Tackle immigration first, Mr. President

Tackle immigration first, Mr. President

Steven Senne/AP

Supporters of immigration reform gather in Rhode Island.

Asked a few years ago whether George W. Bush had made any consequential mistakes in his second term, a senior official of Bush’s administration had to think for a moment. After all, Bush and his people were not known for regrets or introspection. Yes, he finally said, there had been one serious mistake: putting Social Security reform ahead of immigration.

In 2005, the newly reelected President had two domestic policy goals. Immigration reform, a long-time objective of the former Texas governor, looked to the center. Social Security private accounts, prized by conservatives as a game-changing reform of the New Deal welfare state, looked right. Bush chose Social Security.

The Democrats folded their arms and said no. Even many Republicans balked. By the time the resulting wild goose chase had run its course, Bush’s second-term political capital, unreplenishable at that point in his presidency, was depleted.

Worse, the immigration debate had changed. In early 2005, not only Bush but many Democrats and such prominent Republicans as Sen. John McCain were ready to deal. More quickly than anyone expected, the Republican base moved right and the window closed.

And so what should have been a historic policy achievement, and a political watershed for Republicans, never happened. Imagine how different Republicans might look to Hispanic voters today if a Republican President and Congress had led immigration reform. Bush probably still rues that misstep.

And now President Obama looks set to repeat it.

Once again, a reelected but polarizing President begins his second term with political stars aligned for immigration reform. Democrats need to do it, because their liberal and Hispanic base demands it. Republicans also need to do it, because they are desperate to shed their hard-won reputation for hostility to immigrants and Latinos. Obama needs to do it; he has been campaigning on it since 2008, when he said he would “move that forward as quickly as possible.”

Not least important, the country sorely needs immigration reform. The current system has become not only a political thorn in the side of both parties but a drag on growth and innovation. Recent evidence shows that immigration, even low-skilled immigration, is a net economic and social plus.

Meanwhile, the current federal policy takes too little account of skill and talent, and admits fewer workers than the economy needs for the jobs it actually has. America’s current policy is to educate the next foreign-born generation of engineers and entrepreneurs and then expel most of them.

And the policy is inhumane as well as inefficient. Millions of otherwise law-abiding and productive people are driven underground, including many who would pay a reasonable fine or penalty to get right with the law; thousands of same-sex partners and spouses are vindictively shut out of the country.

These are not problems over which Washington has merely indirect influence, as it does with most social problems. They are problems that Congress could actually solve.