The Post makes the case for the Senate bill

The main editorial in the Post today makes the case for passing the Senate bill:

Pass the Immigration Bill
Hope for 12 million people -- if the center holds

THERE WAS a revealing moment Tuesday when the Republican presidential contenders were taking turns bad-mouthing the Senate immigration bill. Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, evidently sensing a twofer target -- the bill as well as Washington's evil ways -- allowed that the immigration bill is (gasp!) a compromise. Or as Mr. Giuliani put it, "a typical Washington mess."

Well, yes and no. The bill, which faces a crucial vote as early as today, is indeed a compromise -- a "grand bargain," in the words of its Senate sponsors, in which each side gave something to get something. That's what has made it such an easy mark for critics. But Mr. Giuliani is wrong to think the immigration deal is "typical" in any way; in fact, the Bush administration has presided over a ravenously partisan era in which precious little bipartisan compromise has occurred on major domestic issues. The immigration bill is the exception that lends hope to the proposition that seeking cooperation, conciliation and the middle ground is still possible in American politics.

The bill is not worthwhile merely because it is a compromise but rather because it addresses the colossal and corrosive problem of 12 million illegal immigrants who have become an integral part of the American labor force. No one seriously believes they will be rounded up and deported en masse, yet too many opponents of the bill evidently prefer the status quo -- immigrants in the shadows; employers ignoring the law; preoccupied and embittered state and local officials in whose laps the problem has been dumped -- to the reasonable resolution the bill offers: an arduous but navigable route to citizenship. Wrestling that problem to the ground would be an enormous achievement, and so would measures in the Senate bill that would tighten the border and create systems by which employers could verify the legal status of the workers they hire...

To read the rest, click here.  For more on NDN's views on immigration click the immigration tag above.