NEW YORK, June 7 Kyodo
Selected editorial excerpts from the U.S. press:
PASS THE IMMIGRATION BILL (The Washington Post, Washington)
THERE WAS a revealing moment Tuesday when the Republican presidential contenders were taking turns bad-mouthing the Senate immigration bill. Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, evidently sensing a twofer target -- the bill as well as Washington's evil ways -- allowed that the immigration bill is (gasp!) a compromise. Or as Mr. Giuliani put it, ''a typical Washington mess.''
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Well, yes and no. The bill, which faces a crucial vote as early as today, is indeed a compromise -- a ''grand bargain,'' in the words of its Senate sponsors, in which each side gave something to get something. That's what has made it such an easy mark for critics. But Mr. Giuliani is wrong to think the immigration deal is ''typical'' in any way; in fact, the Bush administration has presided over a ravenously partisan era in which precious little bipartisan compromise has occurred on major domestic issues. The immigration bill is the exception that lends hope to the proposition that seeking cooperation, conciliation and the middle ground is still possible in American politics.
The bill is not worthwhile merely because it is a compromise but rather because it addresses the colossal and corrosive problem of 12 million illegal immigrants who have become an integral part of the American labor force. No one seriously believes they will be rounded up and deported en masse, yet too many opponents of the bill evidently prefer the status quo -- immigrants in the shadows; employers ignoring the law; preoccupied and embittered state and local officials in whose laps the problem has been dumped -- to the reasonable resolution the bill offers: an arduous but navigable route to citizenship. Wrestling that problem to the ground would be an enormous achievement, and so would measures in the Senate bill that would tighten the border and create systems by which employers could verify the legal status of the workers they hire.
With luck, and providing the bill survives Senate action in the coming days, that flaw will be massaged out of the bill either in the House or in negotiations between the two houses. But even if not, the bill leaves those workers no worse off than they are now; in the future, at least some of them would be able to come legally.
The immigration bill is, fundamentally, an agreement that has marginalized the extremes of both parties for the sake of dealing with a very large problem. The question now for the Senate is: Will the center hold?
(June 7)
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