WASHINGTON - In the fevered debate over illegal immigration, Republicans in Congress -- including all four senators from the Carolinas -- may be forced to choose between key allies.
Do they side with business, which wants a guest-worker program that would include those here illegally?
Or do they stand with grassroots conservatives, who say such plans reward lawbreakers?
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., says he's feeling heat from both sides.
"The Republican Party," he says, "is split down the middle."
First, Dunn sets up the guest worker/enforcement, progressive/conversative dichotomy that appears so often in border lit. It might be that there's something in the middle, say, "comprehensive immigration reform". Scroll down the article and Rep. Jim DeMint says that he's not in favor of a guest worker reform until "we secure our borders". Jim, might a guest worker program help do that?
[Rep. Lindsey Graham] calls the bill, which also has border security provisions, "a legal mechanism to allow people to stay in our country who don't commit crimes and who work hard and who pay taxes and who add value to our economy."
Second, oft-repeated sentiments like Rep. Graham's portray undocumented immigrants as, much like the bills, mechanisms. Economic engines. Cogs. This says nothing for about their cultural input or, really, roles as already integrated within society. They become the people "in the shadows". The risk is in seeing immigrants solely as shadows, rather than as people in the shadows. Humanity is a stake here in a very literal way.
Third, all this is going on in the Carolinas. Think that migration, documented or otherwise, is just an issue along the border?
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