Bloomberg's editorial board asks whether House Republicans can "resisist the urge to kill the immigration bill?":
Preventing that unhappy future falls to Speaker John Boehner. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week, large majorities of Democrats and independent voters supported a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants; only 42 percent of Republican voters did. The attitudes of Republican voters will no doubt be reflected by many Republican legislators, including some vocal opponents on the House Judiciary Committee.
Boehner’s task is to facilitate debate while keeping the legislation from sinking under the ideological bugaboos that have rendered the House dysfunctional. Immigration reform may be the only meaningful legislation this House is capable of producing. If it shatters, the nation will suffer, and the damage to what remains of public faith in Congress will be significant. The damage to the Republican Party probably will be far worse.
Jay Reeves at the AP brings us a fascinating take on the aftermath of the tornado:
Oddly enough, it was the twister, with its 125 mph destructive winds and home-wrecking fury, that began bringing the two groups together, even as it tore much of what they owned apart.
People began working together clearing away debris and wreckage after the storm without regard to language or culture, and folks suddenly were getting along better. Jacky Clayton, assistant police chief in Crossville, which includes part of Kilpatrick, doesn't know exactly what happened, but he said things seem less tense now.
"Maybe it's just a little more understanding of brotherly love," Clayton said. [...]
The tearing down of cultural walls was a rather remarkable achievement in a state that two years ago passed the toughest anti-immigration law in the nation and is now bracing for the results of a protracted debate in Washington on immigration reform.
More on this story below the fold.
Lanhee Chen, policy director for Mitt Romney's 2012 camapign, says Republicans are wrong in refusing to address the status of millions of people who are in the U.S. illegally:
if Republicans are unable to come to a general agreement about how the millions of otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants who are already in the country can eventually legalize their presence here, they will be portrayed as obstructionist, out-of-touch and, worst of all, bigoted defenders of the status quo.
Unfair? Absolutely. But utterly predictable given today’s political climate. As much as Republicans want reform of the visa system and border security, none of our efforts in these areas will matter politically unless we also help to solve the most vexing policy problem in the immigration debate.
In other words, the elephants are missing the elephant in the room.
From The New York Times editorial board:
The system needs to be recalibrated to spare noncriminal migrants the harshest consequences. The Human Rights Watch report recommends revising immigration law to impose only civil, not criminal, penalties, for illegal entry and re-entry. Or, at the very least, it says illegal entry should be punishable by two years in federal prison, not 20.
The immigration bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last week would improve the system in many ways, like providing a path to citizenship for millions and allowing some deportees to apply to return to their families in the United States. But it makes some things worse. For instance, it expands Operation Streamline, a program in border-state federal courts where defendants have little access to lawyers and barely any chance to fight the charges. It was designed for the mass production of guilty pleas and should be abolished.
The bill has bipartisan support, but it also has many opponents who see immigration through Sheriff Arpaio’s eyes. The challenge in the coming Congressional debate will be to preserve the elements that make the system fairer and more rational.
Raul A. Reyes at NBC Latino notes that the scandal-obsessed GOP has been distracted just enough to allow some progress on comprehensive immigration reform:
Consider that many of the opponents of reform have been busy elsewhere. Conservative talk radio, which was credited with helping kill reform in 2007, has been abuzz about Benghazi, not “amnesty.” Tea Party activists have been obsessed by the IRS hearings. With the anti-reform crowd otherwise engaged, lawmakers have been able to get things done (one conservative website wondered if this was all part of a “fiendish” conspiracy by the Obama administration).
Finally,
Elissa Steglich, managing attorney at the American Friends Service Committee Immigrant Rights Program, writes a powerful opinion piece on how her client was torn away from his family, "deported without a chance to say goodbye." It's a must-read:
Even though he had been reporting regularly for three years and complied with every request ICE made of him in the past, they decided he needed to be robbed of his liberty. Nothing had changed from the day before. One Wednesday, ICE was content for him to be with his family. By Thursday, he could not be trusted with his freedom.
All of this happened as the Senate Judiciary Committee was working on what may become historic bipartisan immigration reform legislation. The urgency of immigration reform has never been more apparent — the legislation under discussion would have protected my client. But without it, we now have three young U.S. citizen children who are questioning why their daddy has not come home, who do not know when they will see him again, and whose mother is now struggling to keep the family life as normal as possible. As Congress takes its time, ICE is moving more and more quickly to reach its deportation quota. The devastation on this family and community, however, is immediate as the little girls and the boy realize that daddy really isn’t coming home. [...]
As a nation, we like to take credit for “immigrant success stories.” We need to accept responsibility for the tragedies, as well. My tax dollars locked up my client and flew him to Africa. My government crushed a kind man’s heart for no good reason. My client deserves better. Without irony, he spoke about how much he loves the United States, even as immigration agents were rifling through his wallet and threatening that protesting would only make matters worse.
I want my client’s immigration story to end differently. I want the happy finale. But I, too, am losing hope.