I wouldn’t lose any sleep over a law allowing illegal immigrants who arrived here as children to stay under some kind of normalization program…

…if the law was written well. And if it was, in fact, a law.

But it isn’t a law. And it isn’t – at least, it doesn’t appear to be – written well. Mickey Kaus writes:

(President Obama’s) decree doesn’t just apply to illegal immigrants who were “brought to this country by their parents.” It also would give work permits to those who snuck across the border by themselves as teenagers. “Through no fault of their own” is a talking point for DREAM proselytizers, not an actual legal requirement.

And:

The same goes for the phrase “and know only this country as home.” That’s a highly imaginative riff on the decree’s actual requirement, which is for 5 years “continuous residence.” It turns out “continuous residence” doesn’t mean what you think it means. “Immigration attorneys have been successful in getting immigration courts to whittle this down to a point where it is almost meaningless.”

On the other hand, depending on what you expect the bill to do, maybe that is “written well.” Next up: expanding the definition of “children” to 27 year olds. We require insurance companies to keep the “kids” on their parents’ insurance that long, don’t we?

Other questions also exist, but…oh, come on. Why now? Is that really an issue? When the President’s poll numbers are sagging?

Well, okay, let’s ask. Why now? When Florida’s Sen. Rubio – a Republican – is working on very similar legislation? Did they figure they had to pre-empt him somehow?

Whatever happened to bipartisanship?

And if that didn’t figure into it, then why didn’t Obama do this a long time ago? If it’s the right thing to do?

Ha. I crack myself up.

On the other hand, did the White House do it way too early?

If the next jobs report comes back looking weak, the question of adding so many new workers to the mix will begin to get asked by more and more people. That will trump any benefit Obama gets from the rule change, because people are far more interested in jobs and the economy than in immigration reform.

Like I said earlier: I’m sympathetic to the issue. But it’s just too much to ask for a solution (or an attempt at one) to this issue, instead of a Trojan Horse full of widespread amnesty and open borders.