SINCE CONGRESS WON'T, A PRESIDENT NEEDS TO DO IT UNILATERALLY:

[I]t is time to be honest that the impoverished seeking work and hope believe that one way or another they can cross the border and disappear into the American economy. And you know what...they are correct. The labor shortage for unskilled and even skilled (carpenters, construction, cooks) will take them all. Law enforcement at the border cannot cope with the surge. Asylum laws are gamed, and the catch and release program is viewed as just another route into the underground economy.

There is tragic blowback to all this, however. The encouragement and strengthening of criminal gangs preying on the weakest of the weak. Girls and women are raped. Men are held in conditions so appalling most would get sick if they spent a minute in them. The more money that flows to these gangs the better their technology, their intelligence and the higher their rate of successful crossings. That of course draws more immigrants into their web. A super vicious circle starts, one that defeats all the noble humanitarian efforts of those who believe in lawful, dignified immigration.

For the life of me I cannot understand the failure of Congress to pass real immigration reform. Knowing what I do about immigrants' critical role in our economy, it defies logic to leave immigration to the law of the jungle. There is a crisis at the border and pretending there is not is only going to once again fuel the most ignorant and silliest of fixes. Like sending privately funded National Guard troops south. Nativists and those who have no understanding of how America became the global powerhouse it is will once again grandstand over the undocumented flood.

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