The Fair Immigration Resolution Redux

In May of this year an editorial appeared in the Index-Tribune in regard to the council having passed a resolution (No. 45-2006), “…encourag[ing] Congress to endorse criteria for fair immigration reform laws.” The editorial cited the “immigration reform criteria” – eight somewhat broad, general principles of “fairness” proposed for adoption by Congress, – and asked the council if it was willing to take the next step in furthering discussion of the national issue of immigration. This question was posed despite there being a 3-member majority opposed to any discussion of national issues, as the editorial pointed out.

The editorial went on to ask if “…the council [was] willing to have a substantive discussion,” with certain guidelines, about the immigration bill that was then being debated by Congress, and look at the probable impacts provisions of that bill would have on our community. The editorial further asked if it wasn’t the council’s “…responsibility to try to understand and evaluate the local consequences of any such sweeping legislation.”

Now we all know the immigration reform bill is kaput, but that doesn’t mean the key provisions of that bill are issues that have gone away. To the contrary. They still hang over us and affect our lives. We are faced with increasing ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) raids, there is a climate of fear in the Latino community touching both legal and illegal immigrants, businesses are still in financial jeopardy regarding hiring processes and potential labor shortages, and those concerned most about border security are not satisfied with the status quo. So even though our electeds in Congress couldn’t deal with it, the many issues about immigration are alive and with us on a daily basis.

The I-T editorial also asked if the council was willing to apply the criteria for fairness as put forth in the resolution it had already passed to the key issues of immigration, through discussion, examination and debate. Does a merit system as opposed to the long-standing family based system meet the “fairness” criteria? What about questions of amnesty or paths to citizenship? What is the significance of sanctuary cities and counties and its effect on local residents?

So the question put to the council by the newspaper still remains. Will the council take the lead and address in some form the many relevant local issues as they apply to the fairness criteria of the resolution? Or does its passage of the resolution amount to nothing more than, in the words of the editorial, an “…insincere [and] empty gesture”?