I think EJ Dionne gets this wrong:
the strongest arguments in the restrictionists' arsenal played on a widespread belief that the federal government was too incompetent to enforce whatever tough provisions the bill contained. Bayh pointed to poor planning for the Iraq War and the failure to rebuild New Orleans after Katrina as leading inevitably to skepticism.
It wasn't a question of incompetence, but of will. Nobody believed the government would enforce the border provisions. During Katrina, the government failed because it operated poorly. Immigration enforcement fails because the government is actually subservient to the desires of corporate America, who don't want constant enforcement, or INS raids, or an end to illegal migrant labor.
The American people intuited, rightly, that the enforcement provisions were a political move, rather than the start of an actual commitment to end the employment of illegal immigrants in this country. It would not in fact be hard to create a biometric national ID card and deploy some sort of verification system, particularly in the industries most heavily populated by illegals. It's not being done because the relevant parties don't want to do it, not because they can't.
