THREE VIEWS ON IMMIGRATION.

George Will: ”Once Americans are satisfied that the borders are secure, the immigration policies they will favor will reflect their -- and the law enforcement profession's -- healthy aversion to the measures that would be necessary to remove from the nation the nearly 11 million illegal immigrants, 60 percent of whom have been here for more than five years.”

Peggy Noonan: ”I have argued in this space that nothing can or should be done, no new federal law passed, until the border itself is secure. That is the predicate, the common sense first step. Once existing laws are enforced and the border made peaceful, everyone in the country will be able to breathe easier and consider, without an air of clamor and crisis, what should be done next. What might that be? How about relax, see where we are, and absorb. Pass a small, clear law—say, one granting citizenship to all who serve two years in the armed forces—and then go have a Coke.”

Eugene Robinsion: ”The notion that the first thing to do is ‘secure the border’ between the United States and Mexico -- and only then worry about comprehensive immigration reform -- falls somewhere between hopeful fantasy and cynical cop-out. It's a good sound bite but would be a ridiculous policy. Fact-based analysis is increasingly out of fashion, however, and so the border-first hallucination has become popular among politicians and pundits reacting to Arizona's new ‘breathing while Latino’ law.”

Will and Noonan are thoughtful analysts of the immigration conundrum; ‘fact-based’ analyst Robinson is just a hack hewing to the usual racist trope.