Don't get personal: Debate the real immigration issues
February 15, 2008
Editorial

Our position: Illegal immigration bill is flawed, but attacking supporters' motivation is out of bounds.

It's unfair and unfortunate that what should have been a substantive Statehouse debate on legislation that attempts to curtail illegal immigration degenerated Wednesday into a personal attack on the bill's sponsor.

Opponents of Senate Bill 335 do not help their cause, and won't end the discussion, by insinuating that the legislation's author, state Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, and his supporters are driven by racist motivations.
"I think,'' Delph said before the House Public Policy Committee, "people are sick and tired of people playing the race card every time they stand up for the law."

Delph's bill, as this editorial page has argued previously, is flawed for four primary reasons: It's the federal government's job, not the state's, to control immigration; the economic ramifications of the bill are uncertain; a short legislative session dominated by property tax reform allows insufficient time to address adequately this complicated issue; and the legislation doesn't include money for local police agencies to take on the extra work of enforcing the new law. (A proposed amendment would provide $1.5 million for the attorney general and state police.)
Let opponents fight the bill based on those grounds, and others, which deal with the merits of the proposal. But attacking the motivations of Delph and other supporters poisons the debate and ratchets up the frustration many Hoosiers have about the issue.

The government's tacit approval of illegal immigration does undermine the rule of law, as Delph contends. Some businesses also take advantage of immigrant workers, ignoring wage and hour laws and safety regulations. At the same time, hardworking but low-skilled immigrants have little opportunity to legally enter the United States, even though jobs await. The nation has stumbled into an economic system that makes illegal immigration almost inevitable.

Those realities should prompt the federal government to craft a solution. But Congress' inability to act has shifted the debate to the state level, where a patchwork of partial fixes may arise but unforeseen economic and social consequences also are likely to emerge.

SB 335 has serious weaknesses. Those should be pointed out, with vigor if necessary. Attacking opponents of illegal immigration as racists, however -- the charge essentially leveled against Delph this week -- is a destructive ploy to squelch the debate.
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