The latest attempt to fix the immigration system is stuck

FOR only the second time since he became president, George Bush went to lunch with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill on June 12th. They entertained him frugally: he had a peanut-butter and jam sandwich. And when he tried, strenuously and politely, to persuade them to revive his stalled immigration-reform plan, they gave him more peanuts.

The bill, a compromise drawn up by a small group of liberal and conservative senators, looked close to death last week when its supporters came 15 votes short of the 60 votes (out of 100) they needed to end debate and bring it to a vote. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, a Democrat, pulled the bill until, as he put it, the Republicans get their act together.

Both parties are divided on the issue, but the split is bitterest among Republicans. The party's pro-business wing favours easier immigration, so it supported provisions to allow in 400,000 guest workers a year and award more green cards to foreigners with useful skills. But its support is only lukewarm. The bill's points system substitutes the government's judgment for that of employers when assessing which immigrants the country needs. And an amendment slashing the guest-worker programme to 200,000 means that there will not be enough of them to meet the demand for their labour in America's fields and restaurants.

The Republicans' nativist wing is hotly opposed to the bill because it allows the estimated 12m illegal aliens already in the United States to become legal straightaway, and offers them a path (albeit a long one) to citizenship. This, the nativists wail, is an “amnesty” that will attract another surge of illegals across the border.

Mr Bush is trying to placate this group with promises of tougher border security. The bill calls for miles of fences, thousands of new border guards, a secure identity card for immigrants and a new obligation for employers to verify that anyone they hire is legally entitled to work. Employers resent the burden of doing the immigration service's job for it. Nativists, meanwhile, don't believe that Mr Bush is serious about enforcing the law. Nine Republican senators sent him an open letter demanding that he secure the border first before worrying about anything else. Another two bemoaned the fact that after the last big immigration reform in 1986, similar promises of enforcement were broken. Even blatant employers of illegals are rarely punished and almost never jailed.

Mr Bush has responded with a public-relations offensive to convince conservatives that he is as tough as he says he is. He said he would consider a separate emergency funding bill for border security. Two of his cabinet, Carlos Gutierrez, the commerce secretary, and Michael Chertoff, the homeland security chief, are appearing on television and talk radio to make the case for immigration reform. Lowlier officials are making their case on conservative blogs. Immigration agents are feeding lists of those who have ignored deportation orders into the FBI's crime database in the hope that the police will identify and collar them if they stop them for traffic offences. Some will, but others will doubtless prefer to pursue dangerous criminals.

The White House insists that the status quo is unacceptable. But the opponents of reform are more passionate than its supporters, the compromise bill before the Senate has parts that rile everyone and the Democrats are in no hurry to help Mr Bush win a domestic victory. So the bill's chances look dim. Getting past thousands of border patrol agents is easy, but 41 senators can block anything.
Jun 14th 2007 | WASHINGTON, DC