Thread: Border solutions

Editorial: Published: May 22, 2007 12:30 AM Modified: May 22, 2007 02:40 AM
Border solutions
Illegal immigration has an outsized effect on North Carolina, and its U.S. senators should help shape a compromise measure
The nation can't keep closing its eyes as the illegal immigrant problem continues to worsen. And if Congress has any chance of solving that problem, reform has to be bipartisan and entail compromise. That's an encouraging feature of the legislation being considered this week in the Senate, following a breakthrough announced jointly by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a leading liberal Democrat, and Jon Kyl of Arizona, head of the Senate Republican Conference.
The bill tackles many of the hard policy issues in the immigration debate. Still, extreme elements in both parties can be expected to balk. That will require senators with a stake in resolving the long-standing deadlock to put shoulder to wheel. Count North Carolina's two senators, Republicans Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr, as among those who have an interest in a solution, since they represent a state with one of the nation's fastest rates of growth in Hispanics who entered the country illegally.

The new bill isn't perfect, but that's the nature of a compromise. The bureaucracy needed to carry out the reform may turn out to be massive and and thus expensive. (That would be the price for inaction for so many years.) The bill includes tough enforcement, but if it veers even farther in that direction, some illegal workers may burrow deeper underground.

In general, the legislation can be characterized as practical. It would allow the 12 million or so Hispanics now estimated to be in the United States illegally to stay, but on a probationary basis. That offers fairness to the thousands of immigrants who arrived here legally and now wait patiently for the process to take its course.

Illegal immigrants who want permanent residency would be required to pay $5,000 in fees, and a family's head of household would have to return home for a period of time for the process to start. Those are stiff requirements but not impossible barriers. Keeping up with who was in compliance would be difficult, and is one of several valid objections that will need to be answered.

Conservatives win their demand for tighter border security, which may address national security concerns as well. Significantly, the legislation would require employers to better monitor whom they hire, and it would increase penalties for companies violating the law or doctoring paperwork to hide such hires.

Poverty may drive immigrants across the border illegally, but companies here invite such illegal crossings when they hire workers with little regard for whether their paperwork is valid. They then can poorly pay and badly treat illegal workers without fear that the workers will complain to authorities. That's not only bad for the illegals -- it erodes workplace conditions for everyone.

Dole and Burr should insist on a leading role in shaping a final bill. Illegal immigration increasingly strains North Carolina's medical and education budgets, and a small portion of Hispanics in the state illegally are putting a greater burden on police and the court system.

Opposition to the compromise seems to have stiffened among House members over the weekend, which is the wrong way to go if that means no bill at all. Congress certainly should be looking to make sure that changes in the immigration laws move the country closer to its goals: an orderly, lawful process of absorbing new arrivals that both recognizes the economy's demand for workers and helps ensure fairness in the workplace. But legislation needs to be negotiated in good faith, not with an eye toward scuttling reform.


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reform has to be bipartisan and entail compromise.

Why do they keep trying this rhetoric? Why do we NEED to have comprise in order to get any kind of reform? It wouls sure be nice if we could get a majority of politicians who would grow some balls and do what is right in place of selling out.
So what would be next? Should we no longer sentence rapists and murderers because putting them in prison breaks up their families, and they just want to work too?

The bill tackles many of the hard policy issues in the immigration debate

No it doesn't, it's worse than S. 2611 of last year. People should not be allowed to skirt the law.
Why can't the elected officials understand that we the people do not believe them any longer because they piss down our legs and tell us it's raining. They've granted amnesty after amnesty after amnesty under the guise of "tougher employer and border enforcement" and "this will be the last amnesty" and yet they don't deliver.
WE'VE HEARD AND HAD ENOUGH OF YOUR LYING AND BACKROOM DEALING!
It should be clear that one of the main reasons they want to grant their precious amnesty is to gain a huge new swing voting block. They don't give a rat's ass about the humanitarian side, and they are only interested in getting large donation amounts from their corporate lobbyists. They care nothing for the American people.