Since the November election, the airwaves and news columns have been filled with assurances that the nation may be about to enter a period of political bipartisanship, cooperation and earnest compromise.
The long-overdue search for common ground, it is said, will allow us to “move forward” not only in Iraq, but in other key areas like health care and immigration.
Such talk is a victory of unfounded hope over painful experience, and only the very foolish should waste their time waiting for the arrival of the promised new political era.
All others need not despair. There is, after all, something to be said for partisan politics. Sometimes, it is a very good thing when one political party prevents the other party from a major policy mistake.
Take immigration, for example.
The New York Times published a story Tuesday that heralded a new bipartisan approach to illegal immigration. The new approach, it was said, would “place millions of illegal immigrants on a more direct path to citizenship” than would have been the case under a bill passed by the U.S. Senate last spring.
The sponsors of this new bill, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also sponsored the old bill. The only thing that will change, according to The Times, is that most illegal immigrants wouldn’t have to return to their own countries, even briefly, in order to apply for citizenship or enrollment in a guest-worker program.
In other words, the new bill will be amnesty on a very grand scale, although that word doesn’t appear in the Times account. The underlying assumption is that voters last November opted for a more liberal policy on immigration.
The Times is wrong. There is no compelling evidence, let alone proof, that the election results were a mandate for a liberalized immigration policy. There certainly is no evidence that those who oppose illegal immigration are about to join hands with those who support and defend it.
This is one political topic on which there is little room for compromise. If the immigration issue is resolved sometime in the next year, it will be because of a political surrender, not because some previously undiscovered “common ground” has been located.
The policy differences are fundamental. According to a pre-election poll by the Center for Immigration Studies, fully 75 percent of those questioned said the U.S. has done too little to enforce immigration laws. Based on that poll, it is impossible to conclude the nation will support an immigration bill that actually requires the government to do less enforcement.
The CIS pointed out that many media-sponsored polls have given the public only two choices when it comes to immigration policy: favor “mass deportation of millions of illegal immigrants” or “earned legalization.” Naturally, with this limited menu, many avoided backing mass deportation.
When a third choice was offered in the CIS poll – stepped up enforcement with the intent of causing illegal immigrants to go home – 44 percent picked that option while only 31 percent chose earned legalization.
The CIS poll also demonstrated that the American public isn’t yet willing to buy the notion that there aren’t enough citizens willing to take low-wage, low-skill jobs. Fully 70 percent of those asked agreed with this statement: “There are plenty of Americans to do low-wage jobs that require relatively little education. Employers just need to pay high wages and treat workers better to attract Americans.”
It will be very interesting to see proponents of a more liberal immigration policy argue that employers who refuse to pay wages sufficient to attract American workers should be provided with a nationally sponsored and subsidized pool of low-skill foreign workers willing to put up with inferior labor conditions.
One can hardly wait until Democratic sponsors of the new legislation have to go to their friends in the labor unions and argue for a guest worker program that would, almost by definition, create a two-tier system for wages and worker benefits.
The New York Times is surely free to preach the need for political amity when it comes to illegal immigration, but for some very good and valid reasons, it simply isn’t going to happen.
In this case, that is a very good thing.
Al Knight of Fairplay (alknight@mindspring.com) is a former member of The Post’s editorial-page staff. His column appears on Wednesdays.
