When Ted Kennedy gazes from the windows of his office in Boston, he can see the harbor’s "Golden Stairs", where all eight of his great-grandparents first set foot in America. It reminds him, he told his Senate colleagues this week, that reforming America’s immigration laws is an "awesome responsibility". Mr. Kennedy is the Democrat most prominently pushing a bipartisan bill to secure the border, ease the national skills shortage and offer a path to citizenship for the estimated 12m illegal aliens already in the country. He has a steep climb ahead of him.
As drafted, the bill seeks to mend America’s broken immigration system in several ways. First, and before its other main provisions come into effect, it would tighten border security. It provides for 200 miles (320km) of vehicle barriers, 370 miles of fencing and 18000 new border patrol agents. It calls for an electronic identification system to ensure employers verify that all their employees are legally allowed to work. And it stiffens punishments for those who knowingly hire illegals.
As soon as the bill was unveiled, it was stoned from all sides. Christans, mostly Republicans, denounced it as an "amnesty" that would encourage further waves of illegal immigration. Tom Tancredo, a Republican congressman running for president (without hope of success ) on an anti-illegal-immigration platform, demanded that all but the border-security clauses be scrapped. Even these he derided as "so limited it’s almost a joke". Conservative talk-radio echoed his call. No one is seriously proposing mass deportation, but Mr. Tancredo says the illegals will all go home if the laws against hiring them are vigorously enforced.
Most labor unions are skeptical, too. The AFL-CIO denounced the guest-worker program, which it said would give employers "a ready pool of labor that they can exploit to drive down wages, benefits, health and safety protections" for everyone else. Two Democratic senators tried to gut the program. One failed to abolish it entirely; another succeeded in slashing it from 400000 to 200000 people a year.
Employers like the idea of more legal migrants but worry that the new system will be cumbersome. Many object to the idea that they will have to check the immigration status of all their employees. The proposed federal computer system to sort legal from illegal workers is bound to make mistakes. Even if only one employee in a hundred is falsely labelled illegal, that will cause a lot of headaches. And the points system has drawbacks, too. Employers are better placed than bureaucrats to judge which skills are in short supply. That is why the current mess has advantages—illegal immigrants nearly always go where their labor is in demand.
Other groups have complaints, too. Immigrant-rights groups say that the path to citizenship would be too long and arduous and too few Hispanics would qualify. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, fretted that the new stress on skills would hurt families, adding that her party is "about families and family values". Some people worry that House Democrats will kill it to prevent Mr. Bush from enjoying a domestic success.
Despite the indignation, public opinion favors the underlying principles. At least 60% of Americans want to give illegals a chance to become citizens if they work hard and behave.
Ted Kennedy is mentioned in the first paragraph to（）
A. introduce the main topic of immigration law reforming
B. remind the Senate that they have an awesome responsibility
C. stress the importance of securing the border and easing skills shortage
D. emphasize the fact that even a Senator is a descendant of immigrants
