Voters want action on immigration

SAN DIEGO — Five years ago, following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, I wrote that the tragedy had effectively ended the national dialogue on immigration reform.

Mexican President Vicente Fox and President Bush had resolved to pound out an accord that matched willing employers with willing workers. It sounded simple. Of course, immigration reform is never simple in a country as diverse as ours, where the debate may start out being about security or jobs but quickly becomes about refusing entry to people of a specific race or ethnicity.

After 9/11, things got even more complicated as Americans fought the urge to pull up the drawbridge and keep out all varieties of foreigners — immigrants as well as terrorists.

I spoke too soon. The attacks didn't really mark the end of the discussion, but the beginning. What followed has been five years of angry rhetoric, ugly accusations, political grandstanding — and lost opportunities. The dialogue didn't end until, well, now.

According to news accounts, Republican leaders in Congress have all but abandoned the goal of reforming immigration laws before the end of the year and instead plan to focus on terrorism and national security as they head into the midterm elections.

It's a mistake. On that, anti-immigrant hard-liners and I agree.

For those who are convinced that the country is being invaded and the Southwest is being reclaimed by Mexico, this congressional nonaction is an abdication of responsibility. These restrictionists see a full-blown crisis and they want Congress to address it. Lawmakers can build a wall, deploy an army, deport people, or make speaking Spanish a misdemeanor and this bunch would love it. But, from the sound of it, what they won't accept is the idea of Congress punting on this issue.

Which brings me to why I think it's a mistake. Republicans in Congress are misreading the tea leaves if they think they can go to voters and claim that the effort they made to scuttle the Senate bill (which would legalize millions of illegal immigrants) was their main accomplishment on immigration reform. Voters won't be satisfied with that. They want action. They want the problem fixed, not dodged for political reasons.

Here's what House Republicans don't understand: The people who are angry today will still be angry tomorrow, and on Election Day. They're going to be angry until their beloved towns and neighborhoods are magically restored, in some Norman Rockwell palette, to what they were a generation or two ago before Americans discovered the benefits of immigrants as cheap labor and decided we couldn't live without them.

Tune in to the immigration debate and you'll hear little about the concern that terrorists might enter the United States through the U.S.-Mexico border. What you'll hear are gripes about how immigrants behave once they get here — from not learning English to having too many babies to living 12 people to a house.

The concerns aren't tied to the war on terror. They're tied to what some people call the culture war.

It's the culture war that grabbed control of this debate and helped run it aground. The tone got ugly and the extremes took over. Middle-ground solutions were hard to come by. Nor was there much room in the dialogue for those who had legitimate concerns about having porous borders in a post-9/11 world.

That's what bothers a friend and fellow journalist whose opinion I respect. As an anti-terrorism hawk who wants strict border controls but who also isn't afraid to condemn nativism when it surfaces, he no longer sees a place for himself in this debate. He blames the media, which have given short shrift to those Americans who want increased border security not because they want to preserve Anglo-Saxon culture, but because it just makes sense when you're at war with vicious fanatics.

"There's the impression that anyone in favor of a more stringent border-security reform plan is probably a racist," he said.

"It's a false picture. It does a disservice. It minimizes a legitimate viewpoint held by millions of Americans who love and want Mexicans working here but still worry about suicide bombers."

I get it.

There are plenty of good people in this debate whose concerns are strictly about national security — not cultural purity. We in the media have to tell that story, and what better time to do it than the fifth anniversary of an event that forever changed our perception of how secure we really are.

Ruben Navarrette's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com