Yes, we're going bananas

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From last Friday's edition of The Washington Times: "The Senate voted yesterday to allow illegal aliens to collect Social Security benefits based on past illegal employment."

Well, I think that's the kind of moderate compromise "comprehensive immigration reform" package all Americans can support, don't you? Some mean-spirited extremist House Republicans had proposed illegal aliens should receive 75 percent of the benefits to which they're illegally entitled for having broken the law.

On the other hand, President Bush had proposed illegal aliens should also be able to collect Social Security benefits for any work they had done in Mexico (assuming, for the purposes of argument, there is any work to be done in Mexico).

On the other other hand, Republican Sens. Trent Lott of Mississippi and Ted Stevens of Alaska had added earmarks to the bill proposing that the family of Mohamed Atta should be entitled to receive survivor benefits plus an American Airlines pilot's pension based on past illegal employment flying jets over the Northeast corridor on Tuesday mornings in late 2001.

Fortunately, the world's greatest deliberative body was able to agree on this sensible moderate compromise.

Meanwhile, from the Associated Press: "Mexico warned Tuesday it would file lawsuits in U.S. courts if National Guard troops detain migrants on the border."

On what basis? Posse Comitatus? It's unconstitutional to use the U.S. military against foreign nationals before they've had a chance to break into the country and become fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community? Or is Mexico taking legal action on the broader grounds that in America it's now illegal to enforce the law? Which, given that Senate bill, is a not unreasonable supposition.

Whatever. Under the new "comprehensive immigration reform" bill (Posse Como Estas), a posse of National Guardsmen will be stationed in the Arizona desert but only as Wal-Mart greeters to escort members of the Illegal-American community to the nearest Social Security Office to register for benefits backdated to 1973.

Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, in a quintessentially McCainiac contribution to the debate, angrily denied the Senate legislation was an "amnesty." "Call it a banana if you want to," he told his fellow world's greatest deliberators. "To call the process that we require under this legislation amnesty frankly distorts the debate and it's an unfair interpretation of it."

He has a point. Technically, an "amnesty" only involves pardoning a person for a crime rather than, as this moderate compromise legislation does, pardoning him for a crime and also giving him a cash bonus for committing it. In fact, having skimmed my Webster's, I can't seem to find a word that does cover what the Senate is proposing, it having never previously occurred to any other society in the course of human history. Whether or not, as Mr. McCain says, we should call it a singular banana, it's certainly plural bananas.