NYT on immigration: "It's painful to see what (Bush) has turned into."

[DeepModem Mom]

Editorial
Immigration Reform, in Pieces
Published: September 26, 2006

This can’t be what President Bush had in mind when he gave a prime-time speech about immigration in May. “An immigration reform bill needs to be comprehensive,” he told the nation, “because all elements of this problem must be addressed together, or none of them will be solved at all.”

That was then. Now we have the Republican-controlled House passing a pre-election lineup of narrow enforcement measures packaged to give voters a false impression of resolve. Mr. Bush has even given up talking a good game on immigration: he says he will sign the Republican legislation as a “first step” toward the real reform he has said he wants but has done depressingly little to achieve....

***

Among the most poisonous provisions is one that would give state and local police agencies authority to enforce federal immigration laws. Police departments big and small have bristled at the idea, saying they lack the expertise and the resources to enforce immigration law. They say it would cripple crime fighting by severing hard-won relationships with potential victims and witnesses....But for every police chief who sees this as a foolish attack on law enforcement, there is a sheriff or local politician, like Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive on Long Island, who is just itching to seize control of his or her own little corner of the immigration battlefield. It’s an every-mayor-for-himself approach that would only worsen the ad hoc incoherence of the national immigration system....The senators who have held out for comprehensive reform, which includes giving immigrants a realistic way to work and get right with the law, must stick together to defeat the House campaign.

The House’s election hunt for border-security sound bites shows how susceptible to demagoguery the debate can be. Anti-immigrant fervor is a flame that spreads easily. But leadership can help people look beyond resentment and fear. Once upon a time, Mr. Bush was a sense-talking governor from a border state who understood this. Now he has joined the leaders of his party in calling on the nation to cower behind electric fences, searchlights and squad cars. It’s painful to see what he has turned into, and frustrating, in these days of immigration panic, to keep waiting for a real leader to emerge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/opinion/26tue1.html?hp

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. Painful to see what he turned into? He IS what he always WAS -

an utter failure at everything he stumbled into.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. I think, on immigration, he always could have been worse. Now...

he's as bad there as elsewhere.

[pinto]

3. NYT makes a great point about having local law enforcement

enforce federal immigration laws. It's not their job, it's ripe for abuse or inadvertent missteps by professionals who aren't trained in immigration law and operate under sometimes very differing local and state statutes covering the scope of their duties.

It reeks of "privatization lite" - turn the responsibility over to the locals. It's a cop out.