Senate honing immigration bill

Latest amendments right on the mark

Published May 18, 2006 at midnight

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'The World's Greatest Deliberative Body" may start living up to its name if the Senate continues to strengthen its immigration bill by amending it, as it has been doing all this week.

We support the general direction of the Senate bill, which pairs border security with measures that would allow many illegal immigrants who have lived peaceably here for years to become lawful residents.

But there are some jaw-dropping flaws in the 616-page legislation, and we're delighted several have been scrubbed during the Senate debate.

A stronger Senate bill should also heighten the chances for an eventual compromise with the House to both secure the borders and regulate immigration flows.

The first major amendment seems to vindicate critics who argued that the original legislation would be a law enforcement nightmare. It closes a loophole that would have granted permanent legal residency even to illegal immigrants who had amassed significant criminal records while they lived here. People who not only violated the law by crossing the border but flouted it after they arrived should be deported, not rewarded.

The second caps the proposed guest-worker program, so that it would not evolve into an open invitation for millions of unskilled workers from around the world to claim the right to become U.S. citizens.

As introduced, 325,000 guest workers could enter the country the first year. Then the number of guest-worker visas could escalate by 20 percent per year. Heritage Foundation researchers concluded that the provision would allow as many as 70 million immigrants to enter the country over the next 20 years, assuming that guest workers would not return home and would bring family members along.

Those workers would over time qualify for green cards, and then citizenship.

The amendment, passed 79-18, capped guest-worker visas at a more reasonable level: 200,000 per year. Period.

The third, passed 83-16, requires triple-layer fencing along 370 additional miles of the most heavily trafficked portions of the 2,000-mile southern border, with vehicle barriers blocking 500 more miles of busy border stretches.

The initial bill called for a blend of physical barriers and virtual surveillance to prevent illegal entries, but lacked specifics.

We'd like to see other fixes before a final bill emerges - including a guarantee that today's illegal immigrants could not take a faster path to citizenship than the millions of applicants who wait years in their home countries before they can live in America.

Since Congress seems to tackle immigration law no more than every couple of decades - the most recent major reforms passed in 1965 and 1986 - what emerges this year may set policy for years to come.

Continuing public pressure should lead to additional incremental improvements.

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