Immigration Reform May be Coming our Way

The New York Times reports today that the Obama administration is preparing a comprehensive immigration reform bill that may be introduced to the country in the President's State of the Union address and then introduced into Congress for action. A key element include a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, if they can meet certain criteria.

The president’s plan would also impose nationwide verification of legal status for all newly hired workers; add visas to relieve backlogs and allow highly skilled immigrants to stay; and create some form of guest-worker program to bring in low-wage immigrants in the future.

There will naturally be petty partisan bickering, mostly supported by falsehoods like this one:

Representative Phil Gingrey, a Georgia Republican who follows immigration issues, said he remained opposed to “amnesty of any kind.”

He said that the Obama administration had been lax on enforcement, and that he would “continue working to secure our borders and enforce existing immigration law.”

This, of course, is patently false, since the Obama administration has deported more undocumented immigrants than any previous administration--far more than during the Bush administration. And, yet, the President received 71 percent of the Latino vote in this last election.