‘Bipartisan,” the late comic George Carlin once said, “usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.”
Now that the Senate’s Gang of Eight — four Democrats and four Republicans — has released its compromise on immigration, you can expect to hear such howls from both right and left. But not from this newspaper.
While the bill is far from perfect (a more robust guest-worker program, for example, would do more for the economy, reduce the incentive for illegality and make it easier to secure the border), the bill represents a fair effort to address the one thing everyone agrees on: The status quo is harmful and self-defeating for the nation.
The broad outlines are clear. More investment in border security, provisional legal status for the 11 million people here illegally, a path to citizenship for these people, a guest-worker provision for lower-skilled workers, more visas for high-skilled ones and so on. Most of the debate will be over how it will be carried out, and whether it will do as promised — resolve the status of the 11 million in a way that is humane but discourages future waves of illegals.
Our home-state senator, Chuck Schumer, deserves credit for helping shepherd a proposal that will be debated and voted upon. So do his fellow “Gangsters,” especially Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a rising conservative star who is now being unfairly tagged as a RINO (“Republican In Name Only”) for his work here. We look forward to the fuller debate that has just begun.
We remind those who bitterly oppose this bill that it’s possible to do so without assailing the character of those who disagree. Likewise we remind those who understand how much we need immigration reform that showing respect for those who raise legitimate concerns will go a long way to a successful vote.
That would be the real victory: an immigration system that controls its borders while recognizing that those who come to America to work are assets, not liabilities.