Immigration issues can only be fixed by Washington

BEAUFORT COUNTY Council has tried to succeed where Congress failed.

The council has taken on the national immigration issue. It now requires businesses to pledge that they will not knowingly hire illegal immigrants. There will be some random audits by the county, and violators would have their business licenses suspended. Doing such random audits of 25 percent of the about 5,000 licensed businesses in the county each year would cost an estimated $210,000 and require six new employees, according to the county administrator. How many lawyers the county will have to employ, especially once a business is cited, is unknown yet, but the county is likely to spend a lot of time in court defending its policy. How easily, for instance, will the county prove intent?

This ordinance’s advocates may see it as stepping in where Congress has failed, but this effort just shows how clearly immigration is a federal issue. The Legislature, too, will be striving to step in where Congress failed to act. But state and municipal laws just create a patchwork of rules for businesses to follow in different areas. And they fail to create a real answer to a nationwide, systemic problem.

A priority for addressing illegal immigration is surely a federal one: better policing of our border. In fact, those who agitated for a crackdown on immigration last year insisted that the border had to be fixed first. But it has not; in fact, the GOP leadership of the House declined even to attempt to find common ground with the Senate on broad legislation. So absent the base of major federal action, state or local laws are premature.

That federal legislation should be an early priority for the new Congress. It needs to deal with much more than border security. It needs to recognize that some 11 million illegals are in the United States, playing an important role in the economy, and no mass expulsion of them will be conducted. It would be hugely disruptive, socially and economically, and would tie up enormous resources.

Last year’s Senate bill contained a path to legal status and eventual citizenship for working immigrants who have been longtime residents, which is in line with the promise that America has offered the world for centuries. Becoming legal also would open the doorway to becoming open members in our society, instead of living on the fringes. The bill would have added resources for the border and for internal enforcement of the laws, and it sought to create a forgery-proof identification system, so that businesses can really tell who’s in the country legally — and be held liable for hiring those who are not.

Last year’s Republican leadership in the House decided to try to ride the anger over immigration to re-election, rather than accept the Senate’s plan to fix the issue — the one President Bush wanted. That political stance didn’t pay off. The new Congress should grasp the chance to pass such a broad-based bill. That’s the only way the United States — not just South Carolina or Beaufort County — can really begin to address the immigration problem.

Many of those who have sought state and local crackdowns on illegal immigration are acting under the understandable impulse that U.S. law is being disdained. But it is federal law that’s broken, and Congress is the only place where it can be fixed. If lawmakers in Washington make a real effort to address all the facets of illegal immigration, instead of just being punitive, they can begin to remedy the problem.