Jordan Fabian’s story in The Hill on the 5th Circuit’s immigration decision quotes four “advocates” of Obama’s amnesty (Fitz, Hincapie, Leopold, Smith) and zero people who oppose it — i.e. the side that won. This is standard procedure in MSM immigration reporting. The conventional rules (“talk to both sides”)  don’t apply. I’m not quite sure why it happens. Is it because a) Everyone knows there is only one credible side on the amnesty issue and anyone who opposes it is really too much of a nativist yahoo to quote (unless you’re quoting Steve King to mock him); b) The advocates’ phone numbers are the only ones journalists have — that’s who immigration beat reporters hang out with; or c) the advocates are the ones initiating the stories, and they might stop feeding them to you if you call the other side? …  All of the above, obviously. But I think (c) is often overlooked. …

Longer Shorter Brooks: David Brooks likes some immigrants (talented Asians!). Doesn’t seem to like others (Mexicans!). But if Amnesty-First “immigration reform” passes he won’t get to pick next wave. That’s the crucial point he seems to miss. The current debate is not so much about which immigrants are good for the country or how many.  It’s about whether we have enough control to be able to decide which immigrants (or how many).  We could want high-skilled. We could want low-skilled. But if we don’t have control we’ll actually get whoever and how many decide to sneak in — in recent decades, low-skilled.

If you want to amnesty the existing illegal population — after amnestying the previous wave, in 1986 — then you are buying the U.S. a credibility problem at the border. (“We really mean it .. OK, this time we really mean it … No, this time we really mean it.”) Why would any would-be illegal immigrant not try to sneak in, and wait for the next time?  Millions of people may decide to come. (See the crises now in Asia and Europe.) The only hope of retaining credibility — and control — is to implement new, effective enforcement measures (like a fence and a national E-verify and visa control system)  that can stop any new illegal wave. And that will never happen if the illegals are legalized first, as in last year’s Senate Bill. Once they’re legalized, their advocates will lose virtually all interest in measures to prevent further waves, while actually supporting campaigns to sabotage them by lawsuits and regulations (as in 1986) or by new legislation. The enforcement won’t happen (again).  We won’t have control. And it won’t matter which varieties of immigrants David Brooks prefers.

P.S.: Brooks concludes that

“Hillary Clinton’s daring approach to immigration, supporting a “path to citizenship” for undocumented immigrants already in the United States, is clearly the right one.”

Never mind that the “undocumented immigrants already in the United States” are, overwhelmingly, not Brooks’ beloved Asian “university graduates.” I urge the Clinton campaign to base its 2016 Hispanic outreach effort on firm Brooksian grounds: “Don’t worry. Those undesirable Mexicans won’t be coming anymore!”