When it adjourned last week, Congress put off action on an immigration bill that has progressed from a largely bad proposal to a mostly good one. But a Republican majority intent on creating a campaign issue has refused to surrender an odious provision that would be bad not just for immigrants but for everyone. That section will have to be junked before this bill deserves to become law–and before it will win the approval of the president, who has threatened a veto.
President Clinton’s primary objection is to a change pushed by Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich that would authorize states to evict illegal immigrant children from public schools. The GOP sees this as a way to dramatize its opposition to illegal immigration–a position they see as especially potent in vote-rich California, whose governor, Pete Wilson, favors the ban. A Clinton veto, in this view, would be a plus in the fall campaign.
But no amount of tactical advantage can make it good policy to deny education to kids who are here through no fault of their own. As the White House said last week, the bill would “create a farm system for gang dealers and drug dealers.” Wilson and the bill’s sponsors spend a lot of time toting up the cost to states of educating these children. What they don’t seem to be able to count are the taxes paid by the parents of these children–or the costs of not educating kids who can become either productive members of society or criminals.
Last week, word was that Republicans had amended the proposal to let these kids stay in elementary school as long as they don’t change school districts. But they would still face exclusion once they reached 7th grade–not improvement enough to matter.
The bill is not perfect otherwise, but it has many virtues. It would discourage legal immigrants from becoming a public burden by curbing welfare benefits and placing greater responsibility on their sponsors to help support them when the need arises. It would authorize some modest pilot programs for verifying the legal status of people applying for work. Its focus is rightly on stemming illegal immigration, not the legal kind.
But the bill still falls well short of the sensible and humane legislation that is needed to address the illegal immigration problem without inflicting excessive collateral damage. Congress should put aside short-term political considerations and do what’s right.
