America Locks Down
    By Luis Lema
    Le Temps

    Saturday 30 June 2007

    For its Fourth of July Independence Day celebration in a few days, America will be stronger and more beautiful: 4,000 people will become new United States citizens. "We're celebrating the fact that anyone can arrive as an immigrant and become like most of the descendants of our founding fathers," the organizers rejoice. A good number of the new citizens will pledge allegiance that day with Disney World as a backdrop. The American dream in all its splendor ...

    Yet, in the same movement, the American Congress has just swept away a reform that aimed to finally give a legal status to some twelve million illegal immigrants the country contains. A stated priority for George Bush led to a patiently elaborated compromise that one could not dream of being more successfully completed. Certainly, it left everyone a little bit dissatisfied: some found that the regularization it promised took a far too tortuous path for the immigrants. Others deemed that the border controls promised in the same bill weren't sufficiently rigorous. But as far as its defenders were concerned, it was a question of the only possible compromise. The only solution to put an end to twenty years of quarrels and ineffectiveness.

    So this compromise will not see the light of day, or at least not for a long time. The proof that the immigration question is as emotional and as inextricable in the United States as it is in the rest of the developed countries. The proof, once again, that political systems (with an election in the United States last November, the country is already getting ready for next year's vote) encounter all-too-obvious limitations when faced with the great issues that assault the planet: migratory flows and global warming.

    However, in the case of the United States, one circumstance seems to be heavily aggravating: to bring the compromise that had emerged to fruition, Americans should have been able to count on an administration that they totally trusted, so much did that necessitate a real commitment. Neither Iraq, of course, nor the Hurricane Katrina rout are, strictly speaking, precedents that inspire trust. America today is immobilized. The lockdown of its borders is only a symptom of that.