The following is from an editorial in the Hartford Courant:
Congress should not listen to the hotheads and the anti-immigrant mischief makers who want to delay action on pending immigration reform because the two suspects in the Boston bombing case were immigrants.
The U.S. would be less safe, in fact, if reform — with its likely emphasis on increased border security and bringing millions of undocumented immigrants out of the shadows — falls to fear-mongering.
The immigration status quo is unacceptable. Reform will center to greater or lesser degree on improving security at high-traffic crossings at the border with Mexico, revamping the visa system and creating a path to citizenship for the 11 million to 12 million undocumented workers living permanently in the U.S.
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has unveiled a compromise reform plan. President Barack Obama has his own plan. It has been nearly 30 years since the last immigration reform, and the current system is broken. The momentum to fix it should not be slowed by crimes against humanity in Boston.
The surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was charged with a capital crime, and his brother Tamerlan, who died in a shootout with police, were ethnic Chechens. Their family came to the United States a decade ago, legally, as refugees.
The younger brother is a naturalized U.S. citizen and the elder had a green card. They assimilated to some extent, at least at first. They differed from other immigrants in that the vast majority of immigrants — both legal and undocumented — don't commit heinous crimes.
It's hard to see how a new immigration policy that works, one that makes immigrants visible, would make it more likely that similar monstrous crimes would be committed.