Careful What You Wish For

Immigration: Future On The Fence
Perhaps no pressing national issue has been so neglected by the U.S. government as illegal immigration. Sure, construction's begun on a border fence and Immigration agents have stepped up workplace raids. But such measures barely bandage the problem. The next president will confront a complex scenario: more than 12 million undocumented immigrants, an additional flow of about 500,000 per year, social services around the country strained by the influx and public fury at government failure to fix it. Count on the situation to get worse. As immigrants continue to bypass traditional gateway cities and settle in smaller communities ill-equipped to handle them, the backlash will likely intensify. And with the economy in a tailspin, "many Americans will look for a scapegoat," says David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

There's no shortage of opinion about what to do. Some argue for beefing up border security with enhanced surveillance technology. Yet that will do little to address the estimated 40 percent of undocumented immigrants who enter the country legally and overstay their visas, says Audrey Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Others clamor for the government to deport illegal immigrants—a prescription most experts consider unrealistic. For many, the sensible solution is a comprehensive immigration-reform package that includes enhanced border security, a temporary-worker program and a path to legalization for the undocumented. Local communities, adds Singer, will also need more help to relieve the burden that the new arrivals place on their infrastructure.

Yet the political climate doesn't favor getting much done. Republicans have adopted harsher stances to appease their right-wing base, and many Democrats fear venturing near such a divisive issue. After Congress's failure last year to strike a deal on an immigration-reform package, opponents are feeling even more emboldened. "It will be difficult to pass anything," says Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrants' rights group. "The debate will get uglier, and the political class will be even more polarized and paralyzed." That's not a way to do what many polls show a majority of Americans want: a reform package similar to the one Congress debated last year. "There are no easy answers," says Doris Meissner, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, "but there will be an opportunity that will require some leadership and skillful politics." Two qualities that have been lacking in this debate for too long.
—Jamie Reno, Sarah Kliff And Arian Campo-Flores

Foreign Policy: Where Do We Begin?
Depending on your point of view, President Bush will leave the next president with the most dire foreign-policy landscape in decades, or a brave new world of hope. Bush's Democratic critics cite a long list of disasters: a badly overextended military in Iraq, the War on Terror spiraling out of control in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a stalemate between Israelis and Palestinians, a soon-to-be nuclear-armed Iran, an international economy weighed down by record oil prices, global warming left unaddressed and U.S. prestige in the world hitting rock bottom. "No president will ever have handed over a worse international situation than George W. Bush," says former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke, a top adviser to Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Bush and his supporters, of course, see a different horizon: terrorists on the run, a post-"surge" Iraq on its way to stability, a revived Mideast peace process, the diplomatic and economic isolation of Iran, nuclear deals that are dismantling weapons programs in Libya and North Korea—and, above all, the prospect that his broad "freedom agenda" in the Mideast is succeeding. "There is no doubt in my mind when history is written, the final page will say: victory was achieved by the United States of America for the good of the world," the president recently told cheering U.S. troops in Kuwait.

Whatever history's ultimate judgment, there is little doubt that whoever is inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009, will face a plethora of crises crying out for quick resolution. Iraq will no doubt head the list; even under the best-case scenario, tens of thousands of U.S. troops will still be there. The ongoing stalemate over Iran's nuclear ambitions will likely remain an urgent issue as well: Tehran is expected to have enough centrifuges running to obtain a bomb by midway through the next administration's first term. There is also the question of whether the "Annapolis process" begun by Bush—an ambitious effort to create a Palestinian state—will survive. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, the next U.S. leader will have to manage the beefed-up U.S. presence—Bush has just added 3,200 Marines to the 26,000 U.S. troops there—in the face of NATO's apparent failure to take charge.