The Economist: Let them have a DREAM

From the Economist editorial page:

IT WAS always meant to have been one of Barack Obama’s big priorities. But along with saving the planet from global warming and closing down the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, immigration reform has slithered down the White House’s to-do list as health care turned from triumph to liability. With the House of Representatives due to pass into Republican control at the beginning of next year and the Democrats’ majority in the Senate due to be slashed at the same time, Mr Obama looks set to end his second year in office without having brought forward a plan for immigration reform, let alone getting one enacted. Even climate-change legislation has fared better than that.
. . .
Even a little bravery on this subject would be welcome. And a suitable, if small, proposal does exist, in the shape of the DREAM Act, which a bipartisan group of humane and sensible senators have been trying to get passed for a decade. It provides for young illegals to earn their citizenship by either service in the armed forces (they can sometimes do this already, but it is tricky), or by spending at least two years in higher education, both coupled with an extended period of blameless law-abiding. It is a testament to just how nasty the immigration debate has become that a measure that would bring the fearful out of the shadows, encourage tertiary education in a section of the workforce that needs more of it and supply the undermanned army with recruits has gone nowhere. House Democrats still have the votes to push the bill through their chamber before the outgoing Congress retires at the end of the year, and then dare the Republicans to block it in the Senate. If only they have the courage to say gracias. Click here for the entire piece.

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