New York Times Editorial - Immigration's lost year

New York Times Editorial - Immigration's lost year
Copyrightg by The New York Times
Published: September 19, 2006


Leaders of the U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush insisted for months that they were serious about fixing the immigration system. They weren't, and the more talk Americans hear about border security, about building walls and getting tough this time, the clearer it will be that hopes for effective immigration reform this year are past saving, pinned down by strong arms in the Republican-controlled House and kicked until dead.

The latest proposals are the product of a Republicans-only "forum" last week that distilled the bilge water of a summer's worth of immigration "hearings," which were actually badly disguised campaign events.

Like the summer hearings, the latest Republican legislation is an empty vessel, a sham product aimed at the November elections that sells the test-marketed concept of "security" with little to back it up. By decreeing that a 700-mile fence should be America's top immigration priority while rabidly opposing a path to legal status for illegal immigrants, the House Republicans are hotly pursing a failed strategy. What satisfies the talk-radio appetite for justice - wall 'em out and deport the rest - is not just needlessly cruel. It also won't work.

If the House Republicans have their way and enforcement-only becomes U.S. policy, illegal immigrants will keep their heads down and keep working, cowed into accepting low pay and abuse, dragging down working conditions for everybody else. Lawlessness among the employers who hire them will be encouraged.

Real immigration security means separating the harmful from the hard-working. It means imposing the rule of law on the ad-hoc immigrant economy. It means freeing up resources so that overburdened law- enforcement agencies can restore order at the border and in the workplace. It means holding employers, not just workers, responsible for obeying the law. And it means tapping the energy of vast numbers of immigrants who dream of becoming citizens and who can make the United States stronger.

These are huge tasks, and the anti- immigrant forces have nothing to contribute. They are out of ideas, except about getting re-elected. Their calculated half-measures mock Americans' support for comprehensive reform, which has been repeatedly confirmed in opinion polls.