Sen. John McCain led the way toward sensible immigration reform before angry politics turned him around 180 degrees. Last week Arizona Republicans passed a punitive immigration bill that requires police there to stop anyone they think might be illegal and demand proof that they aren’t. This week Sen. McCain said he thought the law was dandy-fine.
The Arizona bill will wind up in court. It may very well be unconstitutional to require U.S. citizens to carry identification papers proving their citizenship, which the new law does. That’s not quite as bad as being forced to wear a yellow star if you are Jewish — but close. The justices could also toss the Arizona law out because writing immigration law is reserved to Congress.
Whatever, the angry action of the Arizona Legislature brought our im-migration mess back to center stage and reminded all and sundry that a new immigration policy belongs very high on the nation’s must-do list.
President George W. Bush thought that was the case in his first term and backed legislation to set up a guest worker program and create a path to citizenship for most of the 11-12 million illegal immigrants who were in the U.S. at the time. He lost that battle and gradually became more and more anti-immigrant as that sentiment swelled and became a conservative Republican talking point.
Rather than reform immigration law, Congress focused on border controls. That emphasis was strengthed by the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The number of border patrol officers was more than doubled. Headline grabbing raids were made on packing plants and other work places featuring dirty, dangerous conditions where immigrants found jobs. The tactics were made more successful by the recession, which dramatically re-duced the number of jobs available and even sent some illegals back to their home countries to find work.
Added together, the combination of recession, thousands more border patrolmen and stepped-up enforcement still didn’t change the immigration picture ma-terially.
There still are10-12 million illegals living, working, raising children and buying homes in America who have no way to become U.S. citizens. More are arriving every day even though the rate of border crossings has slowed from a flood to a steady trickle.
The need for a new policy remains pressing. George Bush and John McCain had the right idea all those years ago: the immigrants who have been in the U.S. for years — some for decades — should have a way to become citizens. Immigration quotas should be set based on a realistic estimate of the need for workers on ranches, truck farms, orchards, packing plants, hotels, restaurants and the other U.S. enterprises that largely depend on immigrants to keep them operating. And it would be good if U.S. immmigration authorities worked with Mexico and the other nations in our hemisphere to keep the immigration scene orderly and as friendly as can be managed.
PERHAPS PROGRESS must wait until after this fall’s elections. With the example of Arizona in mind, it seems clear that nothing rational can be accomplished in these next seven months. Be-hind closed doors, however, members of Congress from the states most affected could dig out those old, good, bills that McCain, Bush, Sam Brownback of Kansas, and many, many others helped write and then supported, dust them off, bring them up to date and offer a tidied up version for passage in, say, the second week of No-vember.
It’s a mess that really should be cleaned up as soon as it is politically possible, to show the world (and ourselves) that we actually believe in the principles we profess.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
