Back on the burner

The immigration reform bill in Congress has been revived with support from a bipartisan Senate coalition and the White House. Standing against that encouraging step Tuesday was North Carolina's senior senator, Republican Elizabeth Dole. But her Tar Heel colleague, Republican Richard Burr, at least voted to reopen debate. Burr will stand even taller if he puts himself constructively behind reform and helps fashion the compromises that will be necessary to gain the bill's passage.

Dole, facing re-election next year, has cast her lot with those who oppose the bill, mainly because of their view that it extends amnesty to those who have entered the country illegally. (In a recent UPI-Zogby poll, 73 percent of respondents said major immigration reform is needed, suggesting that opposition to the bill, while vocal, hardly reflects a consensus.) A plain reading of the Senate measure dispels the amnesty notion. For instance, it levies fines on illegal immigrants who want to be able to remain here.

Dole actually has good reason to help boost the legislation. From a partisan point of view, it would help her fellow Republican, President Bush, for whom immigration reform is a chief domestic goal.

More importantly, Dole was elected to do what's good for North Carolinians -- and getting a handle on illegal immigration would be good. The rate of growth of Hispanics in North Carolina is among the nation's highest. Too often it is illegal immigrants who do the work on the state's farms.Young Mexicans, Hondurans and the like flock to urban areas to landscape our homes and build our skyscrapers. Illegals burden schools, health-care systems and courts as much here as in other overwhelmed states.

Reform benefits the business community, in that it helps address ongoing labor shortages. That helps explains Burr's apparent open-mindedness. If the bill fails, Dole will owe her constituents an explanation of why she let complaints about wispy "amnesty" block solutions to a large and stubborn domestic problem.