DURHAM - In his post-election news conference, President Bush said immigration reform is an issue on which he and the new Congress can work together. I sure hope so, and it looks like America does, too.

The country clearly likes immigration more than restrictionists would have us think. This year many candidates tried to gain votes by appealing to public fear of immigrants. In my district, Vernon Robinson cleverly revised the "Beverly Hillbillies" theme to say, "Hey, you illegals, put your shoes on. Go home. Don't come back, now, y'hear?" The xenophobic drumbeat was reinforced by talk radio and TV talking heads.

But Robinson lost to incumbent Brad Miller by a two-to-one margin. Some virulent restrictionists across the country rode this issue to defeat as well. Anti-immigration U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth lost his seat in Arizona; hard-line restrictionist Rep. John Hostettler of Indiana also lost. Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum lost to Bob Casey Jr.; there, Santorum's opposition to comprehensive immigration reform was a critical policy difference.

A few incumbent restrictionists, like Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, won re-election, but it's hard to find anyplace where a hard-running restrictionist unseated a pro-immigration incumbent.

These results confirm national polls. The Pew Center for People and the Press found in late September that the public prefers a comprehensive (Senate) approach to immigration reform over an enforcement-only (House) approach, 55 per cent to 41 per cent. The restrictionist caucus is like a Pekinese pup -- noisy, and not very big.

But if we're going to do immigration reform this year, let me urge everybody to be truly comprehensive. Neither the House approach (enforcement only) nor the Senate bill (enforcement with guest-worker) achieve long overdue, true, comprehensive change.

Real reform requires:

1) Re-write the Immigration and Nationality Act. The current law, taking its structure from a 1952 act, was last comprehensively revised in 1965. It includes outdated elements from 1889. It contradicts itself (e.g., making an aggravated felon deportable, but not inadmissible) and is full of loopholes, potholes and sinkholes, the result of 54 years of growth by accretion. The present act looks like social engineering practiced by Dr. Frankenstein.

2) Tie Immigration quotas to job growth. Most immigrants (legal and illegal) come to the U.S. for opportunity to work and be rewarded for their diligence and skill. Our economy continuously grows much faster than the 0.2 per cent biological population growth rate. Yet fixed immigration quotas either (if enforced) strangle economic growth or (if not enforced) create a huge, marginalized, unauthorized population of workers.

If annual quotas are raised to a reasonable level for current economic conditions and then annually adjusted to Labor Department job growth figures (discounted for biological population growth), most of the pressure for illegal immigration will be a memory.

3) Adequately fund U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services. For years, the former INS (now USCIS) has developed huge delays in processing applications, because Congress has not allocated enough money to process the applications. Countless immigrants give up on the legal process simply because it takes so long.

Remember how two of the terrorists got renewals on their student visas from INS -- six months after 9/11? That was because of these funding-related delays. The funding problem could easily be fixed by relating appropriations to the actual number of pending applications, something Congress has never done.

4) Create a fair compromise for unauthorized immigrants. Twelve million people can't just be deported without unbelievable government expense, economic disruption and social misery. The new Congress needs to show the same courage that President Bush has by finding a fair, earned pathway to legal status for those who entered the country to do honest work while our national policy was one of "immigration prohibition."

The time is right for immigration reform; please, politicians, make it truly comprehensive!

(Hans Christian Linnartz teaches immigration law at Duke Law School and is head of the Linnartz Immigration Law Firm.)

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.