THE NOT SO STUPID PARTY?

Republicans Put Immigration Laws Back on Political Agenda (RACHEL L. SWARNS, 8/04/03, NY Times)

Senator John McCain and Representatives Jim Kolbe and Jeff Flake, all Republicans from Arizona, introduced bills in July that would grant permanent residency over several years to foreign workers who enter the country legally and to illegal workers already in the United States. Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, also introduced a guest worker bill last month.

The measures have been criticized by liberal advocacy groups that contend that they do too little for immigrants and by conservative Republicans who say they go too far. White House officials say they have not taken a stance on the bills, and their proponents do not expect them to pass this year.

But critics on both sides of the political divide said the proposals were still significant because they constituted the first time Republicans in Congress had pushed aggressively for comprehensive changes in immigration laws since talks on the issue between President Bush and President Vicente Fox of Mexico collapsed after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Fox had been working on a long-term strategy to regulate immigration flows from Mexico and legalize the status of millions of illegal immigrants already in this country. The plan appealed to Hispanics and to big businesses, important political constituencies for the Bush administration.

"To have Republicans stepping up and proposing these important but imperfect bills is something of a breakthrough," said Frank Sharry, who runs the National Immigration Forum, a policy group.

"To me, it's the post-9/11 signal that it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when we're going to legalize more migration so that we can better regulate it," Mr. Sharry said.

A system that allowed for greater immigration but regulated it better, so that undesirables could be kept out, would be a significant accomplishment for a GOP that has been correctly viewed as hostile to immigrants since Senator Alan Simpson and President Ronald Reagan forged the last major piece of pro-immigrant legislation--which at that time even a Pat Buchanan thought not liberal enough. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 4, 2003 11:19 AM