Frankenstein Immigration Deal Angers Left, Right and Center (NYTimes, via AlterNet)

[marmar]

Frankenstein Immigration Deal Angers Left, Right and Center

AlterNet. Posted May 22, 2007.



Congressional leaders negotiated a new immigration bill. Unfortunately, as the NY Times Editorial Board explains, in trying to craft a proposal that would be acceptable to everyone, they have created an abomination.


The Immigration Deal

The immigration deal announced in the Senate last week poses an excruciating choice. It is a good plan wedded to a repugnant one. Its architects seized a once-in-a-generation opportunity to overhaul a broken system and emerged with a deeply flawed compromise. They tried to bridge the chasm between brittle hard-liners who want the country to stop absorbing so many outsiders, and those who want to give immigrants -- illegal ones, too -- a fair and realistic shot at the American dream.

But the compromise was stretched so taut to contain these conflicting impulses that basic American values were uprooted, and sensible principles ignored. Many advocates for immigrants have accepted the deal anyway, thinking it can be improved this week in Senate debate, or later in conference with the House of Representatives. We both share those hopes and think they are unrealistic. The deal should be improved. If it is not, it should be rejected as worse than a bad status quo.

The good. Part of the compromise is strikingly appealing. It is the plan to give most of the estimated 12 million immigrants here illegally the chance to live and work without fear and to become citizens eventually. The conditions are tough, including a $5,000 fine, and a wait until certain "trigger" conditions on border security are met and immigration backlogs are cleared. It requires heads of households to apply in their home countries, sending them on a foolish "touchback" pilgrimage. That is a large concession to Republican hard-liners, but they, too, have come a long way: consider that last year the House of Representatives wanted to brand the 12 million and those who gave them aid as criminals. A winding and expensive path to citizenship is still a path.

The bad. The deal badly erodes two bedrock principles of American immigration: that employers can sponsor immigrants to fill jobs and that citizens and legal permanent residents have the right to sponsor family members -- young children and spouses, of course, but also their grown children, siblings and parents. The proposal would eliminate several categories of family-based immigration, and it would distribute green cards according to a point-based system that shifts the preference toward those who have education and skills but not necessarily roots in this country. Supporters say that the proposal has been tweaked to give some weight to kinship, and that many immigrants would still be able to bring loved ones in. But the repellent truth is that countless families will be split apart while we cherry-pick the immigrants we consider brighter and better than the poor, tempest-tossed ones we used to welcome without question.

...(snip)...

It is the nation's duty to welcome immigrants, to treat them decently and give them the opportunity to assimilate. But if it does so according to the outlines of the deal being debated this week, the change will come at too high a price: The radical repudiation of generations of immigration policy, the weakening of families and the creation of a system of modern peonage within our borders. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/52186/?page=1

[LBJDemocrat]

1. The deal...

The deal paves the way for cheap labor but with none of the benefits of immigration. It theoretically is pro-immigration, but it's inhumane as hell.

When both parties "reach across the aisle", you can rest assured that it's to screw over the working American.