Immigrants saved an America in crisis. It’s payback time | Editorial

Unless you’re blinded by an ill-fitting mask, it wasn’t hard to recognize the impact of immigrants on our lives during the past year.

They are the kid stocking the shelves at the supermarket, the lady wiping down the elevator in your condo, the guy delivering pizza during the blizzard, the woman holding a grandfather’s hand as he took his last breath.

It took a pandemic for us to acknowledge that they are essential, and the vast majority of Americans believe it’s payback time.

But as President Biden throws his support behind the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, the comprehensive immigration reform bill that is aimed at overhauling the cruelty of his predecessor, the lingering question is how much reform he must trade away in order to gain enough Republican support to pass it.

This task will measure the limits of Biden’s political imagination, and one thing he has going for him is the right partner. At the tip of the spear is Sen. Robert Menendez, a son of Cuban immigrants who has been working on this issue for 30 years and characterizes the bill as not only an affirmation of this country’s humanity, but as an economic imperative.

Let’s hope one of those arguments work.

“The reason we have not gotten immigration reform over the finish line is not because of a lack of will,” said Menendez, a member of the Senate’s Gang of Eight that passed bipartisan reform in 2013, only to have it torpedoed by House Speaker John Boehner. “It is because we have compromised too much and capitulated too quickly to fringe voices who refuse to accept the humanity and contributions of immigrants to our country and dismiss everything as amnesty.

“We will do the righteous thing, and make our case for bold and inclusive and lasting immigration reform. And we will have — as we have seen in poll after poll — the vast majority of Americans standing with us.”

At its heart of the bill is an eight-year path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, if they pass background checks and pay taxes. But the path is shortened to three years for Dreamers, farm workers, and TPS holders. It also erases restrictions so that families can be reunited and expands worker visas.

But the bill also addresses Republican priorities, such as more funding for border security, more resources at ports of entry to detect drug smuggling, and new tools for prosecuting trafficking networks.

Public support is strong. A Quinnipiac poll showed that 65 percent of Americans said undocumented immigrants should have a path to citizenship. Dreamers are embraced as tightly as ever, with 83 percent (including 66 of Republicans) in support of them staying and applying for citizenship.

But the politics are daunting, because the Democrats need 10 Republican votes to gain a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

It’s a heavy lift. Republicans are still in lockstep with Donald Trump — whose immigration policy included family separation and the caging of children — and they often align themselves with an ideology that is opposed to the multi-cultural democracy that America has become.

So Menendez will also emphasize the economic impact. He recalls that when the Congressional Budget Office scored the 2013 bill, it broke their calculators: The CBO said that reform bill would have reduced the deficit by $850 billion over 20 years, grown the economy by $1.5 trillion within a decade, added $300 billion to the social security trust fund, and raised wages across the board.

New Jersey’s senior senator is not opposed to getting it done piecemeal, however. Some GOP senators from agriculture states might be open to provisions for farm workers or meat packers, for example, but Menendez repeats that “the goal is for reform, in as robust a form as possible.”

It is the first major legislation from the Biden Administration that is not COVID-related, and he is swinging for the upper deck. With the lives of 11 million people at stake, we hope he connects.

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