Demise of immigration bill leaves problems to fester

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/06/ ... .html#more

People are elected to Congress to solve problems, but Thursday when the Senate had a chance to solve one of the nation's worst — its intolerable, unworkable and unjust immigration system — a majority ducked and ran toward the safety of their political bases.

Fifty-three senators voted to kill an immigration compromise that was months in the making and favored by interests as diverse as Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and President Bush. The measure would have provided strong new enforcement in exchange for opening a path to citizenship for 12 million illegal immigrants in the USA.

Instead of compromising in the nation's interest, senators kowtowed to their loudest, and often most irrational, supporters. For conservatives, it was nativists who stoked fears that immigrants are tainting America. For a few liberals, it was unions, some of which claimed that more immigration would cut wages and opportunities for Americans.

By failing to act, what the senators gave America is more of the dysfunctional status quo. Republican foes of the measure can crow, as they did Thursday, of a "victory," but the facts show that they killed a long list of enforcement remedies they said they wanted — and could have had just by saying yes.

That list includes more than $4.4 billion for patrols, barriers, cameras and other mechanisms to strengthen the nation's borders. Gone, too, is a plan for the first smart, effective way for employers to verify if workers are legal, as well as stiff criminal penalties for businesses that break the law.
Of course, the biggest cry of the naysayers was that the measure granted "amnesty" for 12 million illegal immigrants already in the USA. Well, guess what? The 12 million are still here. It's folly to think that they will be deported, disappear voluntarily or be hounded away. If past trends continue, another 400,000 will arrive this year, and every year Congress fails to act.

The future for immigration overhaul is bleak. Even the most hopeful reformers say fixing the broken system is unlikely before a new Congress takes office in 2009.

Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff promises enforcement will continue. That means more raids, more children left behind as parents are summarily deported. And cities and states, in the absence of a decent federal law, will continue to pass local measures — many of them ill-conceived and mean-spirited — to restrict housing, jobs, education and just about every facet of immigrants' lives.

What a hollow victory. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who broke from many Republicans to back the compromise, denounced colleagues for being afraid to confront the tough issues: "The American people have a low opinion of us because we can't seem to do the things that we need to do because we're too worried about us and not them."
That pretty much sums it up.

This is the sixth in an occasional series of editorials about this year's immigration debate. View the previous editorials at blogs.usatoday.com/oped/immigration_editorial.