Editorial: Immigration debate continues

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 | 6:54 a.m.

A bipartisan immigration reform proposal that is being debated in the Senate is expected to draw several amendments as lawmakers press for passage of the legislation by week's end.

We support tightening U.S. borders and creating a process through which the United States' estimated 12 million undocumented workers could earn legal status, but this Senate bill falls short of these goals.

The legislation's troubling provisions include a requirement that undocumented immigrants pay a $5,000 fine and return to their home countries to enroll in a reentry process that could take several years. It also calls for creating a guest-worker program that would allow 200,000 foreign nationals to work in this country each year, but would prohibit them from earning citizenship.

The proposal also seeks to abolish a sensible, decades-old U.S. immigration policy that allows new citizens to bring their family members to this country. It would replace that policy with a point system in which job skills, education levels and English proficiency would be more important than family ties.

In the past two weeks opposition to this legislation from right-wing conservatives has intensified - even to the point of driving a wedge between staunch conservatives and President Bush, who supports the legislation.

For example, Republicans opposing the plan are backing amendments, detailed in a story by USA Today on Monday, that would make this legislation worse.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is expected to propose that U.S. tax credits for the working poor be withheld from guest workers and workers enrolled in the citizenship process. And Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, wants to prevent people who have earned legal status from collecting Social Security on wages they earned while living here illegally - even if they paid into the system during that time.

Sessions' desire to withhold from certain immigrant workers the tax credits to which all working poor are entitled further supports our contention that the legislation would create an underclass of workers. Hutchison's desire to withhold Social Security from immigrants who have paid into system is just plain punitive.

Rather than creating second-class citizens and dividing families, the Senate needs to create real opportunities for those immigrants who haven't harmed anyone to stay here, allowing them to continue being productive residents who benefit the nation's economy.