Mickey Kaus writes: “…the invasion of Iraq and ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ actually have more in common than you might think. Far from being a sensible centrist departure from the sort of grandiose, wishful thinking that led Bush into Iraq, ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ is of a piece with that thinking.” Kaus goes on to list what he considers to be 10 similarities between the Iraq invasion and immigration reform. His list is useful in pointing the way to 10 differences that actually demonstrate why the two subjects have no business being lumped together:

1. When Bush came into office, only right-wing ideologues like him supported the idea of invading Iraq; in contrast, the kinds of immigration reforms generally considered to be part of the comprehensive approach that Kaus derides were widely endorsed in the Democratic party. (See page 35 of the 2000 Democratic Party platform). Democrats have generally opposed the guest worker piece that Bush continues to push in the absence of a mechanism for enabling such people to get on the path toward citizenship. But the basic idea of simultaneously combining new enforcement strategies, particularly targeted at employers involving some sort of electronic i.d. system, with a process that would enable undocumented immigrants to get on a track toward earned citizenship is one that had much, much broader bipartisan support back in 2000 than the idea of launching an Iraq invasion.

2. The Iraq invasion was driven by ideology to address an imaginary problem; immigration reformers are trying to pragmatically make progress against a problem that no one denies. Across the spectrum, everyone agrees that the immigration system is a mess, and that it undermines the U.S. rule of law for 11-plus million undocumented individuals to be living in our borders. The status quo is obviously crazy. Based on our historical difficulties in preventing those problems – Mickey points to the largely unsuccessful 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli reforms – no one is naively proclaiming that new legislation will work easily and smoothly. No immigration reformers are promising the equivalent of being greeted as liberators. But the problems are real, and everyone agrees that something big has to be done – the question is what. Nothing had to be done about Iraq.

3. Invading a country is a “grander” solution by orders of magnitude than a package of immigration reforms that simultaneously attempt to address intersecting problems. The comprehensive approach to immigration reform is more like the 1983 Social Security package, the 1986 tax reform act, or even Mickey’s personal favorite – welfare reform – in that it includes a bunch of different provisions that together attempt to work toward an overarching goal both from a policy and political standpoint. If you squeeze too hard on one side of the balloon, the whole thing could pop. The rationale for universal health coverage as opposed to incremental changes is much the same. There’s nothing unusual or wrong-headed about major domestic legislation having a lot of moving parts – some of the most successful governmental actions of the past have been “comprehensive.” By comparison, the very simple-mindedness of invasion as a clear-cut solution to the ostensible Iraq problem underscores what can go wrong when you ignore or downplay the potential ripple effects of the policy.

4. If immigration reform requires a triple bank shot to work out, the Iraq invasion is more akin to the blind Mr. Magoo trying to bicycle from coast to coast (sorry for the dated reference, young people). The very failures of the earlier immigration reforms at least provide some clues that we can draw on this time around, particularly on the employer enforcement front, to avoid repeating the same mistakes. So there’s a pretty good chance that some progress will be made – at the very least, by making it easier to deal with the sundry problems connected to the existing undocumented workforce. But to say that both Iraq and immigration are complicated is no more useful than saying checkers and chess are both games.

5. Kaus is right that the “weak spot” of immigration reform is the difficulty of administratively preventing millions of impoverished foreigners from sneaking across thousands of miles of unprotected borders – and preventing millions of self-interested employers from hiring them. But we kind of have to try something new at this point, ideally drawing on technology that wasn’t available when the last reforms were instituted. Iraq has many, many, many much weaker spots. And the tragedy is that we could have chosen to leave them all well enough alone.

6. Repeating mistakes is dumb, and Kaus is of course right that the lessons of Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia should have deterred the effort to impose democracy on Iraq. But how does it follow that we shouldn’t try to fix our failing immigration system because the last attempt didn’t work? It would be stupid to just warm over Simpson-Mazzoli. But that’s not what’s going on now.

7. Bill Kristol’s support for immigration reform is indeed cause for alarm, but remember that all he cares about is politics. He favors immigration reform because he thinks it would help boost Hispanic support for Republicans, just as he thinks invading countries is good because Republicans generally do better when there’s a war on (sorry, Bill!). He’s totally clueless as a policy analyst, though – he just doesn’t care about any outcomes other than political ones. This is one issue where bedfellows get especially strange. Suffice it so say that the Republican ranks and places like the National Review are filled with former supporters of the invasion and opponents of immigration reform.

8. Kaus says that in both cases, Bush plan enthusiasts may not really mind a chaotic end result; whatever, but in the case of immigration chaos is exactly what we have now and why something needs to be done to try to bring about some degree of order.

9. Mickey notes that in both cases there are less grand, and less risky, alternatives. On immigration, he would prefer to put in place only new enforcement mechanisms, and make sure they work, before “rewarding those illegals who already made it across the border.” The problem with that approach, which may seem logical, is that an important part of the new enforcement regime will relate to the system employers are required to use to verify the status of workers. If the undocumented workers now in the country would be more likely to get nailed under that new system, which ought to be the case if it actually works, then presumably millions will quickly become subject to deportation. Only the Tom Tancredos of the world want that. To get them “out of the shadows,” which really is the overriding crisis we have now, will require creating a path to earned citizenship as those new enforcement mechanisms are implemented. Again, half-measures would pop the balloon, from the standpoint of both policy and politics. (On the other hand, anything short of invasion would obviously have been a much better idea for Iraq.)

10. Kaus says that the consequences of losing the bet in both the Iraq and immigration cases would be severe – he talks about America ending up with a Quebec problem and how it would be worse than Iraq, from which we can always withdraw, because it would change who “we” are. Personally, I still try to think we are residents of a nation that values human lives and the rule of law to a greater extent than other countries. That’s why we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq and that’s why we need comprehensive immigration reform (though I can wait until after Bush leaves office to get it).