next thing you know i'll be eating freedom fries and watching hannity and colmes

The immigration bill is dead.

To me this seems to be a tremendous loss and a tremendous gain, all in one. Undocumented immigrants in this country - or at least some of them - just came closer to solutions to a couple of their problems than they have been probably in this lifetime. And personally, I think they should be breathing a sigh of relief that the bill died where it did. RIP.

I will admit right now that I say that based on only quick skimming of the TONS of coverage and commentary out there about the potential bill, and also with a brief but extremely informative background in both immigration law and Latin American social justice organizations. And here's what I believe - the proposed bill was about politics, not helping immigrants.

It was about figuring out how to appease the relatively open-minded voters and potential (future citizen) voters while not alienating (get it?) the Fox News crowd whose ancestors were, no doubt, sharing their corn with the Pilgrims and walking the Trail of Tears. This is why they can be so damn self-righteously opposed to immigration. (And, of course, because cultural diversity, bilingual education, and finding out what real Chinese and Mexican food tastes like will positively RUIN this country.)

There are many on the left criticizing the "hardliners" who killed the bill despite its supposedly wide support, and I think they're correct that a lot of people in this country would actually like to see a plan for more legal immigration opportunities and maybe even some amnesty. I don't happen to think it's because most people have any kind of a real understanding of the lives of undocumented immigrants or how screwed this country would be without them, much less how absurdly atrociously complicated and self-contradictory the U.S. immigration system is (example: when I worked for an immigration lawyer I regularly had to call the USCIS - formerly the INS - for answers to questions. They regularly gave me WRONG answers, which I would prove to them by reading them the most current version of the law, at which point I usually got hung up on). I do think it's because at least some people don't enjoy a) being hypocrites (see above: the Fox News crowd) or b) hearing about the horrible deaths people die in the Mexican/U.S. border desert or suffocating in the backs of trucks to get into this country.

I disagree very strongly, though, with the notion that a bad bill is better than no bill. How can anyone to the left of Hillary Clinton (and forgive me, but I don't consider her to be anywhere near the left, unless you catch her on a day when the left has taken out its wallet or voter registration cards in a big way, or she just has indigestion) honestly believe that logic? Do these same liberals believe the war on (that's not a typo) Iraq is good because it got rid of a torturous dictator? Is a bad war better than no war? Is a bad piece of seafood better than no seafood at all?

(Hint: No. Unjustified warfare that creates civil war and regional meltdown is really just bad. And no one wants E.coli.)

Give me a break. Maybe this is why people think liberals are naive. A bad bill would have been better than no bill only because there is no bill, so it's easy to pretend that the bill couldn't really have been that bad, could it? (answer: YES) and that our fearless leaders would have made sure that it was fair and benevolent and true to our country's ideals of tolerance and diversity and welcoming the huddled masses yearning to be free, yada yada yada.

Ever tried to read the federal tax code? Imagine it being more complicted. By about 1000 times. That's generally where the immigration code is. There are one or several types of immigration status for just about every letter in the alphabet (example: an L-1B is an intracompany transferee with specialized knowledge; an L-2 is his/her spouse or child), and obtaining one always involves lots of money and time and usually frustration and patronizing treatment. Even better, the laws change constantly, with every whim and pork barrel in Congress.

And that's just the law for people who have a shot at legal documentation. Then there's how we deal with the rest - giant fences, raids on businesses, people picked up for minor offenses - traffic tickets, smelling of marijuana smoke, being brown-skinned, etc. - being handcuffed to a bus seat for, oh, 35 hours and dropped off on the other side of the bridge in Tijuana.

(I'm not making that up, by the way.)

So no, I do not believe a bad bill would be better than no bill at all. I believe a bad bill would have been bad. I believe it would destroy more lives, create an even bigger bureaucratic mess than we currently face, and worst of all, allow most of us to pat ourselves on the back for accomplishing "reform" and ignore the ensuing chaos. I believe this president wouldn't sign a good bill even if the weak-ass Democratic leadership managed to get one to his desk, which frankly, I have no faith they would, because they're too busy being scared of their shadows.

If that makes me a hardliner... so be it.