Los Angeles Times
November 9, 2012
They design our electronics, harvest our food, staff our research labs and care for our children. Immigrants — legal and illegal, skilled and unskilled — by all accounts are vital cogs in the wheel of the U.S. economy, and the money they send back to their families improves the quality of life throughout their homelands.
So why, when both sending and receiving countries benefit, is the quest for comprehensive immigration reform in the United States so politically divisive and often pushed to the legislative back burner?
Immigration policy experts say the caustic partisan debate over who can stay and who must go has been ratcheted up by the lingering joblessness inflicted by the Great Recession and the searing spotlight of Campaign 2012 that illuminated only candidates’ points of contention rather than those of convergence.
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