Senators Build a Frame for Immigration Reform
Source: Houston Chronicle
May 22, 2007
As with good fences, good bridges make good neighbors: They're strong, defensible and make it possible to do business. So the bipartisan Senate team that haggled over an immigration proposal last week should get credit.

The senators crafted a frame on which fellow lawmakers can and must improve. The plan has enough holes and weak beams to trouble both parties. This reflects how hard it was to compromise, and that compromise might work.

The structure, though, is there. Among its features is a decade-plus legalization process for the 12 million illegal immigrations already here. That's in itself a feat of political engineering, addressing the most urgent fallout from our immigration failures.

Under the plan, applicants in the United States would get an immediate, probationary legalization card. In a stroke, this would let Homeland Security focus on true criminals, not hapless workers. Local police could engage more immigrants in crime prevention and process noncitizen lawbreakers as smoothly as they do citizens.

The plan also demands key enforcement actions be taken first. In principle this is sound: A good electronic employee database is long overdue, and more agents and technology will make the borders more manageable.

But enforcement also includes the ill-conceived, antibusiness, environmentally reckless 370-mile border fence already authorized by Congress. That's a high price to pay for reform.

The bill's biggest fissure, however, is its guest worker plan. Quite reasonably, the package calls for 400,000 guest worker visas per year. This is close to the estimated half million unskilled illegal workers who come here yearly — most of whom get jobs.

The problem: These guest workers will have little chance of getting permanent status.

In past decades, most Latin American migrants preferred to earn money in the United States and go home. But a certain fraction — ambitious, committed to American values — will always want to stay. Make the quest hopeless, and some will stay anyway. Lawmakers will have built our children a brand new immigration crisis.

The most profound change in the senators' plan, though, is its rewriting of immigration standards. The reform package would favor immigrants' skills over family ties in this country. This isn't irrational: As much as 90 percent, probably too much, of today's legal immigration is based on family ties.

But cross-generation families fortify newcomers' businesses, stabilize their neighborhoods and, above all, strengthen American culture. Adjusting the weight of merit while preserving families is a crucial calculation.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers both voice deep concerns about the new bill. They should: A strong critique in Senate debate and in the House is needed to shore up the legislation's many weak or unworkable features. But with all its flaws, the senators' plan sets the right frame for reform: enforcement, economic realism and proven legislative will.

It will be interesting to see who tries to makes the bridge stronger, and who just wants to tear it down.