Yesterday the Senate declared the immigration bill that they’d been working on for the past month or so all but dead, despite broad bipartisan support. Being one of those people on the left who thought that the bill wasn’t particularly perfect, and gave too many concessions to folks on the right, I thought it was excellent. Seriously – you know you have a good compromise on your hands when no one gets everything they want, and everyone’s a little peeved about something. That’s how compromise works- everyone walks away from the table a little miffed, but having gotten something, at the very least, accomplished.

Now, thanks to the barrage of amendments by Senators on all sides of the debate, the bill is all but doomed to the dusty drawer for the rest of the year. That’s a shame – America does need immigration reform, badly, but not because we need a silly wall across the desert, not because we beg Mexico’s help in guarding our border against terrorists but then slap them in face by cutting off trade with airfield steel, not because America has illegal immigrants flowing across the border to work in jobs that pay little, are unsafe or otherwise dangerous while companies who manage the facilities reap in the profits of underpaid and ill-treated labor like we’re a third-world country, and not because there’s some massive imaginary problem with social services or health care like the xenophobic right would have you believe. The real reason we need comprehensive immigration reform is to give people who want to come to our great country the opportunity to do so and work and make a brighter future for themselves the same way many of our ancestors did. We need to let them come, legally, and give people a path to legal entrance so people don’t die on the way here illegally, or wind up having to be deported. If it were easier for people to come legally, they wouldn’t have to come illegally, and don’t give me that “if it were harder for them to come illegally, they’d come legally” nonsense, either.

Either way, Eliseo Medina, international executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), has some choice words to get Congress back on track, and to get the job done:

The Senate’s “grand compromise” immigration bill contains many flaws, but it has the potential to begin fixing immigration as we know it and put our nation onto a stronger course. As it stands, the bill would enhance our nation’s security by helping 12 million undocumented immigrants come out from the shadows and get on a path to citizenship. It also commits to ending the notorious visa backlog—no small feat for an underfunded government agency whose delays make many immigrants patiently wait for visas that never arrive.

However, Thursday night, the Senate’s minority Republicans—including the major architect of the ‘grand bargain’ Senator Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.—stymied reform efforts with a cloture vote that effectively stalled progress again.

This is unacceptable. Yes, the immigration bill is imperfect, and it will take a lot of creativity, compromise and improvements before it will work for America. But the challenge before us does not justify sticking our heads in the sand. There are real issues to be resolved, and it is the job of our elected representatives to make it happen.

Agreed. There’s work to be done, and it needs to get done. I would tell Congressional Democrats not to shy away from this issue, and to make this compromise happen on their watch. Not only could they succeed where a Republican-dominated Congress failed, but they could push through real bipartisan legislation reflecting American values and the cooperative spirit they showed when they were elected.

[ Keep Working on Immigration ]
Source: TomPaine.com