Congress Displeases Us

As the death rattle of the 111th Congress approaches its rheumy end, we admit that there are some actions our lawmakers have taken that do not displease us. (Why we are talking like Queen Victoria, we do not know.)

We are happy that a tax deal that enriched everybody from the ultra-deserving middle class to the scoundrel rich also will continue benefits to the unemployed. We are pleased with the end of "don't ask, don't tell," making it possible for gays and lesbians to openly risk their lives in our military adventures like everyone else.

And it is also to be hoped that an arms reduction treaty with Russia will be ratified, as we think we already have a sufficiency of nuclear warheads to incinerate the globe and everything on it an ample number of times.

Our displeasure was acute, however, with the failure of the Senate to pass the DREAM Act, which stands, we are assured, for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act.

To put it simply, and we prefer to put things simply in order that members of Congress will understand us, if you were small child smuggled in your mother's arms across the border into the United States, but now you have graduated from high school without seriously running afoul of the law and have attended two years of college, or if you wanted to serve your country in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida, you could get on the pathway to citizenship.

(Some journalists, with whom we spend company as rarely as possible and think about even less, have written that the DREAM Act would bestow citizenship. It would not. It would give recipients a green card, making them resident aliens who could apply for citizenship in five years if they maintain high moral character, something somewhat difficult to do in this country if the shows we see on our television receiver are to be believed.)

President Barack Obama, for whom we have considerable respect, thought the DREAM Act would be the "easy" part of his comprehensive immigration reform package because it dealt with students and soldiers, whom some find difficult to dislike without first meeting them.

President Obama even bargained for Republican votes by sweetening the deal: He got tough on deportations, raising them to a record 390,000 per year, to show that he was no immigration "patsy" (a term we learned by watching "CSI: Miami").

Alas, the Republicans were insufficiently sweetened.

While in most democracies 55-41 would be a victory, the U.S. Senate retains a feature called the "filibuster," which would be better suited for the comic operas of Gilbert & Sullivan than for lawmaking, but which requires 60 votes to accomplish anything.

So the DREAM Act has gone down to defeat, and various people now proffer differing reasons. Naftali Bendavid, writing in The Wall Street Journal, a publication we have ironed and placed next to our kippers every morning, said Republicans complained that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "was seeking to push through the DREAM Act, as well as a repeal of the prohibition on gays serving openly in the military, a spending bill, and the New START nuclear arms pact with Russia at essentially the same time, just days before Christmas."

Imagine members of Congress being required to enact legislation before going upon one of their frequent holidays! The outrage of it! We admit we were amused, and a smile almost passed upon our lips.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., had a different reason for voting against the bill. "We're not going to pass the DREAM Act, or any legalization program, until we secure our borders," he said.

The impossibility of securing so large a border — especially since Americans are squeamish about the use of land mines — is well known to all. For every 50-foot fence, the saying goes, there is a 51-foot ladder.

The way to stop illegal immigration is at the workplace, not the border. If businesses had an inexpensive and reliable way of verifying who was in the country illegally and if immigration laws punishing businesses for hiring illegal immigrants were enforced, one-third of the immigration problem would be solved.

The second third is deciding who should be allowed into the country legally and permanently — high-tech workers, nurses, plus a lottery for those less fortunate? — and the final third is deciding what to do about the 12 million or so undocumented aliens who are already living in America, some of them for decades.

This is called "closing the back door, closing the front door and deciding what to do with those trapped in between."

Why, then, do we have these votes on bills that are sure to fail?

Bruce Morrison, an expert on immigration, tells us: "Was this about passing the DREAM Act, or was this about telling Hispanics that Democrats love them and Republicans hate them?"

So was this all a charade, a kabuki dance, a stage act? Was this all, in other words, about politics?

We shudder.

To find out more about Roger Simon, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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