IMMIGRATION REFORM
I haven't seen much on this story around lately, but I want to keep people posted, since it's one of my most passionate issues. Here's the Dean campaign offering a lame critique. They think it wouldn't do any good to register illegal immigrants unless we also give them a living wage. Hmm. Well, fortunately, the Dean campaign is becoming a footnote of history. This editorialist is strongly supportive. The Christian Science Monitor is skeptical of the proposal, pointing out that temporary workers have typically stayed in their adopted country. Of course, that doesnt bother me much: I want them to be able to stay. In that case, I should probably be on the side of the Hagel-Daschle bill. Here's an article explaining how this one contrasts with the president's proposal. But the president's proposal actually appeals to me, though I'd have to know more about it to know if the appeal is justified. I don't think we would be massively deporting people after six years, realistically. In this sense, the immigration reform is like the tax cut: a measure introduced temporarily as an experiment, which Bush actually wants to make permanent once the public gets used to it. It is probably a good thing to encourage immigrants to go home after a while, because they benefit the sending country by bringing home money and experience. I don't think we should force them, or expect us to have the stomach to do so.

Anyway, this was the key point of the article for me:

Recent polls show that strong majorities of people oppose Mr. Bush's plan, but the White House insists that opinion will come around when he explains it to the public.

Mr. Bush said yesterday that giving illegal immigrants a way to "come out of the shadows" will improve national security because it would allow border patrol agents to concentrate on more dangerous criminals, not everyone who crossed illegally.

"We've got a lot of border patrol agents trying to chase the good, hardworking people down," Mr. Bush said. "If we make the system work right, if we make it legitimate, then our border patrol will be able to chase down true threats to our national security."

It's at moments like this that I really admire the president. I'm afraid I don't actually think he's right, in thinking that a mere explanation to the public will melt people's opposition. By own view is that this will take a much deeper moral revolution in America, and that the spectacle of massive, organized, principled and highly public civil disobedience to the immigration laws-- a national network of people committed to treating illegal immigrants as equals, to ignoring the "laws" against them, and facing prison if necessary for the sake of their convictions-- will be the best way to awaken America to how iniquitous our elitism by exclusion is. But it's wonderful that a president is using the bully pulpit for the sake of the most disadvantaged in this country.

And it's a disgrace that the Democrats called it a "political ploy" and refused to offer praise and support for the move. That alone is enough to make me dearly desire the Democrats' destruction in the elections of 2004.