Immigration Bill Fallout

Was the Senate compromise bill on immigration really a struggle between the reactionary anti-immigration "hardliners" and the more moderate, bipartisan, "pragmatic" center? That is how Joshua Holland seems to paint the picture at alternet.org. Indeed judging from the angry mobs attacking Latino bystanders in Hazleton Pennsylvania, perhaps he has a point. But David Bacon has, I think, a better analysis on truthout.org called Who Killed the Immigration Bill, and Who Wants It to Come Back?:

"Meanwhile, legalization proposals in the same tradeoff bills were presented as the payoff for immigrant communities. Yet, many of the legalization schemes threatened to disqualify immigrants guilty of document fraud. ICE now says this includes anyone who's given a false SS number to get a job, something almost all undocumented workers have done. Other proposals would have imposed employment requirements, imposed high fines difficult for most working families to pay, and required people to take an undetermined amount of time off work to return to their home countries to apply for readmittance, with no guarantee they could pass a host of bureaucratic checks. Most proposals would have had people wait at least a decade before they could get a green card for permanent legal residence (not citizenship). Legalization programs wouldn't even take effect until the US gained 'operational control' of the border, leaving the door open for years of increased enforcement with no change at all in the status of the undocumented ...

The beltway lobbying strategy started by asking what employers and a Republican administration would be willing to accept. Groups like the [National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON)], however, proposed building a popular movement to change the political terrain in Washington, like the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Responding to lobbyists who called the Senate bill the only chance to reform immigration law for years, NDLON said 'We know the struggle for justice and immigration reform requires a long view of history, and we will not be pressured into accepting an insufficient compromise simply for sake of political expediency. We owe it to this and future generations to pass a bill that we can all be proud of.'"