ANOTHER UPDATE (to this posting): Thomas Sowell has three columns, here (on whether “amnesty” is really an inappropriate word), here (on those jobs Americans won’t do) and here (on precisely whose problems the immigration bill is intended to solve). And, while not directly related to the present topic, he explains the importance of putting rhetoric over fact here and here.

Of course, the President just has to engage in mis-characterization of the debate, as if it is about immigration qua immigration, rather than illegal immigration. From his speech at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center yesterday:

I want to introduce Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez -- I appreciate you coming, Mr. Secretary. (Applause.) Carlos wasn't born here, see. He was born in another country -- Cuba. And now he sits in the Cabinet of the President of the United States. There's something great about a country that welcomes people, people who uphold our laws and realize the great blessings of America.

With us, as well, is Senator Mel Martinez. He wasn't born in America. He's a Senator from Florida. He was born in Cuba. I don't know if you know his story, but his mother and father put him on an airplane to come to the United States of America, to be raised by total strangers because they didn't want their son to grow up under a tyrant named Fidel Castro. He used to sit in the Cabinet of the President of the United States; now he sits in the United States Senate. What a wonderful country it is, where people can come to live in a country based upon liberty, and realize the great blessings of our country.

And I want to mention those two men because, to me, they represent what the immigration debate is all about: Will we be a welcoming place, a place of law, that renews our spirit by giving people a chance to succeed? (emphasis added)

He had the temerity to go on to intimate that sceptics of the bill haven’t read it. He must be relying upon the CIA for that sort of information.

Thank you, Mr. President. You could have been helpful on the issue. But you were so much less.