BERKSHIRE EAGLE NEWSPAPER

Immigration as non-issue
Editorial
Tuesday, January 22

The Lou Dobbs for president movement that exists exclusively in cyberspace is revealing of what has become of the immigration issue in the presidential campaign. One-issue worshipers of the CNN ethnic purist who would build fences, drawbridges, moats or whatever else it takes to keep Hispanics out of the country are finding that Americans don't share their views, and the presidential candidates are reflecting this reality in their campaigns.

Senator John McCain, the closest thing there is to a front-runner in the tumultuous Republican campaign, has the most reasonable policy on illegal immigration and has refrained from the ugly immigrant-bashing and advocacy of punitive policies that many in his party have engaged in. Rival Mitt Romney, as always searching for positions he believes are popular, followed the Lou Dobbs playbook early on, but abandoned it when he saw it wasn't playing.

Polls indicate that illegal immigration is well down the list of issues that concern Americans this election year. Republican congressmen who engaged in demagoguery in killing an immigration reform bill last year may want to take note before they go out campaigning this summer and fall.

While it was easy enough to predict that immigration would not engage Americans as an election issue it is still satisfying. America, a nation of immigrants, is too good a country to reduce itself to the level of the anti-immigrant yahoos. Illegal immigration is a serious issue but it requires the kind of even-handed reform that last year's failed bill personified. It requires the acknowledgment that thousands of illegal immigrants cannot be deported and must instead be given be given a route to citizenship, and their children provided a chance at education. It requires the realism to know that a fence on our southwestern border is impractical if not preposterous. Americans want real solutions to this issue, and they want a president who will make them a reality.
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/editorials/ci_8041780