http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/edi ... 26020.html

June 4, 2006, 7:55PM



Strike a pose
City Council opposition to a day labor center contract and Gov. Perry's proposal to catch illegal immigrants on camera constitute classic political posturing.

TEXAS politicians may not be able to solve the issue of illegal immigration, but in recent months they've proved successful in making political hay out of it. Two recent examples come to mind.

The first involves the efforts of six Houston council members, all Republican, to kill the renewal of a $100,000 federally funded contract with an organization that helps day laborers find employment. The goal is to reduce the streetside labor markets that have sprung up around town and protect the workers from abusive treatment by employers. By all accounts, the Neighborhood Centers Inc. staff has done a good job.

With immigration a hot-button issue on GOP agendas, former center supporter Shelley Sekula-Gibbs switched sides and voted against the contract. Critics attributed the reversal to her effort to win the Republican nomination to replace resigning U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay. Ironically, when former Councilman Mark Ellis unsuccessfully ran for the state Senate and criticized Houston police for not ascertaining the citizenship status of people they stop, it was Sekula-Gibbs who accused him of political grandstanding.

Councilman M.J. Khan was the lone Republican to break ranks and vote for the day labor center contract, assuring its passage by an 8-6 vote. Khan should be commended for putting the best interests of the city over partisan gain. Perhaps because of his experience as a Pakistani immigrant, he was able to see past the immigration rhetoric to the human reality beyond.

The second example of a politician playing immigration politics involves Texas Gov. Rick Perry. In appealing to delegates at the Texas GOP Convention this weekend, Perry rolled out a plan to spend $5 million from his office account to build a video camera system along the Texas-Mexican border that would transmit images day and night to a Web site. Perry faces stiff opposition to his re-election from independent candidates Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman, as well as from Democrat Chris Bell.

If Perry's modest proposal to create the "Virtual Border Watch Program" is enacted, one can imagine an army of insomniac citizen volunteers glued to their computer screens hopping from one camera to another looking for illegal aliens to report to a law enforcement hot line. The "illegal immigrant cam" might make for some fascinating reality TV, but as a solution to illegal immigration it ranks right up there with that short-lived U.S. Senate proposal to pay drivers $100 rebates to ease the pain of high gasoline prices.

Elected officials who play politics with the immigration issue only make improvements to the situation more difficult. Both President Bush and a bipartisan coalition in Congress are backing a rational approach that includes a guest worker program and a long path to legal residence for most of the undocumented population here.

Supporting their efforts makes a lot more sense than shutting down day labor centers or setting up a 24-hour border video channel.