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ARIZONA DAILY STAR
(Editorial): All cards on the
table now for border reform
July 20, 2005
The star's view: With a bill introduced by Sen. Kyl, hearings are finally scheduled on crafting a new immigration policy. It's what Arizona has waited for.
Now it can begin - a serious discussion of comprehensive immigration reform with the promise of stopping deaths in the desert, stabilizing the American work force and restoring the rule of law.
If there were any doubt that Congress was waiting for Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl before moving forward, consider this: A week to the day after he announced his plan, with fellow Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the first hearing will finally be held.
The setting is the Senate Judiciary committee, whose members include both men. On the agenda will be Kyl-Cornyn as well as another approach to the same problem - the McCain-Kennedy bill introduced in May by another Arizonan, Sen. John McCain.
How much attention immigration reform receives might depend on another issue looming before the same committee - the nomination of a Supreme Court candidate to replace Sandra Day O'Connor of Arizona.
Leaders in Congress already have said they doubt a vote will come this year on immigration reform. And while the competing Senate bills address very similar challenges, they do so in conflicting ways. Still, you can hear advocates of reform rubbing their hands at the chance to get moving.
Even U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, a Mesa Republican and co-sponsor of McCain-Kennedy, had kind words about the competing bill Tuesday: "It's clear that momentum for congressional action this year is growing."
Kyl had signaled the intent of his bill long before Tuesday, emphasizing enforcement as the leading component and drawing a line in the desert sand against anything that resembles amnesty for people here illegally. The bill turns out to be as good as his word, mandating the hiring of 11,250 new officers and requiring foreign workers to return home each time they wish to gain or renew legal residency.
The Kyl-Cornyn bill is inferior in many ways. It provides little incentive to come forward for the illegal immigrants already here - more than 10 million by the Census Bureau's count, up to 20 million in Kyl's statement.
McCain-Kennedy offers them a path to permanent residency in the belief that most will return home eventually and are merely stuck here because we've hardened the border against their return. This path is too arduous - requiring fines, fees, evidence of a job and civics proficiency - to be described as amnesty. Still, that's what critics are calling it.
Kyl-Cornyn seeks to lure people out of the shadows with this promise: Come forward and be deported, but rest assured you can go to the front of the line when you try to come back. Many questions remain about how this provision will jibe with existing laws that bar certain illegal immigrants from returning for three years, 10 years, even a lifetime. Rather than luring people to register, Kyl-Cornyn may force a massive national roundup.
On the issue of enforcement, Kyl-Cornyn goes overboard. Hiring a slug of new officers comes straight from an earlier Intelligence Reform bill, but it throws bodies more than answers at the problem. The Border Patrol has said it can't train and deploy all these agents in a timely fashion. Tucson Sector Chief Michael Nicley, in an interview earlier this year, told the Star that manpower alone can't do the job. He needs better technology.
Still, there are obvious openings for compromise in the two bills. Both, in fact, set six years as the maximum period for a temporary visa. But progress will require a level of cooperation we haven't yet seen from this Congress. Perhaps if two Arizona Republicans can come to agreement, the rest of the nation can, too.
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