This from that bastion of secure borders, the Wall Street Journal:

“House Republicans are already spooked about immigration, and should one of our own lose on the issue, you will see panic break out,” one GOP congressman told me. At the same time, several GOP pollsters, led by Whit Ayres, say their surveys show it is vital that Republicans pass some immigration bill this year to prove they can govern.”[Is Cannon Fodder? |One GOP congressman may lose his seat for his pro-immigration views, while another offers a compromise. By John Fund, May 30, 2006]

With fingers crossed in hopes that Cannon is history - and without going into the nonsense of the Pence proposal - I make the observation that the GOP, as the party in power, may want to demonstrate that it will actually enforce existing law to “prove they can govern.”

Fat chance.

Memo to the GOP–any legislation that allows illegal aliens to remain is amnesty.

No bill is far better than a bad bill. What the Senate has given you is beyond a bad bill. It is suicide.

The European Union has been the ideal for many a Davos man of uber-government bureaucracy, with unelected officials given plenty of control over running everything. Add in a stunning degree of dhimmitude toward jihadist headchoppers, appeasement toward Islam generally and anti-Americanism in spades, and you have today’s EU.

Like NAFTA, the EU started out as a trade association. But elites found that it was a handy way to diminish representative government (with all those annoying citizens expecting their rights) by undermining sovereignty. Say, isn’t that what Ralph Nader used to warn against — corporate power threatening American democracy?

(In a recent marketing ploy, the EU tried to sell itself with the only part of diversity that people actually like — food, including a poster with delicious-looking traditional desserts.)

At any rate, Europeans have not been happy with post-national political union (particularly the immigration part) and have used their remaining shreds of self-rule to say so [EU is at a turning point, LA Times, By Charles A. Kupchan, May 30, 200].

In Britain and Poland in the last month, nationalistic parties uneasy with integration into the European Union have scored major advances. The EU constitution, rejected last year by France and the Netherlands, is dead in the water. Economic nationalism and protectionism are surging. The French, Italian, Spanish and Polish governments recently have taken steps to protect national industries from foreign takeover.

On a continent that dreamed of eliminating national borders, hostility toward immigrants — especially those from Muslim countries — is causing national boundaries to spring back to life.

In short, political life across Europe is being renationalized, plunging the enterprise of European integration into its most serious crisis since World War II.

At least the European Union has been presented to the people in a more or less straightforward way. In this country, the shotgun marriage with Mexico (and Canada), aka the North American Union, has been developed in stealth, disguised with open borders and permissive immigration, because the American people would never give up the nation which many thousands in uniform died to preserve.

During the recent Senate bloviations on immigration and making English the nation’s official language, Sen. Boxer (D-CA) of Marin County said:

“Why do we have to say that English is the language that we speak in America? Are we that insecure about ourselves?”

Much of what passes for “debate” over immigration and the national question consists of this kind of posturing intended to suggest that the speaker is so rich, powerful, talented, and all-around superior that he or she can afford to be utterly insouciant about any conceivable side-effect of immigration.

In contrast, Enoch Powell pointed out that insecurity about the future is the appropriate attitude of our elected officials:

“The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils.”