The Good News On Immigration

THE bad news is that there will be no movement on immigration reform before the election this year.

The good news is that there will be no movement on immigration reform before the elections this year.

That may seem a contradiction in terms, but it is most decidedly not.

The Republicans in their wisdom have essentially shut down any further efforts to bring about a compromise between the House and Senate versions of immigration reform in the few weeks remaining in this Congress.

Having spent the summer lambasting the Senate bill as basically a tool of al-Qaeda, it is hardly surprising that House Republicans have no plans now to try and seek a reconciliation between the two bills.

That is actually good news for immigration reform advocates — and no, we’re not whistling past the graveyard.

The fact is that any possible accommodation would have been on House Republican’s terms, which would have spelled disaster for the overall package.

Now with Republicans seemingly very likely to lose the House in the November election (one of their own consultants told The New York Times this week that it was a 75% likelihood) a Democratic House would be a far better vehicle for dealing with immigration reform than the mandarins who currently control it.

Imagine not having to deal with Congressmen Jim Sensenbrenner or Pete King, the architects of the enforcement-only House bill that passed earlier this year?

(Actually Sensenbrenner is a lame duck in any event. He stands down from his chairmanship of House Immigration Sub Committee even if Republicans retain control.)

A New Opening?

IMAGINE, too, if Democrats win not having to deal with the almost racist daily onslaught on immigrants that we have been hearing from this Republican House for the summer months this year?

It is more than a little pathetic that the party in power in the House seems only able to bang the anti-immigrant drum as their solution to the immigration crisis.

Even though the GOP has majorities in the House and Senate and hold the White House, their failure to pass immigration reform, which the voters have made clear they want, is truly pathetic.

Their half-hearted effort at lining up a compromise based on a far out scheme by Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana, to send everyone home and then bring them back if everyone agreed, was really a pretty poor attempt.

All this would change dramatically if Democrats win power in the House in November.

As for the Senate, while the odds are longer for Democrats taking over, there has never been the anti-immigrant fervor there that is so evident among Republicans in the House.

Senators such as John McCain and Arlen Specter have been more than well disposed towards resolving this issue in the best way possible by passing a comprehensive bill that would deal with all aspects of the problem.

Meanwhile, President Bush has made clear his desire for a comprehensive approach and that will hardly change in the new Congress. Overall then, in the near to long term, prospects look far brighter than they do at present.

Good Read

BRITAIN and Ireland, Lives Entwined is the latest book from the British Council Ireland, and it an extremely interesting read.

Contributors include Bernadette McAliskey, Ed Moloney, Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe and Ray O’Hanlon of the Irish Echo.

McAliskey’s contribution is especially interesting. She focuses on the IRA informer Denis Donaldson, who was killed by unknown assailants last year.

The McAliskey piece takes the Provo leadership to task on their treatment of Donaldson, saying they denied “the intrinsic humanity of a person whatever his or her deed” as part of a “learned self defense mechanism . . . This process of dehumanizing the image of the other is how most people on all sides survive the reality of war,” she states.

At the end she writes, somewhat surprisingly, “Contrary to the construction of my own identity to others, I do not consider myself an Irish Nationalist, a Hibernian, nor have I any difficulty with the national identity of others.”

If you have any difficulty figuring out where Moloney is coming from in his piece, the following paragraph should suffice:

“The majority of all Nationalists now support a party that is morally bankrupt. Whose leaders lie outrageously and who stand accused of the most heinous deeds.” Well, that settles that.

Ironically, earlier in his article, Moloney had given an excellent account of the failure of most of the media in the North to cover the Provo’s rise to political prominence properly. Self-censorship, as he points out, was everywhere.

The book can be ordered through www.britishcouncil.org/ireland.

Adams in Jerusalem

SINN Fein leader Gerry Adams is in Jerusalem and Palestine this week to speak about the Irish experience of the peace process, and to offer whatever help he can.

Adams was there at the invitation of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — an invite that clearly did not please some American backers or leading Israeli politicians who have refused to meet him.

That seems shortsighted. As Adams pointed out in his remarks, the U.S. met with every party in the Northern Ireland conflict and played a huge role in securing the peace process by doing so.

Adams told a mixed audience of Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers that war was not the only option in the region.

“Building a political alternative, constructing a peace process which can deal with the causes of a conflict, and which can provide stability, justice and democracy, is an option also and one which would have the support of right thinking people worldwide,” he said.