Border Illusions
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on
the Web, May 16, 2006
President Bush's speech from the Oval
Office last night was not a blueprint for comprehensive immigration reform.
It was a victory for the fear-stricken fringe of the debate.
These are the people who say illegal border crossings must be stopped
immediately, with military boots in the desert sand. Never mind the
overwhelming burdens of Iraq and Afghanistan, the absence of a coherent and
balanced immigration policy, and the broad public support for a comprehensive
solution. America must send its overtaxed troops to the border right now,
they say, so a swarm of ruthless, visa-less workers cannot bury our way of life
under a relentless onslaught of hard work.
Rather than standing up for truth, Mr. Bush swiveled last night in the direction
of those who see immigration, with delusional clarity, as entirely a problem of
barricades and bad guys. His plan to deploy "up to 6,000" National Guard
troops to free the Border Patrol to hunt illegal immigrants is a model of stark
simplicity, one sure to hearten the Minuteman vigilantes, frightened conspiracy
theorists, English-only Latinophobes, right-wing radio and TV personalities, and
members of Congress who have no patience for sorting out the various and mixed
blessings that surging immigration has given this country.
Those on the other side of the argument have spent frustrating months making a
quieter, more complicated case. Supporters of a compromise immigration
bill in the Senate want a balanced approach that is both tough and smart.
They, too, would add people and technology to enhance security on the Mexican
border, which is now about as solid as a screen door. But unlike the House
bill, which is fixated on enforcement, the Senate bill seeks to restore law and
order in a variety of ways. It would, for example, shorten an immigration
backlog by adjusting work and family visa quotas, tighten the enforcement of
immigration laws in the workplace and put illegal workers on a path to
assimilation and citizenship.
Mr. Bush gave lip service to aspects of comprehensive reform, but that part of
his message was, as usual, delivered with a mumbling lack of conviction.
He denounced "amnesty" again, but did not speak up forcefully enough for a
citizenship path for the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants who, in
huge national marches in recent weeks, have made their hunger to assimilate
powerfully clear.
Some say Mr. Bush's proposal is simply a tough act to distract the mob so he can
get to the real business of comprehensive reform. But endorsing the
Minuteman argument only emboldens hard-liners. Representative Charlie
Norwood of Georgia, a state that is leading the nation in trying to remove all
the offending noncitizen parts from its economic engine, wrote just before Mr.
Bush's speech that he could envision using 36,000 to 50,000 troops to seal the
border. The job could be done "by Memorial Day at the latest," he
contended.
Mr. Bush's speech could be dismissed as a mere distraction. But it is
worse than that because the best hope of reform, the Senate bill being debated
this week, is under fire from the very forces Mr. Bush is trying to appease.
That legislation is built around a solid core — a bill from Senators John McCain
and Edward Kennedy — but in recent months it has morphed into something that is
far more complicated and problematic. It's encrusted with new provisions
intended to placate the enforcement-only hard-liners by ensuring that an
immigrant's path to legality would be anything but quick and easy. Some
hurdles are innocuous time-wasters, but others are so onerous and cumbersome
that they might put the whole business at risk.
The Senate bill is also cruelly inadequate in giving due process to those
accused of violating immigration laws. Its reliance on guest workers
should be met with wariness. The United States is not an Arab emirate.
It does not ennoble our democratic experiment by importing a second-class
society of worker bees who are vulnerable to exploitation and have little
incentive to adopt our values. If there must be guest workers, there must
also be a path so they, too, can seek citizenship if they choose. Mr. Bush
last night specifically — and shamefully — urged that such a path be denied to
temporary workers.
The core principle energizing and legitimizing immigration reform must be that
of citizenship. Ultimately, only those who are full stakeholders in
America will put down roots here. Only those whose right to stay cannot be
challenged or revoked will be bold enough to insist upon their rights.
It is still possible that a good bill will emerge this year, but only if
Democrats and moderate Republicans hold firm to protect the fragile flame of
good sense against the deter-and-deport crowd. This means sticking
together to defeat destructive amendments on the Senate floor. It means
overcoming this latest contribution from the ever-unhelpful president, who could
have pointed the nation toward serious immigration reform last night, but
instead struck a pose as Minuteman in chief.
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