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Senate Immigration Compromise

Details from The Washington Post and MyDD.

The lovely and talented Ursula will certainly have more to say on this issue, but here's the nickel summary.

• Current undocumented immigrants will receive a new visa class that they can renew indefinitely and use to get green cards for their family members.
• The hardline Republicans have agreed to a shorter fence (370 miles instead of 800 miles), and, you know, passage
• Democrats accepted a guest worker program that does not include an explicit path to citizenship.

On policy, this seems like something of a raw deal. Republicans gave up a long fence that won't work in exchange for a short fence that won't work. Democrats allowed the return of the bracero program, which will move America towards European-style immigration. What's more, this does nothing to solve the big problem in immigration enforcement: employers and employees still have every incentive to cheat. Even if we returned to Clinton-era levels of labor law enforcement (the number of fines against employers for hiring undocumented immigrants has dropped to near-zero levels under Bush), it will still be too easy to hire incoming undocumented immigrants. It's difficult to forecast the exact consequences of the guest worker program; will it make it easier to prevent the entrance and hiring of the 100,000 to 300,000 immigrants who will still probably enter illegally? Will we allow guest workers to apply for green cards, in which case, strictly speaking, one doesn't need a new "path to citizenship"? We can't tell. In theory one can make those changes later, but the bulk of the bill has to pass now.

Bowers is looking at the politics solely in terms of next election cycle, in which case, yes, you have to be worried about Democrats losing some ground among Latinos, though a Tancredo-led uprising in the GOP might fix that problem. But in the long term, passing the immigration bill this session is the right thing to do. You can't pass anything in '08 because it's an election year. In 2009, an incoming President of either party will have too many priorities to expend political capital on immigration reform. An incoming Democratic President, in particular, is not going to have much cover to compromise on immigration. You have to bite the bullet now rather than later.

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Last updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 07:39 17 May 2007