Immigration reform: President reveals plan in Las Vegas today

President Barack Obama visits Las Vegas today to address one of his biggest re-election promises: an overhaul of the country’s immigration laws. Our city is an appropriate venue. Las Vegas has a large and growing immigrant population – legal and illegal, union and nonunion – working for big and small businesses and within the gray economy.

The process of making lawful immigration less complicated and arbitrary and giving illegal immigrants some kind of lawful status will be one of the great political challenges of our time. Don’t let Monday’s announcement of a bipartisan Senate plan, given tentative support by the president, fool you into believing such reforms can be enacted easily, anytime soon.

For decades, this country’s immigration policies have been a disaster. Highly skilled, educated foreigners from overseas have been turned away or forced to wait for years to enter the United States, at great expense, even when their presence would lead to investment and job creation. Meanwhile, low-skilled illegal immigrants have taken advantage of weak border security, grabbing work where they can get it. Our schools must educate their children, regardless of their immigration status, regardless of the cost of teaching them English. Our hospitals must care for them, often without compensation.

This is not exclusively an Hispanic issue, although the Latino vote in last year’s election is driving this discussion – in Nevada and across the country, Hispanics overwhelmingly backed President Obama and Senate Democrats. That result has made Republicans eager to participate in a solution that might rebuild their Latino support in future campaigns.

Will President Obama and Democrats use that leverage as a bludgeon to hammer Republicans and gain a political victory? Are Democrats willing to meet GOP demands? Can Republican House Speaker John Boehner collect enough votes to pass anything that gives illegal immigrants a path to citizenship?

When the president addresses a supportive audience at Del Sol High School today, we hope he acknowledges that the United States can’t continue to overzealously enforce some immigration laws while ignoring others. The most important part of any package of immigration reforms is a plan to bring a stop to illegal immigration – for good. That can be accomplished through better border security, seasonal work visas for agricultural workers and a better way for businesses to verify the immigration status of would-be employees.

In 1986, Americans were promised reforms passed by Congress and approved by President Ronald Reagan would solve the country’s immigration problems. Instead, the law made those problems worse by incentivizing illegal immigration. Which brings us to today.

By all means, Congress should give illegal immigrants who have made America their home the means to remain here legally, without cheapening citizenship by giving it away. Then it must end illegal immigration by giving foreigners no rewards for breaking our laws. And it must reform the way we deal with prospective immigrants who do not have easy access to our land borders.

That’s a bipartisan approach. That’s what President Obama should champion today.