The immigration debate is, among other things, a window on the kind of President George W. Bush might have been if he hadn't been captured by the far right -- a uniter, not a divider, as someone said.
Bush, in seeking to satisfy internationalists as well as exclusionists, to respect immigrants as hard-working human beings, and also to deliver good policy, is doing something he has not done since the early response to 9-11. He is committing an act of leadership.
Bush's path was cleared last year by another rare case of bipartisanship, the alliance of Senators John McCain and Edward M. Kennedy. Working with immigration groups such as the National Immigration Forum and the National Council for La Raza, McCain and Kennedy embraced what the experts called ''comprehensive immigration reform."
That meant not just securing America's borders, but the equally daunting challenge of enabling most of the estimated 12 million people here illegally to regularize their status. People here illegally are not just lacking proper immigration documents; they are outside the law entirely. That means not only vulnerability to unscrupulous employers, but an inability to rely on all the civic protections of a lawful society.
The nation would be better off if we did not have a separate outlaw caste, most of whom want nothing more than to be normal, hard-working Americans. Immigrants would be less of a drag on wages if they shared the rights enjoyed by other workers (which are far too weakly enforced -- but that's another column).
McCain and Kennedy offered a grand bargain: much tougher border enforcement, a path to normalization of status and eventual citizenship for immigrants who had not committed crimes, and serious enforcement directed at employers, who can currently hire illegally with impunity as long as the worker produces something that resembles papers.
It's the work, of course, that draws the migrants. Make it impossible for employers to hire people illegally, and the flow will dry up.
In embracing a variant of this approach, Bush rejected the exclusionist wing of his own party, led by a true primitive, Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo. Tancredo wants to make illegal immigration a felony, round up and deport all 12 million, and build a wall around America.
As a sop to his own right wing, Bush has agreed to a partial wall, and to make the path to citizenship more arduous than the one proposed by McCain and Kennedy. For the GOP's business wing, which wants plenty of cheap, exploitable workers, Bush added a large ''guest-worker" program, which would recreate a caste of immigrants without rights in a different form.
It remains to be seen how tough Bush will be on employers who hire illegally. Without tough employer sanctions, the immigrant flow will continue in other ways (most illegal immigrants did not swim the Rio Grande; they overstayed tourist or student visas).
Bush seems motivated partly by his own Christian values, shaped by his early experience in Texas where he saw migrants as good, hard-working people, and partly by the calculus of Karl Rove that the GOP needs big business support and the burgeoning Hispanic vote more than it needs to appease the nativists.
The immigration debate marks the end of Republican unity in Congress. Under majority leader Tom DeLay, the Republicans had a thin majority, but DeLay disciplined his House caucus as no leader had done since the dictatorial House Speaker ''Uncle Joe" Cannon a century ago. With DeLay's ignominious departure and Bush's plummeting support, the days of unity are gone.
In the Senate, majority leader Bill Frist tried to block the Bush-McCain-Kennedy approach with clumsy parliamentary maneuvering, but failed dismally. On Wednesday, the Senate rejected an amendment to deny undocumented workers an earned path to citizenship. The amendment lost, 66-33, with Republicans split down the middle.
The same dynamic was evident in the House Thursday, when Democrats won passage of a bill revoking government giveaways to oil companies. Republican leaders failed to block a vote; the measure split the Republican caucus and passed, 252 to 165.
This brand of governing rattles the Republican right, but it's nothing but a return to normal. America isn't a parliamentary system. Every recent President, save Bush, has worked with both parties, often over the objections of extremists in his own party. That's what it means to be President of all the people.
In desperation, Bush has reverted to bipartisanship. This may yet produce good immigration policy. It would take a far bigger miracle for him to reclaim the mantle of uniter.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. This column originally appeared in the Boston Globe.
