A year or two ago, most observers thought that immigration “reform” was a foregone conclusion. The entire Democratic Party wanted it, including union leaders who were happy to sacrifice their members’ interests; the Chamber of Commerce wanted it; quite a few libertarians were OK with it; and just about every rich person (and political donor) in America, it seemed, was on board. Democrats and the media confidently declared that Republicans had to go along with amnesty and other “reforms,” or cease to exist.

It was about that time when Senator Jeff Sessions began waging his lonely battle on behalf of American workers. He and his staff tirelessly assembled data, sought information from experts, argued their case with fellow conservatives, and, in the case of Sessions himself, took to the Senate floor to argue and cajole. Sessions has delivered a series of speeches on immigration that, in persuasiveness and effect, deserve to be ranked with some of the great 19th-century debates.

Along the way, a funny thing happened. Sessions’s campaign on behalf of American workers went from quixotic to plausible to victorious. Due largely to his efforts, and those of his growing ranks of allies, there is little chance that Congress will pass an immigration package that sells out American citizens in the near future. Now, Sessions’s efforts have turned toward blocking the Obama administration’s plan to implement amnesty and other “reforms” through an unconstitutional executive decree.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has emerged as the face of Silicon Valley’s support for amnesty and expanded immigration quotas, notwithstanding persistently high unemployment and underemployment among America’s STEM graduates. So on the Senate floor, Sessions took on Zuckerberg in old-fashioned, populist style. Sit back and enjoy this video of Sessions in action; I score it as a TKO. But be sure to listen to the end, because it isn’t just a populist demolition. In the last minute or so of the video, in a peroration that is both moving and profound, Sessions reminds his fellow Senators of the social contract between Americans and their government, and calls on Senators and other government officials to return the loyalty of the American people.

It is remarkable that Sessions’s extraordinary campaign has not been more widely recognized. Surely there is a story here, but I don’t think that many of those who rely on CBS, NBC, CNN or their daily newspapers for information have any idea how or why the seemingly inexorable tide of “immigration reform” has been stemmed. I can only guess that most media outlets would rather not explain that it was the Republican Party standing up for American workers that killed the great immigration boondoggle, at least for now.