Editorials

A compromise on a new immigration policy has been hammered out. Members of both parties and the White House see it as a step in the right direction. It is not perfect, but it is good.

It also faces stiff opposition from liberals, who see the guest-worker provisions as a way to bring in cheap labor and depress wages. Union opposition to this is expected. Union officials feel the plan is unworkable and want a process that makes it easier for illegals to start on the road to permanent residency.

The compromise also raises the hackles of conservatives, prominent among them our own Sen. Jeff Sessions, an immigration hardliner who is withholding judgment until he sees the whole bill, but doesn't like what he has seen so far.

What does Sessions like?

That question may have been answered last week when he suggested that an immigration plan advanced by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has many “very good ideas” that Congress and the Bush administration should consider.

Under the Heritage Foundation proposal, the 11 million illegal immigrants who already are in the United States would be rounded up and sent home. Then border security would be beefed up and there would be a detailed background check on anyone trying to return. The system would be restructured so that among the returning the highly skilled would be given top priority, but they would return as temporary workers, not as immigrants seeking a new home — something all but guaranteed by a provision that would bar spouses and children from coming with them.

As for enforcement, much of that burden would fall on state and local governments.

Such a plan might be “very good,” or even perfect, for the senator and his ilk. But to us the plan is full of problems and pitfalls.

Conservative critics of our current immigration policy go on and on about how we should round them up and head them home, but they have little to say about the practical and financial considerations that would accompany such an effort. How would our fiscally conservative senator propose to pay for all this? How would Sessions, who has praised the virtues of small government, explain the expanded bureaucracy the plan would create?

The senator also must realize that saving money by letting state and local law enforcement handle the job is a weak reed on which to lean. Look at Alabama, where despite our relative prosperity we cannot afford to hire needed state troopers. Not that it would matter, though, because our state Senate could not pass the necessary legislation if the money was there.

Meanwhile, the idea of using immigrants as a temporary labor pool but denying them the right to bring their families with them — where they could start a new life here — is so contrary to what America is about that it is almost offensive.

Sessions might think these “very good ideas” could form the core of a perfect immigration plan, but we fail to see much good in them.

What is good is the compromise immigration plan that has been worked out and will be debated soon in Congress. We hope that Sessions will back off trying to create a “perfect” policy that would exile those people who have come to America to seek a better life and seal our borders against their return.

The compromise bill is not perfect. It is not perfect for liberals or for Jeff Sessions conservatives. But it is good.