Becoming legal
CONGRESS HAS TAKEN a bold step to update the nation's immigration laws and enhance security. By advancing sensible legislation on Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee also rebuked the House, whose bill called for merciless and unwise security crackdowns.
Immigration is a kind of Cinderella story. The economy hums with little mention of the girl doing its grueling work. Now the country is looking at that girl. She's the millions of undocumented immigrants who cook, clean, pick fruit, and work construction. They live outside the law but pay taxes. The economy would buckle if they were all deported. Still, their request for legal relief is often met with outrage: People who violate immigration law must not be rewarded.
But the other outrage is that the United States is using these workers, relying on their labor and on the taxes they pay, while leaving them in the legal shadows.
''The immigration system doesn't work for anyone," Senator Edward Kennedy said this week in a statement. ''There is virtually no legal way for a foreign worker to enter the country and take a full-time, year-round job." This guarantees an illegal flow of workers.
A bill filed by Kennedy and Arizona's Republican Senator John McCain was the spine for the comprehensive legislation adopted by the Judiciary Committee. It would increase border security, create a temporary guest worker program, and offer a chance to become a legal resident.
The bill wisely does not include language that would make it a criminal offense, rather than a civil one, to live here illegally. And it would not punish anyone for giving humanitarian aid to illegal immigrants -- freeing Catholic Charities, among others, from the specter of being prosecuted.
The public should reject the hype. Inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants coming here to steal jobs, sell drugs, and plant bombs is false and obscures real problems. The American workforce is at risk, thanks to a widespread lack of education and skills. And national security isn't strong enough. But building big fences along the border won't fill the big holes in national intelligence. Homeland defense can't just be tougher. It also has to be smarter.
The Judiciary Committee bill can work. It would give illegal immigrants a way to work legally and to make amends by paying fines. It would protect the economy. And it would enhance national safety by increasing the ranks of law enforcement and by expediting deportations. Rational, safe change has been championed by people in rallies across the country, including one in Boston on Monday night. The full Senate and the House should heed these cries for fairness. 