A middle road; Senate plan lays reasonable path on immigration.

COLUMN: In our opinion

As a bipartisan coalition in Congress this week tried to restart the immigration reform effort that foundered last year, a massive raid on a New Bedford sweatshop placed the often conflicting human, economic, political and legal elements of this contentious issue starkly on display.

Hundreds of immigration officers and local police entered a factory that was producing safety vests and other military equipment on Tuesday. Three company officials were arrested and more than 300 employees, predominantly Guatemalan and Salvadoran women, were detained.

Although undocumented workers are not as critical to the economy of the Northeast as they are in the Southwest, they constitute a significant minority of the work force in the tourism, manufacturing and other sectors. Yet they often are underpaid, unfairly treated and work in abysmal conditions, but dare not complain for fear of deportation and, perhaps, separation from their children who are natural-born citizens.

The raid also underscored the polarized, sometimes toxic politics surrounding the debate.

On one extreme, immigration hawks saw the raid as vindication of their hard-line stance - as if building thousands of miles of guarded border fences and rounding up and deporting the 7.5 million to 15 million illegal immigrants in the United States were a practical option.

On the other extreme, apologists for the see-no-evil status quo dished out inane platitudes such as the sentiment on Worcester advocates' banner, "No Human Is Illegal" - as if unconditional amnesty for undocumented foreign nationals and opening the borders to all comers were a desirable, sensible or fair solution.

Last May, the U.S. Senate took a huge step toward bringing immigration policy into the 21st century, crafting a bipartisan bill taking a middle road embraced by national leaders across the ideological spectrum.

Unlike a House bill passed in 2005, which would make illegal aliens felons, the Senate would bring illegal aliens such as those detained in New Bedford out of the shadows. It would create a guest-worker program that, among other things, would lessen workers' vulnerability to exploitation while putting greater responsibility on employers who hire illegals.

The Senate bill would enhance border security but at the same time would offer a chance for citizenship to those who come forward, pay a fine, learn English, study American civics, demonstrate they had paid their taxes and then take their places in line behind other applicants for citizenship - while properly denying a citizenship path to those convicted of three misdemeanors or a felony.

U.S. immigration policy manifestly has been an abject failure, with an estimated 400,000 to 850,000 people entering the country illegally each year. The middle road charted by the Senate last year offers the best available chance to remedy a situation that long has been untenable.