Dead Immigration Bill Didn't Go Far Enough

For a progressive assessment of the Immigration Bill, see "A New Green Card Deal" by Mae M. Ngai in The Nation. She makes the case that we've had illegal immigration problems ever since in 1965 we imposed quotas on countries in the Western Hemisphere.

She concludes:

"We would be wise to rethink the unilateralist premises of US immigration policy. It makes much more sense for our policies to reflect how migration is driven by supply and demand in a world in which population and wealth are distributed unevenly. History shows that policies designed to categorically exclude--from the Chinese exclusion acts of the nineteenth century to the imposition of unrealistically low quotas on Mexico in the twentieth--are doomed to failure."

And she's right. The policy we currently have is neo-colonialist and racist, and needs to be thoroughly reexamined.

(cross-posted at Cobalt 6)