Sen. John Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, has just released his much-discussed amendment to the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill. The amendment is extensive — 134 pages — and covers a number of areas in measuring and enhancing border security. But perhaps its major feature — certainly the one that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has called a “poison pill” — is its insertion of a real border-security trigger into the Gang of Eight bill.

If Cornyn’s amendment were adopted as part of the legislation, the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants who will be made legal shortly after passage of the bill would not be able to apply for green cards a decade later until new border security measures were actually in place. “The Secretary [of Homeland Security] may not adjust the status of aliens who have been granted registered provisional immigrant status,” the amendment says, until: