IMMIGRATION SHOWDOWN

The Senate Judiciary Committee worked through one of the most emotional issues of the session Monday, offering needed rationality in a debate that included the competing interests of providing secure borders for the nation while at the same time allowing a work force of millions of undocumented workers to remain, for some temporarily and others longer. The bill was reasoned and bipartisan but not unanimous, suggesting that it will encounter opposition in the full Senate.

Immigration reform not only inspires marches in cities with Hispanic populations, though it has certainly done that recently; it also evokes the nation’s founding and growth, especially of the late 19th and 20th centuries, when huge numbers of immigrants settled in states across the continent. No distinction between legal and illegal immigrants changes what for most Americans is the comparatively recent family sense

of settling in a new land.

But even as the words of Emma Lazarus (“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”) were repeated often during this latest version of the immigration debate, Congress understandably wanted this nation to be able to say who comes here to live and who does not.

Some in Congress proposed building a 700-mile wall along one-third of the border with Mexico, in locations where the highest numbers of crossings occur. That is an extreme reaction, besides costing an estimated $2.2 billion and being objected to by locals along the U.S. side of the border where the economy depends on an ability to cross easily.

The committee’s bill took a better approach by proposing to double the number of Border Patrol agents and authorizing a “virtual wall” of unmanned vehicles, cameras and

censors to monitor the border. Given the cost and environmental effect of an actual wall, this seems like a smarter alternative.

Even more controversial is a provision that would permit the estimated 11 million illegal aliens currently in the country to apply for citizenship with-out first having to return home, which many Republican senators wanted. The process in the committee bill would take at least six years and include learning English, studying civics, paying taxes and fines and waiting in line for an opportunity to apply for citizenship.

Detractors of the bill are calling this an amnesty plan, which in some ways it is, but it is amnesty with hurdles and it recognizes the value these workers bring to industries such as agriculture and construction – their value, at least in part, being their willingness to work for low wages. Mostly unstated is the effect of those wages on the paychecks of Americans. Similarly, the bill would raise the number of documented workers allowed in specific fields – agriculture and nursing, for instance – which is at least a more honest attempt to recognize how much these workers contribute to local economies.

Republicans remain split on this issue; only four of the 10 on the Judiciary Committee supported the bill that emerged. But if conservatives are determined to have an immigration bill, especially one that improves border security, what they have before them may be as much as is likely this year, their protests notwithstanding.