EVERYBODY knows that America’s immigration system is a mess. It turns away too many useful people—skilled scientists and engineers at one end of the pay scale, agricultural labourers at the other. And it also leaves 11m people—the mostly Hispanic illegal immigrants who have often worked in America for years yet fear the knock on the door followed by summary deportation to a country they no longer know—to live within its borders but in the shadows.

During his first term Barack Obama promised comprehensive reform time and again. Yet time and again he shied away from it. This week the political landscape shifted. On January 28th a bipartisan group of eight senators published their plan for reform, which they are now working up into a full-scale bill. A day later Mr Obama weighed in (see article) with a speech outlining his own scheme, and threatening to send his own bill to Congress unless it acts quickly.

In their plans, both the senators and Mr Obama have met the first test for a reform worth having: offering a path to citizenship to most of the 11m. Critics will excoriate this “amnesty” as capitulating to criminals, but it is far better than forcing generally law-abiding people to live in a persistent and incurable state of lawlessness. And the amnesty would not be unconditional: the illegals would have to pay a hefty fine and wait a good while for their citizenship to come through. But in the meantime they would be immune from deportation, and be able to work (and to pay their taxes) legally.

The real problem comes over timing. The group of eight, in their desire to keep their Republicans on board, are insisting that border security be beefed up before the process of legalising the 11m can begin. But the border will never be truly secure, and anything that smacks of making that a precondition risks becoming a way of ensuring that comprehensive reform never happens. In fact, thanks to much better policing, as well as a system of workplace checks called E-Verify (and, admittedly, the recession), illegal border-crossing has slowed to historically low levels. By all means beef up E-Verify and the rest of the apparatus; but reform in the other areas must take place at the same time. This is what Mr Obama wants, and he is right.