Chicago Tribune Editorial - Bush's border politics

Chicago Tribune Editorial - Bush's border politics
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Published April 12, 2007

President Bush's prescription for immigration reform has always included four points: border security, workplace enforcement, a guest worker system to address this nation's labor shortages and a plan to bring the 12 million immigrants living here illegally into the open.

U.S. Reps. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) nailed all four points in the 700-page bill they tossed onto the table two weeks ago. The bill drew predictable scowls from recalcitrants who think the solution is to wall off the border, period. But it has much in common with the comprehensive bill passed last year by the Senate and favored by Bush. With a little muscle from the president, it seemed, the Flake-Gutierrez bill could pass. And work.

But Monday, the president poured cold water on that plan. He doesn't think it's restrictive enough to get through Congress. Determined to sign an immigration law before he leaves the White House, Bush has been meeting with Senate leaders to draft a measure that he hopes will appease enough hard-liners to ensure passage. The plan he sketched out Monday is less welcoming than the Flake-Gutierrez bill, or last year's Senate legislation.

Like the Flake-Gutierrez bill, Bush's plan calls for more guards at the border, better systems for verifying the legal status of job applicants and stiffer penalties against employers who hire illegal workers. But the president is backing away from the idea of "earned citizenship" for immigrants who have settled here illegally. His plan would allow them to stay indefinitely under a renewable "Z" visa that would cost $3,500 every three years. But to get green cards and eventual citizenship, they would have to leave the country and return through regular channels after paying a $10,000 fine.

Those are steep costs for workers at the bottom of the labor ladder, but the greater obstacle is the shortage of visas that would let them re-enter legally. Bush's plan does little to reconcile the huge gap between the number of jobs that need to be filled and the much smaller number of visas that are granted. Bush would increase the number of worker visas slightly by diverting visas now allotted for applicants who want to join family members already living here. That would reverse a long-standing policy of promoting family unification and would net only a fraction of the workers needed. It's not worth it.

Bush's plan also provides for an unspecified number of low-skilled guest workers who would have to leave this country after two years and wait six months before returning. Those workers could not bring their families and would not be working toward citizenship.

Immigrants and their advocates consider the Bush plan a betrayal given his assertions that "family values don't stop at the Rio Grande." They also say the plan would create a permanent underclass of revolving-door guest workers and Z-visa sub-citizens.

Those are valid concerns. The country would be better served by a plan that encourages immigrants and their families to put down roots -- to assimilate, invest and build communities.

White House staffers insist the president has merely outlined his "talking points" and is open to other approaches. Let's count on it. In the meantime we can be grateful for the relative quiet of the hostile hard-liners who dominated last year's debate. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) can still be counted on to demand the deportation of illegals, but he's not calling the shots. The people who have the floor right now -- on Capitol Hill and in the White House -- don't yet agree on immigration legislation. But they are focused on getting the job done.