Window of Opportunity (Immigration Bill) E. J. Dionne Jr. / WaPo

[Demeter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/28/AR2007052801054.html?referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email


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Window of Opportunity

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007; A13




Take, first, the Democrats. A substantial majority of them support giving 12 million or so illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. But they find two features of the bill particularly troublesome.
The most disconcerting is a guest-worker program through which about 200,000 immigrants would be admitted each year -- but only for two years. After that, they would in principle have to go home for a year before they could try to come back again. The problems with this are moral and practical. Guest workers are a bad idea. Workers should not be treated as if they were factors of production such as steel or plastic. They are human beings. The best way to guarantee the rights and wages of all Americans is to give every immigrant the opportunity to become a citizen, with all the rights and duties that entails. In any event, the notion that all or even most of the 200,000 guest workers would return home on schedule is laughable. We could be opening up a brand-new immigration problem.

The other provision that bothers so many Democrats, particularly Latinos, is a point system based on various qualifications, including employment and education, for determining who would get preferences for green cards. It would have the effect of making it harder for immigrants to bring in members of their families.

This idea has drawn fire from, among others, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Obama said the proposed system "places a person's job skills over his character and work ethic." In pushing to change this part of the bill, Clinton said tartly: "For those who often speak about family values, this is your opportunity to match your rhetoric with your action." (Here's betting that Clinton wins this one.) These are real issues, but they must be balanced against the urgency of doing something about the illegal immigrants already inside the United States. Most Democrats, uncharacteristically, agreed with President Bush when he said at his news conference Thursday: "You can't kick them out. Anybody who advocates trying to dig out 12 million people who have been in our society for a while is sending a signal to the American people that's just not real. It's an impractical solution."

That's the opportunity. Politically, it will be much easier for Democrats if a Republican president and a substantial number of Republicans in Congress push through legalization. Otherwise, Democrats might have to bear this burden by themselves -- if they should keep control of Congress and win the White House in 2008. However they vote on a final bill, both Clinton and Obama (and every other Democrat running for president) have an interest in getting something done now.

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