Hillary Clinton Takes the Lead on Immigration

With her speech on immigration in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Hillary Rodham Clinton took a large step forward, up front and to the left of President Obama. That is a good place to be for a presidential candidate who proposes to get the stalled debate moving again, and to bring hope to the millions living here outside the law.

Mrs. Clinton defended a path to citizenship for those 11 million, and promised as president to take executive action — more broadly than Mr. Obama has — to defer the deportations of those who have strong bonds to the community through family and work. She also promised to make conditions “more humane” for immigrant detainees.

Mrs. Clinton noted that her call for a citizenship path sets her apart from any and all Republicans who are in, or likely to enter, the 2016 race. The same is true of her support for executive action. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a former advocate of sensible reform, had the sense beaten out of him by the Tea Party, and now seems to be seeking a vague provisional status for the undocumented — a long, difficult path to a temporary work permit. Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, has been moderate in the past but is wobbly on citizenship, a nonstarter for many in his party. Whether he supports it for some immigrants, and which ones, under what conditions, is hard to pin down on any given day; like other Republicans hoping to survive the primaries, he is on his own tortuous path to a coherent position.

Like Mr. Bush, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky speaks compassionately of immigrants at times, but his agenda seems limited to sealing the border and ending the 14th Amendment guarantee of citizenship by birth. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin just wants every unauthorized immigrant to leave the country — and he wants to limit legal immigration, too. It’s early in the campaign, and the ground could always shift. Mrs. Clinton’s full-throated public commitment to expansive immigration action, while surprising and welcome, is only a few hours old. She may yet prove herself a staunch defender of immigrants’ rights, but only last fall she was dodging questions from the young advocates known as Dreamers with a discouraging non-answer: “Elect more Democrats.”

A shot at citizenship is the only proper goal of sensible immigration reform. But even under the most generous and ambitious proposals, immigrants won’t be able to reach that goal for years, if ever. Creating a citizenship path requires Congress to pass a bill, and there’s no sign when that will happen. “If Congress refuses to act,” Mrs. Clinton vowed, “as president I will do everything possible under the law to go even further. There are more people — like many parents of Dreamers and others with deep ties and contributions to our communities — who deserve a chance to stay. I’ll fight for them, too.”

Those are stirring words, but Mrs. Clinton has set no timetable for action and given herself clear exits if things get sticky. “Under the law” is one collision point, as we see from the way hostile governors, attorneys general and a testy judge in Texas have managed to stall Mr. Obama’s modest, and patently legal, action to defer deportations. If Mrs. Clinton is going to expand executive action, she is going to face a ferocious fight from those who consider such a deed tyrannical, and insistence from immigrant advocates that she protect as many people as possible.

While Mrs. Clinton could protect Dreamers and their parents from deportation, would she protect those with minor convictions or drunken-driving arrests? It is arguably far better for families, and the country, if many who have deep roots here are allowed to stay, despite blots on their records — but that can be a hard political argument to make. As for reforming the unjust immigration detention system — an urgent mission, one where Mr. Obama has failed — Mrs. Clinton will have to commit serious resources and stronger will to accomplish that.

There is a pressing need to lift the burden of fear and separation from families, to unshackle workers who are chained to exploitive jobs by fear of deportation. Mrs. Clinton has shown that she understands this. But meanwhile, the Republicans are stuck in the early 2000s, still talking of border security and illegal invaders. They forget that the 11 million are on this side of the border, and have children, and roots, and jobs, and dreams, and their plight needs to be confronted. Here is a tip: When you hear candidates talking about securing the border — a border that is as secure as it’s ever going to get — that is the sign that they are not interested in a serious conversation.