Bill Sali

There must be a temptation for Republican politicians to want to keep their heads down and go small and quiet when it comes to immigration. The Republican base is so thoroughly split that even the party’s presidential candidates have been tearing each other, and themselves, into pieces on the subject.

Maybe such a situation is a call for nuance, which might in turn explain Idaho Representative Bill Sali‘s entry into the arena. He said at a business meeting last week that he plans to introduce a bill. Which is of only so much interest, since there are a lot of bills. What’s interesting is that there doesn’t seem to be any bomb-throwing in it. A description from the Idaho Business Review:

The bill would combine border security, increased immigration law enforcement and a temporary worker program with controls to prevent foreign workers from flooding the market and displacing American workers.
The key to immigration reform is to combine groups that want to see the borders protected and groups that are concerned with the effects on the economy – particularly the agriculture, construction and hospitality industries – that a loss of immigrant workers would create, he said.
Sali said he tends to fall into the first camp, but he sees the effects of a lack of immigrant workers on agriculture.

Nuance. From Bill Sali. Will be interesting to see how he explains this to the bumper-sticker crowd.