Some people have suggested that Not WRIGHT for America (http://www.notwrightforamerica.com) is hypocritical because we always slam Obama on illegal immigration when in fact McCain has a poor record on this issue also.

There is no question that while McCain has a fairly good Republican record, he does have a poor record on immigration. In the past he has supported efforts to give amnesty to illegal immigrants. However, John McCain does seem to have seen the light on one critical issue—as this article notes, his position now is that it is not appropriate to even discuss laws to make wholesale changes to the status of illegal immigrants already here until we secure the border. In other words, when you’re in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging.

I oppose amnesty because I do not believe in conferring benefits on people for breaking the law. However, the American public might go for amnesty if they believed it was the last amnesty that would be offered.

This is what killed the 2007 amnesty bill. The proponents claimed that it basically offered amnesty in exchange for finally securing the borders. But this was the same deal that was offered in 1986—and back then, liberals pocketed the amnesty parts of the law, and the new largely democrat voters that this amnesty produced. But the enforcement provisions, including the much touted implementation of the I-9 process, turned out to be a joke.

The public just did not buy it in 2007 because they did not trust Congress and the feds on enforcement. And adding to the credibility woes was the notorious bait-and-switch that Congress pulled just before the 2006 election. These politicians thought they were so clever when they authorized a border fence but they failed to fund it. So they could go home to their districts and say they voted for the fence, but the reality was without funding this vote changed nothing.

Well, this little ploy was exposed, in part thanks to the "Where's the Fence" ads above, and it destroyed any credibility on this issue that was left.

I think McCain has genuinely learned the lesson that amnesty is off the table until Congress and the federal government demonstrate that they are truly committed to securing the border. And it seems that for once, we are seeing effective enforcement, as the Center for Immigration Studies has noted a decline in the illegal immigration population for the first time in ages, thanks to enforcement.

And anecdotally, anyone who travels Interstate 8 between the Phoenix area and San Diego (this interstate runs very close to the border in much of California and parts of Arizona) will notice a difference in Border Patrol activity. That is, they are actually out there in force. In the past, they haven’t been, or if they were, they were very well disguised.

The bottom line is that with McCain, we may get amnesty, but we will also get enforcement. With Obama, it’s amnesty and open borders.

Though I will proudly vote for McCain, I admit that on this issue it is a question of which candidate is less bad. I know this does not please people like me who want our laws enforced, but it is reality.