Editorial: Real battle not yet begun

Sunday, May 28, 2006 | 7:38 a.m.

Now that both the House and Senate have passed immigration bills, the real battle - reconciling the two bills - will get under way next month.

The primary issue dividing the two branches of Congress is the fate of 12 million undocumented immigrants.

The House bill would make felons out of all of them and likely lead to a massive law-enforcement effort to capture and deport them.

The Senate bill calls for deporting the roughly 2 million undocumented immigrants who have been in the United States for less than two years. Those who could prove they have been here between two and five years would have to go home, but they would become immediately eligible to apply for a green card and return as guest workers. Those who have been here five years or longer could apply for citizenship.

Other aspects of the bills are similar, the result of compromises by the Senate. Both, for example, call for shoring up the most vulnerable parts of the U.S.-Mexico border with a wall.

But a majority of House Republicans echo the feelings of Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was the principal author of the House bill. He opposes giving any illegal immigrants the opportunity to apply for citizenship.

His extreme position is wrong, in our view. Even the Senate bill, as we see it, is far from perfect. There should be a path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants. Sorting through the lives of millions of people, trying to figure out how long each has resided here, is an unnecessarily harsh complication.

But of the two, the Senate bill is preferable by far, a fact recognized by President Bush. If it is to have a chance of success during House-Senate negotiations, Bush must corral the extremists. Given the difficulty of that task, look for the immigration debate in Congress to continue for a long time.