Finding common ground on immigration

We couldn’t agree more with President Donald Trump that “the time is right for an immigration bill as long as there is compromise on both sides.”

Despite hard-line rhetoric, compromise offers a chance for meaningful reform.

That’s well said and we applaud the willingness he expressed to reporters Tuesday before his address to Congress to provide some type of legal status for those living here illegally.

According to an unnamed source with The New York Times, Trump even “went so far as to raise the idea of granting citizenship to young undocumented immigrants who had been brought to the United States as children.”

But it is important to note that those were not public remarks.

In his speech to Congress a few hours later, Trump made no mention of legal status or the fates of childhood arrivals who have been granted work permits under a program implemented by President Barack Obama.

Officially, on the record, Trump said: “I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible, as long as we focus on the following goals: to improve jobs and wages for Americans, to strengthen our nation’s security and to restore respect for our laws.”

We would add to the list: to respond with compassion to those pursuing the American dream within broken and unenforced immigration laws.

Trump may be coming around, and if he is, we would have preferred for the public to hear it from his lips.

It’s as though the president is playing a game of good cop, bad cop.

Trump, threatening for weeks to play hardball, now suggests a compromise, but leaves it to Congress to hash out the policy and take the inevitable cries of amnesty from hard-line Republicans who shot down attempts by George W. Bush and Obama to provide some type of legal status.

Trump made it abundantly clear he’s not about to abandon his tendency to overemphasize the threat those living here without legal status pose to everyday Americans.

He invited the families of three people who were murdered — one in 2008 and two in 2014 — to the address and talked in some detail about the tragic cases.

“I have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American victims. The office is called VOICE — Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement,” Trump said. Some members of the audience released an audible gasp at this announcement.

It seems preposterous to us, but perhaps it will serve the purpose of actually compiling reliable statistics about the rate of crime among the immigrant population both those here legally and illegally.

If one thing has been lacking, both during Trump’s campaign and during his first month in office, it’s been meaningful statistics to back up his repeated claims that those here illegally are posing an outsize threat.

Hopefully, VOICE can shed some light on how these criminals slipped through the cracks, and how to prevent future crimes.

But VOICE must also answer the big-picture question of whether such an office is even justifiable.

Whatever Trump’s strategy, we hope the result is meaningful immigration reform, quickly implemented by Congress to alleviate the fear millions are living in, and to lessen the anti-immigrant sentiment that has developed alongside Trump’s rise to power.

Trump made it abundantly clear he’s not about to abandon his tendency to emphasize the threat those living here without legal status pose to everyday Americans.

— The Denver Post, Digital First Media