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The new Congress has come ready with some fresh ideas for immigration reform. Freshman Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said in a recent interview, We have to start with a secure border, we have to start with a guest worker program. Gardner is right to link border security with a guest worker visa program. The former cannot be achieved without the latter.

Gardners comments are an under appreciated bit of common sense in an immigration debate stubbornly stuck between the polar opposite demands for nearly unlimited border security from the populist Right and unconditional amnesty from the progressive Left. Neither position will stop illegal immigration.

Doubling down on enforcement by itself wont work. Since 1992, there has been an almost 500 percent increase in the number of Border Patrol agents and patrol hours spent along the Southwest border. In 2014, apprehensions a proxy measure of the number of illegal crossers were little more than a fourth of their 2000 peak of 1.6 million. Last years apprehensions were almost 100,000 fewer than they were forty years ago in 1974.

Doubling down on enforcement by itself wont work.

Texas Republican Rep. Mike McCauls new Secure Our Borders First Act would amass dubious technologies at the border fences and other security gimmicks that will have little impact on an already trivial flow of unlawful immigrants. Instead of beefing up security, a guest worker visa program could decrease illegal immigration even further. History provides a prime example.

In 1953, there were about 2 million illegal immigrants from Mexico in the United States. By 1955, the number had fallen 90 percent and the cross-border flow nearly ceased all while the number of Border Patrol agents actually dropped. This turnaround was achieved by the expansion of the so-called Bracero guest worker visa program.

After the expansion, Mexican workers learned that they could get a work visa easily. The visa allowed American farmers to legally hire migrant workers with minimum government oversight. Border Patrol helped by handing illegal immigrants a Bracero visa at their worksites. Many times, Border Patrol even brought the workers to the border so they could take one step into Mexico and immediately into the U.S. legally a process dubbed walking around the statute.

Once Mexican migrants realized it was simple and cheap to get a visa and American farmers realized they could hire all of the legal migrant workers they demanded, the illegal immigrant market virtually disappeared. At this point, Border Patrol and immigration enforcement focused on those few illegal immigrants that remained a job made much easier, because Bracero shrunk their numbers so dramatically.

Bracero was ended in 1965, due primarily to opposition from labor unions. As a result, the number of illegal immigrants shot up after that year. This deprived American businesses of a legal way to hire migrants, and migrants of a safe and legal way to enter, ushering in the modern age of illegal immigration.

Enforcement is vital but it is merely an expensive band aid without a functional guest worker visa program. The government cant get a handle on illegal immigration without a guest worker visa program to legalize much of the flow. A large and lightly regulated guest worker visa will drive would-be illegal immigrants into the legal system an option that currently does not exist for them.

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The Smart Way to Stop Illegal Immigration

With no fewer than two Texans and a pair of Hispanics interested in the presidency, the Republican Party is starting to think that maybe, just maybe, 2016 is the year it can win over Hispanics and, by extension, the White House.

After all, Ted Cruz and Rick Perry have succeeded in Texas, where Hispanics are already the largest ethnic group. Republicans did well in 2014 in New Mexico and Colorado. Marco Rubio is interested in being president. What could possibly go wrong?

One word: immigration.

In the new Congress, the first order of business is opposing President Barack Obamas controversial executive order slowing deportations. The second order of business is another bloated bill spending billions on the Mexican border. The presidential hopefuls have kowtowed to the Houses biggest immigrant basher. It seems that being against Mexicans, to be blunt, is the new litmus test for being a conservative Republican politician.

First, a little history: Shortly after George H.W. Bush was elected president in 1988, I wound up in the office of Lee Atwater, the ruthless but amiable genius who engineered the election. He enthusiastically explained how the Republican Party could attract Hispanic voters. After all, Ronald Reagan had just signed a comprehensive immigration law. It sounded plausible, but then two things happened: Bush was defeated and Atwater died. The idea languished.

That is, until George W. Bush came along. As Texas governor, he spent time on education and appointed more Hispanics to government than Democrats had. He netted about 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. As president, before 9/11, he wanted to make Mexico the centerpiece of his foreign policy.

Later, he backed another sweeping overhaul of immigration laws that failed. One of his last acts was to ban the automatic deportation of Central American children who arrived here without parents. Cultivating ties to Mexico, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans was popular with business, and it resulted in political rewards. But by the time Bush was on his way out, his party was headed in the opposite direction.

In 2008, tea party conservatives punished John McCain for his complicity in the failed immigration overhaul. In 2012, it was not Rick Perrys televised senior moment that destroyed his presidential ambition; it was a tea party furious that he allowed in-state tuition for college students whose parents had brought them, with no say, to this country undocumented.

Despite Hispanic support at the polls, Democrats werent doing much better. Obama promised immigration reform but delivered more deportations than all presidents from the 1870s through the 1990s combined. Most Hispanic Americans know someone in this country illegally a misdemeanor, by the way, not a felony and it was the top issue to Hispanics who voted in 2014. It was probably a reason, too, that many did not vote.

Today, the litmus test for conservative politicians seems not their concern about the deficit or even their opposition to abortion. Its this: How anti-Mexican are you? (Not anti-Mexican-American, mind you.)

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