Time for sensible immigration reform (Houston Chronicle)

[struggle4progress]

Houston Chronicle
Updated 07:23 p.m., Thursday, December 8, 2011

... President Obama's remarks last year that some Republicans would like an alligator-filled moat as well as a border fence were catnip to candidate Herman Cain: He'd have the moat and the alligators, he said, along with a 20-foot-high fence, topped with electrified barbed wire, and a sign, "It will kill you: Warning." He later said he was joking. Then he said maybe not ...

One development is that arrests of illegal border-crossers have dropped dramatically - down by more than 25 percent, to the lowest levels since the early 1970s, as reported by the Washington Post. In fiscal year 2011, 327,577 illegal crossers were caught, a steep plunge from the 2006 peak of 1.6 million. At least 90 percent of those stopped at southern borders are Mexican ...

And as for sending all illegal immigrants home, even die-hard illegal immigration opponents are having second thoughts - not necessarily from humanitarian concern about separating families, but because it just doesn't make economic sense. (Nearly two-thirds of the more than 10 million unauthorized adult immigrants in this country have lived here for at least 10 years, and nearly half of them have minor children.) ...

In a new poll of likely Iowa GOP caucus attendees, hardly a liberal bunch, a large majority of likely voters said economic issues were more important than immigration or social concerns, reported The New York Times. They also expressed broad support for changes in immigration law to benefit young people and foreign-born professionals and entrepreneurs ...

http://www.chron.com/opinion/editorials/article/Time-for-sensible-immigration-reform-2390760.php