If only...

And now for something completely different. It's good to know that at last many of the illegal immigrants in this country will have the opportunity to become, well, legal immigrants. The more hardline set of Republicans is, of course, making a stink about the whole deal. Of course, the more hardline Democrats would be making a stink about it if the issue was one that they had been elected to office on the principle of, at least in part. But that is not the real point. The point is that the Republicans, at least the more moderate ones, were willing to cooperate with the Democratic majority on at least one issue, and Bush was forced into thanking the Democrats for putting a bill that they have wanted to do so with on the fast track to lawdom (Schoolhouse Rock reference). There was no way that the US was going to be able to deport even a fraction of those affected by this bill, so the best way to go about this problem was to do it exactly the way that the Democrats, and Republicans now too, are doing it; they are getting the workers in the US under the law, and they are doing more to prevent more from getting in. If only they could cooperate this way, for the benefit of the populace, on more issues...