Party politics has stalled the important immigration bill in the US Congress, despite the crisis steadily becoming more urgent every week. Desperate poverty in Central America is forcing hundreds of thousands of people to leave home and seek new lives in the US, placing a huge strain on those parts of the US where immigrants settle. And this is in addition to the 12 million illegal immigrants who have already got into the US, but do not have any legal status despite some having lived there for decades. The political clash in Congress is between the conservatives who fear the flood of humanity coming into the US and want much more border security and tighter deportation laws, and the liberals who want to find a way to regularise the status of the 12 million by creating a clearer route to becoming a legal citizen for those who have work and are not in trouble with the law. Obviously toughening border controls and regularising illegal immigrants are not mutually exclusive and both should be done. The only reason nothing is happening is the partisan split in Congress as the Republicans want to make things as hard as possible for Barack Obama.
In addition, the liberal answer to the flood of would-be immigrants is to tackle the root cause of poverty in Central America and they have linked introduction of tougher border controls to starting of substantial aid programmes in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Obama needs the support of Congress to get this through, even if he may regularise the status of the illegal immigrants by presidential executive action.
The latest figures show more than 40,000 unaccompanied children have been detained at the border since autumn as they tried to get into the US without documentation and as their families used them to flee acute poverty. It is sad that a country built on immigration should now be so hard on people seeking to improve their lives and also offering economic benefits to their new country. The Congress should make a priority of passing this bill.
