By VINCENT J. CANNATO

It would be no exaggeration to say that the Republican Party has been in a state of panic since the defeat of Mitt Romney, not least because the election highlighted America's demographic shifts and, relatedly, the party's failure to appeal to Hispanics, Asians, single women and young voters. Hence the Republican leadership's new willingness to pursue immigration reform, even if it angers the conservative base.
Before Republicans jump at whatever reform Democrats may offer up, they should read Jeb Bush and Clint Bolick's "Immigration Wars," about as sensible a look at immigration policy as one will find these days. Mr. Bush, the former Florida governor, and Mr. Bolick, a conservative legal activist, understand what so many Republicans don't: that the "comprehensive" immigration plans being bandied about today are anything but comprehensive.
The authors liken immigration policy to a hydroelectric dam that is "decrepit and crudely cemented over" (not exactly an elegant analogy); instead of patching it, they say, we need to replace it. Simply put: America's immigration laws need an overhaul, not piecemeal reform. The authors argue that adding a few more visas for high-skilled workers and passing the Dream Act—a proposed bill that aims to give eventual citizenship to illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16—will only temporarily mend a broken system.
Current immigration policy was created in 1965 to rectify the flaws of an older, discriminatory quota arrangement. The 1965 law was poorly constructed and had many unintended consequences. Under the law, more than two-thirds of legal immigrants to the U.S. receive the right to legal permanent residence because they are related to immigrants already in the country. "The eight-hundred-pound gorilla in immigration policy," Messrs. Bush and Bolick write, is "family reunification." Only about 20% of yearly visas are reserved for skilled workers. The rest go to refugees, asylum seekers and winners of the so-called diversity lottery, which rewards visas to people from countries that don't send many immigrants to America. If you don't qualify under one of these categories, it is difficult to immigrate legally to America.
Instead, Messrs. Bush and Bolick call for a serious tightening of family reunification, limiting it to spouses and the minor children of U.S. citizens. (The current law allows visas for adult children of immigrants as well as siblings, a policy that, over time, widens out the kinship field considerably.) Second, they call for dramatic increases in visas for high-skilled workers and entrepreneurs. Third, they argue for a guest-worker program for lower-skilled workers pegged to market demand: Such a program would allow for a steady but regulated stream of seasonal workers. Fourth, they want to replace the diversity lottery with a "system for regular immigration," which would allow easier entry for those who don't qualify for family reunification or work visas.
As for illegal immigration, Messrs. Bush and Bolick call for a pathway to legalization but not to citizenship. To reward those who entered the country illegally with citizenship would be a blow to the rule of law, they say, but bestowing permanent resident status will at least bring people out from the shadows. As it happens, about half of illegal immigrants don't covertly cross the Mexican border but overstay their visas and remain in the country illegally. The authors would like to see stepped-up enforcement—including a biometric verification system for visa holders—but argue that the best way to crack down on illegal immigration is to increase work visas and lessen the temptation to enter illegally.
As good as "Immigration Wars" is, it isn't without problems. Messrs. Bush and Bolick call for increases in work-based immigration and for easing the flow of regular immigrants, yet they are hazy about caps or yearly quotas. Even a pro-immigration policy needs to have limits. Millions of people apply unsuccessfully each year for visas, yet the authors provide few clues about which criteria they would use to grant visas to some and not to others. In fact, the Bush-Bolick plan would substantially increase the number of legal immigrants entering the country.
The book's final chapter, "Prescription for Republicans," calls for the GOP to work harder to reach out to Hispanics, Asians and other minorities. Yet it repeats the standard line about Hispanics being natural Republican voters, ignoring the fact that Hispanics seem increasingly attracted to the Democratic Party's message of bigger government. That more than half of Hispanic births are to unmarried mothers is a reminder that the GOP's electoral troubles can't be solved by simply recasting its immigration position. Hispanics will obviously be a tougher sell on Republican economic programs than Messrs. Bush and Bolick would like to admit.
That fact leads to the ultimate irony of "Immigration Wars": Even if all of its proposals miraculously become law, Hispanics may well dislike the law itself. Limiting family reunification for the sake of more highly skilled workers will favor other groups over Hispanics and rile the immigration-rights lobby, which increasingly sees immigration as a civil right. The policy changes that Messrs. Bush and Bolick propose would undoubtedly serve the nation's economic needs better than the current law, but it is unclear whether Republicans would ever reap a political reward. Still, "Immigration Wars" contains a message that needs to be heard by members of both political parties. Unless we have a real overhaul of American immigration law—not just a cosmetic one driven by political pressures—the immigration wars will continue, and Americans will be fighting them for decades to come.

Mr. Cannato, who teaches history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, is the author of "American Passage: The History of Ellis Island."