It's a prospect made all the more pointless by the fact that in one of the places where government still functions -- Washington, believe it or not -- realistic steps are being taken to address the actual issues involved with illegal immigration. The fact is, there's little appetite in most quarters to uproot and deport the 11 million immigrants estimated to be living in the U.S. without papers. It takes very little imagination to foresee just how laced with multiple indecencies such a process would be. That's why most serious polls continue to show that a majority of Americans would favor some sort of "path to citizenship" for the 11 million without papers -- if the government simultaneously takes responsibility for seeing that their numbers are not constantly replenished.
Immigration debacle
The idea of stripping Latino children of their rights as Americans is the first of probably many reprehensible measures to crawl out of the vacuum of Sacramento politics.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has said he will introduce a comprehensive immigration reform bill sometime in the fall. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has begun a low-key crackdown on employers, as opposed to mass roundups of their mostly blue-collar workers. The White House recently said it would require companies seeking federal contracts to check their workers' status against the computerized E-Verify database, which contains Social Security and other personal records. At the same time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has begun systematically examining the records of firms in industries known to make regular use of illegal immigrants. The $150,000 fine recently leveled against L.A.-based American Apparel for employing 1,800 illegals among its 5,600 factory workers was part of that effort.
In other words, what we're likely to see is proposed immigration reform that addresses both the human reality of the illegal immigrants already inside the U.S. and popular anxiety over the issue's dimensions.
There will doubtless be a fight over Schumer's proposal; there always is when the question involves immigration. Still, it's something of a relief to see government actually working, as opposed to the willfully feckless mess that both parties have made of things here in California.
And the debate over Schumer's bill may take many turns, but none will be as bad as the viciously loony idea of stripping children of their rights as American citizens, a proposal that has crawled out of the inexcusable political sinkhole where Sacramento used to be.
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timothy.rutten@latimes.com
