VIRGINIA POSTREL points to this editorial by Steve Forbes on immigration policy. Forbes is right: It’s asinine.

We have the worst of all worlds in our current immigration system — it’s demeaning, unpredictable, and contemptuous toward would-be legal immigrants, while being porous toward illegals. And it’s the main experience most foreigners have of dealing with the United States government. When my Nigerian sister-in-law, before she married my brother, passed her citizenship test, my brother said he was glad that the person who swore her in was so nice, because it was the first time in the entire process that the process wasn’t run by a jerk.

This is a mess, and the Bush Administration isn’t fixing it. It should.