One step at a time

HIS NAME is Aaron Schock. He’s a U.S. representative from Illinois-indeed from the same part of that state another congressman once represented: Abraham Lincoln, whose district also included places like Springfield, Peoria and environs.

Aaron Schock is a Republican whip in the House. Which means he’s a vote-counter and vote rounder-upper. In response to a question at a town hall meeting last week, Mr. Schock said some hopeful things about the prospects for immigration reform in the House. Hopeful and encouraging.

Mr. Schock isn’t one of those Republicans who thinks it’s good politics to play to the worst fears of their party’s LCDs (Lowest Common Denominators). On the contrary, he’s one of the growing number of Republican leaders who realize that something must be done about immigration. For the subject has been ignored entirely too long.

Yes, there was a game effort by some of the party’s more forward-thinking leaders, like George W. Bush and John McCain, a decade ago. But nothing was done, and what once was a growing problem has become a mounting crisis as we develop a whole, undocumented nation within a nation. And lose the ideal of one nation indivisible.

And, no, please let’s not have just another amnesty. We’ve all seen how the first one worked out back in the 1980s. Or rather didn’t.

There’s got to be a better approach to illegal immigration than just fighting the problem, however satisfying that non-solution may be to the xenophobes, soreheads and generally mad as-hell among us. How about trying to solve the problem instead? Or would that be unspeakably sensible?

There’s hope reason may yet prevail. According to Congressman Schock, the House is likely to take up a number of immigration bills after summer recess. One at a time. Nice and easy. Okay. Fair enough. If it works. Though so far it hasn’t.

THIS congressman from Illinois says the first reform bill that’ll come before the House is a move to tighten the country’s borders. “I think that’s going to be an easy bill to pass,” he says. “It passed out of the Homeland Security Committee with almost unanimous support . . . . I think that will pass the House and I think that’s a done deal.”

Let’s hope so.

Then, according to the congressman, the House will move to provide more visas for (a) agricultural workers, and (b) immigrants with high-tech skills. Both are needed if the American economy is ever going to get going again.

Not since the bracero program decades ago has the country had a decent way to let farm workers come here for a season to harvest crops, and then return home with their pockets full of cash that their families desperately need back home.

The demand for highly skilled technicians from abroad also mounts every year as our economy becomes more and more centered on handling information rather than picking crops. Here’s hoping this congressman is right about Congress being able to make progress on both fronts.

The next step, he says, could be a vote on the DREAM Act at last. Approving it would open a path to citizenship, or at least legal residence, to those young people who were brought here as small children-and had no say in their becoming illegal immigrants. Both justice and mercy, not to mention these young immigrants’ future and the country’s, demand the swift passage of a DREAM Act. If we will it, it is no dream. Passing such an act would be Step. No. 3.

After that, a more controversial step awaits. It would deal with the folks who have been illegal immigrants for years and years, who’ve raised families here and put down roots, and have acted like good citizens-even when they’re not citizens.

It’s time, past time, to let these people come out of the shadows at last, and work openly-so they can pay taxes and generally contribute to the country’s future and their own. It’s only fair. It’s only reasonable. It’s only just. Even if none of those objectives appeal to the kind of folks whose only reaction to the country’s broken immigration system seems to be: Hell, No!

Will all this play in Peoria? Or in Piggott, Arkansas? Steps 1 through 3 just might.

Nobody says you have to kill all the dragons at once. Take them on one at a time, and save the giant steps for last. It might work. Nothing else has done the trick.

In a burst of statesmanship, the U.S. Senate has passed a comprehensive bill to reform the country’s immigration system. (Will miracles never cease?) Thank you, Republican leaders like Marco Rubio, the still-new senator from Florida. He’s taken the lead in fashioning this reform.

UNFORTUNATELY, it’s almost an American tradition to object to every new wave of immigrants, that is, every wave of newcomers who got here after our own forebears did. Then it becomes time to pull up the ladder.

It was old Ben Franklin, otherwise a paragon of common sense, who was scared silly that German immigrants were going to take over Pennsylvania, and soon enough the whole country.

Later, a whole third party would be formed to fight immigration. (Mr. Lincoln didn’t think any more of that idea than he did of slavery.) But even today, the ideological descendants of those old Know-Nothings sprout with the arrival of every new wave of immigrants.

These modern Know-Nothings are moved not just by baseless fear and general animus, though they are, but by something that may be even more debilitating-a lack of confidence in the remarkable absorptive capacity of the American culture, economy, language and political system. You’d think these people would have learned better by now, but they haven’t-which may be another result of Americans’ failing to study our own history.

Happily, even the most ingrained of prejudices may be overcome. There are increasing signs of common sense about this issue, even on the part of politicians. Although the growth of the Hispanic vote certainly has helped expand their horizons. More and more of the political class may be catching on. Even in the Republican Party, which, lest we forget, used to be the pro-immigration party.

An enlightened attitude toward immigration, legal and illegal, could be adopted by the Grand Old Party if its Bright New Hopes-like Arkansas’ Tom Cotton-ever catch on. But some of the same old things Tom Cotton has to say about immigration demonstrate that even the best and most promising of our politicians have some learning to do. Here’s hoping Mr. Cotton learns fast where immigration is concerned. And that his party does, too. Especially its members in the House.

Aaron Schock has shown the way. It’s good to see that the spirit of Lincoln still lives in the Land of Lincoln.