While the division of party leadership in the two houses
of Congress can be thought of as an obstacle toward passing legislation that
tilts significantly toward a specific party’s agenda, it conversely presents a
new opportunity to pass a bill that will bear the marks of both the Republican
and Democrat priorities. The key will be to extract enough leadership and input
from both parties to make sure that each party is “invested” in the final
product. We must remember that neither party stands to gain from alienating the
fastest growing and largest minority segment of the voting citizenry. It is
incumbent upon both parties to work together and in good faith to construct a
CIR that strikes a neutral chord, tilting neither demonstrably left nor right.
History has taught us that we can’t pass the Leaning Tower of CIR.
Therefore, the questions that CIR advocates should be
asking themselves are; first, what are the minimum, bottom line reforms that
will solve the most pressing and broken aspects of our immigration system?
Second, how can we get that bill written, introduced, and ultimately passed?
Each of these issues will be difficult for various
reasons. Accepting significantly less than what we want – but ultimately what
we need – will be a bitter pill to swallow. Shifting priorities and downgrading
expectations are never easy. However, we must choose to have expectations that
are grounded in reality. In this case, the most difficult pill to swallow will
be the pathway to citizenship. I think that particular aspect of the “old” CIR
is probably out of reach. Any new CIR will probably have to settle for an
earned and vigorous, long and protracted pathway to some new category of legal
“non-immigrant.” Perhaps the failed DREAM Act’s approach to a “temporary
non-immigrant” status, requiring regular re-application processes, might be an
acceptable middle ground. Remember, CIR opponents will fight this provision, as
limited as it is, tooth and nail. However, at the end of the day, since this
avenue to bring dignity and above ground status to the undocumented will take
any discussion of “chain migration” off the table, the Restrictionist opponents
might be enticed to accept this as less than “amnesty.”
This brings me to the second question, of how do we get
this done? I think that we must take everything that we associate with the past
CIR attempts off the table, so to speak, and start the process fresh with a
blank white sheet of paper. We should probably even change the name, even while
we change the approach. Forget “Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” per se.
Let’s re-think how we label this, and even talk about this new approach.
Perhaps we should think of this in terms of national sovereignty, border
security, economic stimulus, and especially American values. The integration of
these urgent national needs is what we are trying to achieve, so perhaps we
should call it something like the Strategic American Migration Initiative –
anything but the tainted CIR.
We need to re-build this initiative brick by brick. Each
and every aspect from border security, to worksite enforcement, to future flow,
to earned legalization should be discussed in a bipartisan way – integrating
input from both parties – and only written onto the blank page when consensus
has been reached on that issue. Stagnation and obstruction has brought us to
this impasse, but perhaps we need to trust in our Founding Fathers enough to
follow sound legislative procedure, and to settle our differences
constructively. Who’s to say that the Republican’s approach of securing the
border first is entirely without merit? Perhaps if members from both parties
are willing to write this new legislation through consensus, issue by issue, we
will find that we are not all that far apart on what we all ultimately want for
our nation. More importantly, and perhaps ironically, through a divided
Congress we might actually achieve what our nation needs, but has eluded us for
far too long – a workable, sensible, bipartisan immigration policy.
Robert Gittelson is the co-founder of Conservatives for
Comprehensive Immigration Reform.