Folks, the immigration system in this country is seriously broken, and it needs to be fixed. The blame lies squarely on Republicans. They have controlled the purse strings since 1994, and now that Democrats are in charge and attempting to do something about it, they put up road blocks at every turn.
There's a lot for progressives to dislike about the current Senate bill. It guts the family reunification policy that has been the bedrock of our immigration law since 1965 and instead sets up a meritocracy so that only those who were already successful and well-educated in their home countries can come here, while those who are poor are relegated to their meager existences back home. The guest worker provision, as implemented in the bill, risks creating a permanent non-voting underclass.
But it's a start. It at least provides us as progressives the opportunity to engage in a conversation about what we want this country to be. Right now, our legal immigration system is so onerous, so backed up, that many people who play by the rules, going through the system in good faith, still can't catch a break. People such as Janina, deported two weeks ago because of a paperwork mistake over a dozen years ago. People like Tonio, who can't even start the process of getting his wife out of Iraq where she has been beaten and nearly kidnapped, because the government has taken more than two years to process the immigration paperwork that is supposed to take 14 days.
With a legal immigration system that is so broken, so underfunded, and so mismanaged, can we really blame people for bypassing the system? What we have is a highway where the speed limit is 55, but the minimum speed is 65--how fast you should go can only be determined by spending tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers, and if you get caught you (depending on your color) get sent to a concentration camp built by Halliburton.
So let's have the conversation. The 1965 immigration law was built by progressives, and for the first time since the Naturalization Act of 1795 finally made our immigration law race-neutral and centered around what makes immigrants and our society at large succeed--communities and family. Every law passed since has whittled away at those progressive ideals, and pushed our policy further and further toward Republican policy--where the rich get richer and the poor get to fend for themselves.
The current Senate bill does more of this, but less than the proposals being floated by the nativist right, who want to bring back Operation Wetback in all of its glory. What would you do?