Mickey Kaus is one of my favorite bloggers, and now he's moved to Newsweek, which seems to be a better deal for Newsweek than for Mickey.

Nevertheless, they are paying him, so he feels duty-bound to produce his usual bald insights--this time on the issue of immigration reform. Most of you won't be surprised that its largely a two step process--enforcement then amnesty.

What Kaus makes clear though is why its never going to happen.

Why hasn't this obvious two-step plan been pursued? If it had been pursued, consistently, over the past decade, legalizers would have their amnesty by now. The answer must be that the "reformers" do not want one of the two steps. My friend "L" suggests that the politicians who say they're reformers don't really want Step Two, the amnesty. They want the prospect of a future amnesty to dangle as a carrot in front of Latino voters. If they ever actually achieved that amnesty, the carrot would be gone.

People are usually surprised and perplexed when I point out that institutions created to solve a problem have a vested interest in insuring that the problem is never solved. Think I'm crazy? Well, look at the schools. The quality of student performance is nearly the inverse proportion of the per pupil funding. The schools suck, but are nevertheless highly-successful institutions because the reality is that they exist not to turn out young educated minds, but perpetuate themselves with ever larger budgets.

But, for the non-cynical pro-legalization reformers, it has to be that they don't really want Step One, greater enforcement. Why not? If you've ever been to an immigration reform rally, you know that the movement is propelled in large part, by Latino ethnic solidarity. The first pro-reform rally I attended, in 2006, featured hundreds of Mexican flags. The last one, in DC this year, was conducted at least 50% in Spanish. No non-Latino immigrant groups were in evidence. A Step One policy that was actually effective in keeping out millions of worthy, job-seeking Latinos is simply more ethnic self-abnegation than this movement can stomach, even if it's the essential precondition for legalization.

Many voters, even those who approve of both steps, sense this logic--it's almost a proof--and therefore don't trust reformers to keep the "enforcement" half of the "comprehensive bargain." That distrust makes voters insist even more strongly that Step One come first--and that it precede Step Two by a significant period of time (years, not months) to make sure it sticks. This of course makes Step One even less palatable to the reformers, of course--which in turn magnifies voter distrust, increasing their insistence on "enforcement first," which in turn ... etc., etc.

This leaves me to ponder an unusual proposition--what if we treated illegal immigration like smoking?

By making smoking socially unacceptable, society has put a serious dent in the practice. I find myself almost astonished when I see someone smoking and to be perfectly frank, I can't help but entertain a poor opinion of someone engaged in the practice. (Before you ask--no, that's not the reason I'm so hard on Obama, but it doesn't help matters...). If people felt the same way about hiring illegal aliens, most would eventually find their way back to their villages.

Some ads, a few Oprah shows and this thing would be done.