And the president should not be criticized too much for being more the politician than social reformer. This is an election year and the rule of thumb is, keep it simple. Congress, as the president has indicated, can wrestle with the details. We only hope that it does, and in short order.
Clearly, what Bush delivered in the White House last week was less a policy wish list for long-term immigration law reform than it was a plan to deal with illegal immigrants in the shorter term.
The debate over what essentially amounts to a temporary guest worker program promises to be a passionate and even furious one. The guest worker concept has a troubled past and, in a worst case scenario, can amount to little more than a tease and the basis for the potential abuse of people whose contribution to the nation can potentially be far more than unskilled labor at a minimum wage.
At the same time, there are already in America many who see themselves as just temporary residents, here long enough to earn enough money to set things right back in their country of origin.
It has been noticeable in the last couple of years that Irish immigration advocates in the U.S. have started to speak to this phenomenon. They often now refer to those undocumented Irish in America who are “serious” about making their lives here.
It is these undocumented, the ones who, in advance of any favorable legislation, have set about earning as best they can a long-term and fully legitimate role in U.S. society who now deserve the attention of a Congress that has been invited to act by the president.
Whatever emerges from congressional debate will not be called amnesty. And in fact it won’t be one. The concept of earned adjustment, or earned legalization, has already superseded the politically-derided idea of a blanket amnesty.
“Earned” implies giving something to get something back. And if there’s one thing the Irish immigrant experience teaches us is that we’re expected to give something to America in order to share in the benefits that this society can bestow.
So it’s over now to Congress. It can only be hoped that any new immigration legislation to emerge from its deliberations is timely, fair and sensible and crafted in such a way as to invite immediate presidential approval.