Obama and Romney stopped talking about immigration until the Democrats dropped the Dream Bomb

corralled.  So mostly all we heard in 2008, as in 2006, was “operational control this,” “operational control that,” with the meat of immigration reform ending up on the floor of the D.C. slaughterhouse.

Fast forward to 2012. The wisdom of the candidates in 2008, bipartisan wisdom, appears as breathtaking as owning a basement with no sump pump.  

In the last four years about 20 state legislatures have invented their own immigration legislation to resolve IRCA-related problems.  Whether you like the state-level legislation or not — the Supreme Court is currently reviewing Arizona’s SB 1070 — state legislatures would never have been forced to pass any of their bills if the federal government had moved in a timely fashion to create national immigration legislation to replace the defunct IRCA. 

Now, in the summer of 2012, all the clues again pointed to another immigration deal between the Obama and Romney camps.  The big clues? First, the Obama administration’s Border Patrol announced last fall, then before Congress in this spring, that they had a new five-year national strategy.  This new strategy was, in short, premised upon nothing more than replacing the same darn measurement of operational control with a new measurement which CBP decided to hand off to a subcontractor.  Date that the subcontractor will produce the new measurement of operational control?   Two years.  Which is certainly a long time after voters mark their ballots in November. 

Then in May, another clue that this summer was going to be 2008 all over again: the Republican-controlled House passed the Secure Border Act.  Representative Candice Miller (R-Michigan), chair of the committee which authored the legislation stated, “Our common defense begins with effectively securing our borders, and the American people rightly expect and demand that the federal government take the responsibility to secure the borders.” In other words, here comes operational control all over again, this time from the Republican side of the aisle.

But then the big Democratic lollapalooza on 15 June.  Now that the dust has partially settled, the warts on this Dream Bomb are budding faster than Sarah Palin waned from the presidential scene .  Since it is an executive order, Obama’s Dream Act does not carry with it the force of law and, in fact, does little but tell ICE to stop deporting, at least until the next president takes over on 21 January 2012,  illegal immigrants brought to this country as children of a certain age.