Editorial: Like a bad dream

Monday, Oct. 29, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.

Last week the Senate defeated a measure that would have provided a path to citizenship for young illegal immigrants who had entered the United States as children and have lived in the country for at least five years.

The legislation, known as the Dream Act, would have given six years of conditional legal status to illegal immigrants who came to the United States when they were younger than 16, provided that they graduated from a U.S. high school with an untarnished record and had lived here for at least five years. Those who spent two years during the conditional status period serving in the U.S. military or attending college would have been eligible for permanent residency.

The measure, which would have covered about 1 million of the estimated 12 million people who live in the United States illegally, was very much like a provision that the Bush administration included in its immigration reform legislation, which tanked this year.

So it is mystifying as to why Bush administration officials opposed the legislation on Wednesday morning - the same day the Senate voted. The measure fell eight votes short of the 60 needed to put it to a full Senate debate.

Although the vote would have been close even without the Bush administration's resistance, the White House's statement opposing the legislation on the grounds that it would create a "preferential path to citizenship for a special class of illegal aliens" certainly didn't help. Such opposition from Bush, who supported such a measure when it was in his legislation, is just spineless.

The Washington Post reports that Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., sponsor of the legislation, argued that it was in America's best interests to cultivate the ambitions of these young immigrants who "committed the crime of obeying their parents, following their parents to this country." Durbin urged lawmakers to "give them a chance to prove themselves to this country."

We have said all along that immigration reform should create a reasonable and attainable path to citizenship for immigrants who already have established themselves as productive members of their communities and whose only crime is being here illegally. To deny such a path even to hard-working youngsters who came here through no fault of their own - and who had no other choice but to accompany their parents - is just mean-spirited.