegal immigrants should be allowed into a guest worker program with the ability to work toward citizenship over a period of several years. Such a guest worker program had wide support among voters of all political stripes.

But 71% of voters said Congress must do more to deal with illegal immigrants entering the country.

Maybe it's the parent in me, and perhaps there's some point to this I'm missing, but isn't illegal immigration...well, illegal? And if it's illegal, doesn't that at least imply that there should be some penalty to the individuals who cross our borders illegally? Giving them an amnesty mulligan doesn't sound like much of a penalty to me. And yet the same, purportedly overwhelming, proportion of respondents also want the federal government to impose far more stringent border control?

Two weeks ago the American electorate put back into power the party that believes in open borders (even more than the other party) and looks upon illegals as a constituency group they can exploit to do an, well, illegal end-run around the (apparently already crumbling) center-right majority and regain their indefinite monopoly on power. So I can only conclude that those who say they want stricter border control desire that less than they do cutting the twelve million illegals already leeching off our system a break.

Or they refused to choose and pretended they could have both. The triumph of the "radical middle," as it were. After the party they put back into power tosses off another blanket amnesty, opens the borders entirely, we're overrun over the course of the next generation, and the Democrats are consequently entrenched beyond any possibility of electoral dislodging, will the borders even still exist? And will the Mexican-controlled puppet government in New Mexico City (formerly Washington, districto de Colombia) be as doltishly tolerant of minority "anglos"?

There are many routes to national suicide. But they all start from voters who, for want of making touch choices, invariably end up making the wrong ones.

And to think that this fate is the optimal one....