[Mb-civic] Scuttling Toward Sanity By DAVID BROOKS

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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April 6, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Scuttling Toward Sanity
By DAVID BROOKS

I had a horrifying experience in the House of Representatives last week. The
House Immigration Caucus held a press conference so members could compete to
see who was the biggest blithering idiot in the group.

"Anybody who votes for an amnesty bill deserves to be branded with a scarlet
letter, 'A for Amnesty!' " one aspiring idiot thundered. There's "a foul
odor that's coming out of the U.S. Senate!" bellowed Representative Dana
Rohrabacher of California, who then went on to win the prize by suggesting
that instead of using illegal aliens to harvest crops, we force felons to do
it. "I say, Let the prisoners pick the fruits!"

Here was a seemingly mentally competent adult recommending that we force a
largely minority population to go out in the fields and pick lettuce and
cotton. You wanted to hit him over the head and scream: Is this ringing any
bells, Representative Rohrabacher? Are we repealing the Emancipation
Proclamation, too?

But this week the action moved over to the Senate, where pomposity generally
has a restraining influence on stupidity. And indeed the major bill in the
Senate, first conceived by John McCain and Ted Kennedy and refined by Arlen
Specter, was immediately more sensible than anything that had emerged from
the House.

The Specter bill acknowledged a few realities. First, a highly skilled
nation like ours needs to import unskilled workers to do miserable jobs.
Second, government is simply not powerful enough to hold off the global
economy. You cannot build a wall around the United States that will
successfully keep out the workers the U.S. economy demands.

The Specter bill balanced border enforcement with worker programs. It would
build sluice gates regulating the flow of immigrants, not a wall.

But the Specter bill didn't have enough Republican support to pass. So an
amazing thing happened. Senators tried to find a viable center.

Mel Martinez and Chuck Hagel forged a compromise proposal. McCain and
Kennedy latched on. So did Bill Frist (who decided he'd swung too far over
toward the anti-immigrant crowd) and the White House.

This proposal also recognized some realities, namely that the longer an
immigrant is here, the more valuable to America he or she becomes. New
immigrants are going through the shocks of assimilation. But veteran
immigrants, even illegals, usually have excellent work records. They've put
down roots. Their children are golden. These U.S.-born children go on to
earn as much as children of natives, and pay taxes that compensate for the
welfare costs of the first generation.

The Martinez-Hagel compromise would allow illegals who have been in the
country five years to work toward citizenship, while imposing a higher
hurdle for those who haven't. The measure was sufficiently tough to win
support from 15 or so Republicans who couldn't support the Specter bill.

The Republicans were delighted with their progress, but then ran into
trouble with the Democrats. At first they blamed the Democrats' lack of
response on Harry Reid's desire to deny Republicans a victory. But then it
became evident that the unions and other Democrats had leapt up to oppose
the compromise because it might give legal status to illegal workers already
here. The unions have a semilegitimate concern that large numbers of these
workers lower wages for U.S. workers. This is probably true, but the effect
is so modest that after thousands of studies, reputable economists have not
been able to agree upon how much wages are reduced or even if they are at
all.

Senate Democrats were also afraid that a half-baked Senate measure would be
ripped apart in conference by Jim Sensenbrenner, the House negotiator who in
past conferences has eaten senators for breakfast and cleaned his teeth with
their bones.

What happened next is comprehensible only to devotees of the Senate. A
trifling few differences about substance erupted into a furious disagreement
about who would control the schedule on the floor.

As darkness settled last night, aides were boiling with frustration and
ladling precriminations to me over the phone. Nobody could quite put their
finger on exactly what was holding up a deal. And yet the Democrats might
end up defeating a liberal immigration bill over a trifle.

"This is the sweet-spot deal," said the immigration expert Tamar Jacoby. "It
makes moral sense. It makes practical sense. It's a little convoluted, but
it's workable. If it fails, what a shame."

The House may be vulgar, but at least that body gets things done.

Bob Herbert is on vacation.

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