Another opportunity lost on illegal immigration

Chalk up another failure for this Montana legislative session. Yet another illegal immigation bill bit the dust, this one in the House Judiciary Committee. This bill sponsored by Sen. Shockley had passed with strong bipartisan support in the Senate.

As we have noted before, we need to have comprehensive measures dealing with the problems of illegal immigration before the inevitable wave hits Montana -- not after.

There are bipartisan concerns -- labor, voter fraud, safety, the solvency of social service programs, law enforcement, and general respect for the rule of law.

Bipartisan action should be able to address all of these concerns -- if only each side is willing to grant that the other's concerns are valid. As long as Republicans remain reflexively anti-union and pro-cheap labor -- and as long as calling Republicans racist remains a respectable talking point from our supposedly more intelligent friends on the other side of the aisle, we won't get anywhere.

And we need to.