Whose problem is the immigration bill in Congress supposed to solve? The country's problem with dangerously porous borders? The illegal immigrants' problem? Or politicians' problems?

It has been painfully clear for years that the country's problem with insecure borders and floods of foreigners who remain a foreign -- and growing -- part of the American population has the lowest priority of the three.

Virtually every step -- even token steps -- that Congress and the administration have taken toward securing the border has been backed into under pressure from the voters.

The National Guardsmen who were sent to the border but not assigned to guard the border, the 700-mile fence on paper that has become the two-mile fence in practice, and the existing "tough" penalties for the crime of crossing the border illegally that in practice mean turning the illegal border crossers loose so that they can try, try again -- such actions speak louder than words.

The new immigration bill that supposedly secures the borders first, before starting the process of legalizing the illegal immigrants, in fact does nothing of the sort.

It sets up various programs and procedures -- but does not wait to see if they in fact reduce the flow of illegal immigrants before taking the irrevocable step of making American citizenship available to 12 million people who came here illegally.

This solves the problem of those illegal immigrants who want to get citizenship. The steps that they have to go through allow politicians to say that this is not amnesty because these are "tough" requirements.

But, whether these requirements are "tough" or not, and regardless of how they are enforced or not, there is nothing to say that the 12 million people here illegally have to start the process of becoming citizens.

Those who do not choose to become citizens -- which may well be the majority of illegal immigrants -- face no more prospect of being punished for the crime of entering the country illegally than they do now.

With the focus now shifted to the process of getting citizenship, those illegal immigrants who just want to stay and make some money without being bothered to become part of American society can be forgotten, along with their crime. Continued...