The Bill Is Back

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Editorial / Periscope - Niall O'Dowd

The Bill Is Back

June 21, 2007

THE Senate immigration bill is starting to resemble the Perils of Pauline, or some old movie script where the heroine is tied to the tracks as the train approaches and barely escapes before it rolls over her. After another near death experience the bill is back down for debate in the Senate, borne away from abandonment by a last minute change of heart by both major parties at the behest of the White House.

It is starting to get quite wearying though, this constant will he, won’t he atmosphere around passage of this bill which would alter the lives of the undocumented and give them hope for a future.

Anyone reading The Wall Street Journal report on Monday about the effect on the children of undocumented immigrants of a raid by the immigration authorities on a meatpacking plant in Grand Island, Nebraska could not but be moved by the awful fate of the children suddenly left without parents and dependent on the kindness of strangers while their moms and dads were handcuffed and lead away.

Is this really the kind of United States we want American-born children to witness, where their parents are dragged away screaming for wanting nothing more than a better life for them?

Or is there a better way, as in passing this immigration bill, dealing with the undocumented issue in a humane and fair way and moving on from there.

The answer should be a resounding yes, and politicians in both parties briefly appeared to reach the same conclusion last week, but for different reasons and not so noble ones.

On the Democratic side, this Congress is quickly matching the reputation of the last Republican controlled one for a do-nothing record.

The approval ratings for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are in the toilet, and his party’s ratings barely make it out of the bathroom. The facts are that people send legislators to Congress to legislate.

By pulling the immigration bill Reid was merely giving further evidence that legislating is the farthest thing from politicians’ minds especially when a point scoring exercise can make the other side look bad. By bringing the immigration bill back it looked like Reid was getting the message that action, not inaction, is needed.

On the Republican side the dynamic is somewhat different. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll last week showed that Hispanics now prefer Democrats by 51% to 21%, with the rest undecided, a catastrophic result for a party that once enjoyed approval ratings among Hispanics in the 40% range.

Little wonder that President Bush arrived on Capitol Hill last week with both Vice President Dick Cheney and Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff in tow, intent on getting the immigration bill back on the floor of the Senate. Not surprising also that soon after the pow wow a number of senators suddenly rediscovered their enthusiasm for the bill. Bad poll numbers can have that impact.

What happens next is anyone’s guess, given the controlled chaos of the immigration bill to date. It seems a lock that a majority now exists in the Senate, but no doubt one or two of the Republican hold-outs will try and filibuster the bill again and kill it.

There is enough self-interest in both parties now to drive a bill through the Senate, avoid killer amendments and send the legislation on to the House. We can only hope that is the outcome over the next week or so as the July 4 break approaches, but nobody will take that outcome for granted until the votes are counted.

We as a community can only continue to keep the pressure on by calling, faxing and e-mailing the relevant senators. Don’t believe the naysayers that no bill is better than this bill. Just ask the parentless children in Nebraska about that.

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