HOW HE SEES IT First things first: Secure our borders

By MICHAEL GOODWIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Given the importance and emotions surrounding immigration, you'd think Washington would want to get to the heart of the problem. But then you'd be guilty of living in a fantasyland.
The last thing either party wants to do is solve the crisis. Both much prefer pretense to the risky business of actually dealing with the facts.
The biggest illusion, embraced by President Bush and many Democrats and Republicans, is that America must somehow first legalize the 11 million-plus illegals here before closing the borders. Right, let's clean up the water on the floor before we plug the leaky pipe. You don't have to be a plumber to know that's not going to work.
There is no plan
The shocking truth is that nobody in Washington has a real and humane plan to stop the flow of illegals coming into the United States. An estimated 3,000 people from Mexico alone scramble over and under the border each day, yet the bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee would merely double the number of border agents over five years. With about 1 million illegal immigrants coming here each year, any legislation that doesn't bring border control is doomed to fail.
Indeed, the situation now is a direct result of Washington's last "solution." Twenty years ago, with as many as 6 million illegal immigrants in the country, Congress passed and Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty bill that also had guest-worker provisions and sanctions against employers. What it didn't have was effective border control, or real enforcement. You see the result.
The reason nobody wants to tackle border control is ... I don't actually know the reason. Especially after 9/11, it should be a no-brainer, both good policy and good politics. But the war on terror is ignoring not only the back door, but the front door, too.
Scary stuff
Undercover investigators recently smuggled into the U.S. enough radioactive material to make two dirty bombs, The New York Times reported last week. Using forged documents, truck drivers got through checkpoints on both the Mexican and Canadian borders even though radiation detectors sounded.
Those detectors should be a wakeup call, but Washington keeps hitting the snooze button.
Eyes wide shut, the pols and an army of advocates are consumed with the details of legalization proposals for those already here. Stereotypes are running wild, with the bleeding hearts seeing every immigrant as a hardworking, churchgoing, law-abiding victim.
The hard-heart extreme sees the same people as lazy, shifty thieves stealing services and jobs. The latter view dominates in a bill passed by the House that would make it a felony to live in the U.S. illegally, instantly turning 11 million immigrants into criminals. The bill's provision that would make it a crime to assist illegals is an easy target for protesting opponents, including the Catholic cardinal of Los Angeles.
Sharing the blame
The Mexican government is also at fault: It openly backs legalization and winks at its citizens' exodus. Our porous borders are a boon to Mexico because the remittances illegal immigrants send home are a huge source of consumer capital. Bush is meeting with President Vicente Fox in Cancun tomorrow, but he shouldn't expect much help. Despite millions of dollars in direct U.S. aid, Mexico, according to a study by the Heritage Foundation, voted against the U.S. about 65 percent of the time in the United Nations.
I'd say we're getting ripped off.
X Michael Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.