A Senate bill, with some amendments from House critics, could be applied to the untenable situation that has left millions of illegal but working immigrants dangling in a limbo between here and nowhere.
Treating the issue of border security and immigration reform as one and the same has resulted in a stalemate. Treating them as separate matters is the way to end the current impasse.
Sadly, however, the impasse appears to defy such a simple solution. Into the fray rode President Bush a while back but the president seems now to have fallen captive to the gravitational pull of the House border control bill.
Now more than ever he needs to exert his own influence on the debate.
As is usually the case when competing political forces collide there is a solution lurking somewhere in the murk. When it is reached it invariably has the air of the obvious.
In this case the solution is as easy as one, two. If one bill doesn’t work, let us have two.