Very interesting stuff. After everyone - including the media and, apparently, pro-immigration groups - ingested the conventional wisdom that immigration was dead until at least after the November election, pro-comprehensive reform forces are suddenly being routed on the Hill by the security-firsters.

The House started the ball rolling last week with the Secure Fence Act of 2006. Yesterday, the Senate voted 94-0 to take the measure up and President Bush said on national television he'd sign it. House Republicans then followed up the fence bill by passing a voter ID requirement yesterday along near party lines. Today, they're putting the pedal even further to the metal with seven more immigration related votes scheduled, including the Border Tunnel Prevention Act of 2006, the Community Protection Act of 2006, and the Immigration Law Enforcement Act of 2006.

Obviously, Republicans have come to the conclusion that security-first immigration measures are critical to their reelection prospects this year. But this piece by John Kamman analyzing the impact of immigration on races in Arizona this year quotes Tamar Jacoby, the notoriously pro-immigration Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, saying that while Republicans think they've struck an electoral gold mine by getting tough on illegal immigration, it's really just fool's gold:

If immigration does give a victory to the GOP hard-liners, it would be the first time a get-tough approach has been such a powerful force in a federal election, a Washington, D.C.-based policy analyst says.

"In the past 10 years, a lot of politicians have looked at polling and said, 'Here's this big pocket of voters who don't like immigration,' " said Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute.

"It has turned out in every instance to be fool's gold (as a campaign issue)," she said.

Kamman goes on to write the following:

Statewide, public opinion so far indicates only modest support for the super-enforcement policy advocated by Hayworth in the district stretching north from Ahwatukee through Scottsdale and by GOP nominee Randy Graf in the district running from Tucson to the Mexican border.

I find that a bit strange, given that just a couple clicks away on the AZ Republic web site you can find this story by Dan Nowicki reporting how Jon Kyl is currently pulverizing Jim Pederson over a remark he made on a local radio show caling the Simpson-Mazzoli bill (a.k.a. amnesty) "the last effective (immigration) measure that passed Congress." Senate races are statewide contests, aren't they?

The fact is, amnesty is a dirty word, and House Republicans have done a good job of framing "comprehensive reform" as amnesty, and also of linking illegal immigration to concerns about national security. My feeling is that this makes the House-led approach more like a gold mine - at least in the short term and the coming election. The fear of some, however, is that tough measures by the GOP now will turn out to be fool's gold in the end, if they alienate a big chunk of the fast-growing bloc of Hispanic voters in the future.