New York Times: if the "nativists" weren't really "anti-immigration", they'd support massive immigration

The New York Times editorial board is back with yet another very special editorial (link):

One of the false pieties uttered by anti-immigration politicians is that they love immigrants. If that were true, Congress would not be having so much trouble passing a simple law to smooth out a serious kink in the legal immigration pipeline.

Seriously, does anyone - even those in their target market - buy this? One doesn't have to support all types and all levels of immigration in order to "love immigrants". That should have been obvious to even the writers of their screed.

What they're advocating for is "visa recapture", where visas that weren't used for one reason or other can be applied to the current year's limit. If this were a video they'd have a Harry Shearer-narrated animation of their sales job:

Every year thousands of potential green cards vanish, like unused cellphone minutes.

The visas they're discussing are green cards, although I haven't checked whether H1Bs and the like would be covered as well. The two bills they mention are sponsored by immigration lawyer Zoe Lofgren and Robert Menendez, so there's probably a lot more they aren't mentioning; see also this.

Immigration2008a · Fri, 10/03/2008 - 10:11 · · Importance: 2