6/25/2007

The compromise Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) had two inherent failures, among others: One was the basic concept that the system would legalize the 12 million illegal aliens and as a solution to control the immigration in the future, the system should reinforce the borders against the inflow of illegal aliens (allegedly half a million a year) and at the same time reform the legal immigration system to control the immigration.

Second failure was the misguided concept of "compromise" producing a "mosaic" of completely unworkable and incompatible far right and far left political agenda rather than finding a solution that moved to the middle of the spectrum. The first failure has produced a sense of injustice in the legal alien community that the people who had abided by the laws were punished by the compromise bill and those who broke the law were rewarded for their acts.

The immigrant community felt that such compromise would encourage rather than discourage illegal immigration for the future. This sense of injustice was brought about particularly by the concept of "elimination of chain immigration" and " point system or merit system" as the two pillars for control of future immigration. The negotiators had wrongfully focused on devices to punish and control legal immigrants rather than focusing on resolving the current illegal immigrants and the devices to prevent such flows of illegal immigrants in the future. That was the most critical failure in the compromise bill.

As for the second failure, it was a simple accommodation of the far-right political agenda and the far-left political agenda side-by-side rather than a solution to truly compromise the differences and produce workable solutions that involved some give-and-take, which was the basic political skill of negotiation and compromise. This phase of failures further deteriorated during the process of debates and amendments.

One wonders why this happened. The Senate could have just picked up the bill which they passed last year and try to amend it through the debates and negotiations. Or, the Senate could have just picked up the bi-partisan bill of STRIVE in the House and tried to amend it by the art of negotiation and compromise. As the New York Times editorial appropriately chastisized, the leaders involved in the compromise and Senate majority and minority leaders and the White House totally failed.