When Politics Impede Progress

The title for this post is so generic it could apply to almost any policy issue at almost any time. When politics impede progress could probably be the subtitle for a book on the history of American government. Despite being able to accomplish some great things (we'll omit the boatload of mistakes they've made), our politicians of operate within an unnecessarily complex world of opaque backroom deals in which the progress of our nation is often of secondary important to the political well-being of an individual or his/her party.

Right now, the issue being held captive by politics as usual is desperately needed immigration reform. Though conservatives have begun moving in the right direction (meaning to the center) on the issue, many are loathe to take real action on the issue prior to the midterm elections because it may fracture the party when they have a chance to win seats.

There are so many outrageous things to say about this I don't even know where to begin. For starters, it's hard to imagine the Republican party presenting itself as a unified group on anything. Republicans in the House and Senate are very different breeds, and no amount of sanity is going to coax tea party candidates from their ensconced positions in districts that have been gerrymandered so safely that blue might as well be illegal.

Secondly, shouldn't doing what's in the best interest of the country be the voters' standard for electing or re-electing candidates? We desperately need immigration reform. Longtime allies of the Republican party in business are pushing for it hard. This isn't a red vs. blue issue. This is a national priority. The only real point of contention is the idea of "amnesty" (which as I've pointed out before, only far-right Republicans could turn into a bad word...), and there are ways to get around this. Even recently some Republicans have said they support a path to residency for illegal immigrants, just not citizenship. That seems like a perfectly acceptable place from which to start negotiations on overhauling the whole system. It frustrates me in the extreme that our politicians won't even look for common ground in their efforts (or lack thereof) to pass meaningful legislation, and that the bar for what constitutes acceptable behavior from a politician has been set so low that his or her first priority is self-preservation rather than the needs and well-being of the nation.

The nature of self-government is that we elect people who we believe represent us and our interests. This system, democracy, according to someone far wiser than I is "the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried." Winston Churchill clearly understood that politics can impede progress as easily if not more easily than they spur progress. That means our system will only work well when we spend time thinking critically about the well-being of our nation and then holding our elected officials accountable for improving our situation rather than sitting on a "to do" list until they've been able to capitalize on any particular political situation.

The government does not exist to drive change, but to take the necessary steps to rectify situations that adversely affect the livelihood of the nation. It's been no secret that immigration has need fixing for quite some time, and yet our politicians have failed to act for nearly a decade if not longer. This is costing the nation money, and is creating a "shadow class" of residents who have few or no rights and who create more far problems through the uncertainty of their situation than they do through their presence or actions. It's far past time we fixed this issue, and it's far past time that we the people hold our politicians accountable for the work they've done to improve America, not the work they haven't done to benefit either the Democratic or the Republican cause.