Amnesty and the Law of Unintended Consequences

History is repeating itself.

In 2006, illegal immigrants came out of the shadows and Congress voted to build 700 miles of fence along the nation’s southwestern border.

Americans are fair but there is little sympathy for foreign nationals who sneak across the border or overstay their visa, and then march in the streets and demand to be rewarded with a “path to citizenship.”

Public opinion polls show large majorities of Americans support Arizona’s tough new anti-illegal immigration law.

A Pew Research Center poll found broad support for Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants. Fifty-nine percent of Americans support the new law; a whopping 73 percent support requiring people to show police documents verifying their legal status.

Similarly, a McClatchy-Ipsos poll shows most Americans approve the law:

A strong majority of Americans support Arizona’s controversial new immigration law and would back similar laws in their own states.

Sixty-one percent of Americans — and 64 percent of registered voters — said they favored the law in a survey of 1,016 adults conducted May 6-9.

Strikingly, nearly half of Democrats like the law, under which local law enforcement officers are tasked with verifying people’s immigration status if they suspect them of being in the country illegally. While the Democratic Party generally is regarded as more sympathetic to illegal immigrants’ plights, 46 percent of Democrats said they favored the law for Arizona and 49 percent said they’d favor the law’s passage in their own states.

Indeed, the in-your-face protests and threats of a boycott are propelling illegal immigration near the top of Americans’ list of most pressing problems, according to a new Gallup poll.

The poll findings make you wonder why illegal immigrants and their supporters assume “comprehensive immigration reform” will lead to a “path to citizenship” for people who flout the rule of law.

If Congress listens to the American people, a national solution will lead to secure borders, workplace enforcement, and a path to detention and removal.