Mediaboss Marketing

President Barack Obama

Sara D. Davis, istockphoto.com/EdStock

Enlarge photo

Suppose, for a second, that politics and egos were not a factor in Washington. We would hope the Republican majority in Congress would reach across the aisle and craft an immigration bill that comes close to matching what the president did through executive order late last year.

That is, we would hope they could act with compassion, finding a way to keep immigrant families intact while legitimizing undocumented workers whose only crime is seeking a better way of life than what was available in their own troubled homelands. We would hope such a bill would grant these people work permits and allow the federal government to keep track of them, and that they could be placed on a track that helps them obtain citizenship fairly.

At the same time, we would hope the bill could tighten border security, making it easier to punish those who come here to cause mischief and emasculating the power of ruthless drug gangs who profit from crime. These are two things that even now ought to garner immediate support from both major parties.

As we said in November after President Obama announced his sweeping executive order on immigration, we are concerned with the legality of what he did. But we are more concerned with how it poisoned an already rancorous debate over what to do with millions of people who live and work in the United States without documentation.

Egos do matter in Washington. So do political considerations. Taking a cue from the presidents posture, the new Republican majority does not seem inclined to adopt anything that would legitimize his actions in November. But this doesnt mean Republicans cant come up with positive legislation of their own that does better than to relentlessly pursue people who provide work necessary for the economy.

Last week, Republican members of Congress met for a retreat in Pennsylvania. By all reports, the talk there centered on ways to completely undo Obamas executive orders on immigration, going back to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program originated in 2012. It allows undocumented people brought to the United States as children to receive work permits.

Considering these people were brought here through no fault of their own, and that they are Americans, culturally and in every other way except citizenship, forcing them to leave the country would be unusually cruel.

Read the original post:
In our opinion: How immigration reform ought to be realized in Washington