Borderline reality

ONLY THREE OF CALIFORNIA’S 19 Republican members of Congress exhibited a realistic understanding last week of the state’s complicated relationship with undocumented immigrants. Central Valley legislators Devin Nunes of Visalia, Bill Thomas of Bakersfield and George P. Radanovich of Mariposa represent agricultural, immigrant-dependent districts. All three voted against a House immigration bill that is harshly punitive, with no accounting for employers’ needs and no offer of a temporary-worker program.

The other 16 California GOP House members voted for the bill (no California Democrats did so). Even senior California Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas), who can usually be counted on to be thoughtful, voted yes.

The Senate is likely to put forth a more comprehensive bill acknowledging, as President Bush does, that millions of undocumented workers are in this country not because they are hardened criminals but because employers seek their labor. Perhaps that’s why the House members who voted yes felt free to pander to the most vociferously nativist voters. But that doesn’t excuse them -- certainly not in this state.

The House measure is a cynical relative of Proposition 187, the anti-immigrant state ballot measure that Gov. Pete Wilson backed in 1994. Wilson’s campaign in favor of the proposition, a low point for an otherwise moderate governor, focused on the fears of an electorate that was still overwhelmingly white and native-born. The House’s immigration measure, which stiffens criminal sanctions for the undocumented and encourages local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws, is similarly misguided and counterproductive.

It’s understandable that many Americans feel uneasy about the nation’s inability to fully control its borders, and it is corrosive to the rule of law for the U.S. to tolerate a black market of labor made up of millions of people here illegally. But the answer to this unacceptable situation is not to pretend that all these people are evil or that we don’t need their labor.

The answer is to update our immigration laws to create a legalized flow of labor, presumably via a guest-worker program, alongside measures to toughen enforcement. There are plenty of immigration bills in Congress that would achieve that balance, including a measure sponsored by GOP Reps. Jim Kolbe and Jeff Flake of Arizona. Curiously, that one still hasn’t come to a floor vote.

So how did Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), an anti-immigrant opportunist, get his bill voted on instead? Perhaps the GOP leadership, given the failure of congressional Republicans to agree on a number of major bills lately, had to have a win. Perhaps the measure just offered up a good wedge issue for the coming election year. It’s now up to the president to make it clear that he is on the other side of the wedge from the Sensenbrenners of the world.