The recent fire in a factory in Bangladesh that claimed the lives of114 garment workers generated international headlines and calls for reform of working conditions in similar plants in Asia.  Yet the ongoing human tragedy along the border with Mexico somehow escapes notice.  Scores of mostly Mexican immigrants are dying trying to get across along the frontier.  More than 120 bodies of human beings once treking through Brooks County alone in South Texas have been found this year.  They died of exposure to harsh conditions, rattlesnakes, dehydration and foul play.  The number of victims more likely reaches 500.  Authorities estimate that only one in four victims is ever found.  The chances of surviving are low.

This ghastly, sad human toll is only one of the imperatives that should be driving discussions about immigration in Washington.  At the moment, though, there does not seem to be a draft plan being discussed uniformly by all interested parties.  If a breakthrough is not soon achieved, it will be a long time before today’s propitious, post-election opportunity comes again.  And, if the latest jobs report from the Department of Labor released last week indicates an economy turning around, then it will become again the magnet dulled by the Bush recession and by the slow recovery afterward.  Would now not be the right time to put a system in place so that future immigrant waves are not chaotic repeats of the acrimony and suffering of the past three decades? 

Make no mistake, the immigrant tides — high or low — being discounted now as phenomena of the past will return as the economy improves.  We should prepare with a new system of laws.  But what should the system look like?

The resolution to the immigration “problem” — which at the moment technically does not exist since immigration actually is at net zero — must be realistic.  That immigrants are not flooding the border as in recent years does not mean that too many sojourners are not perishing.  Despite so many dying along the border, the face of immigration is no longer just that of individuals crashing the border so much as the 11 million or so who are here, anchored to new lives by families, jobs and other permanent circumstances.

So the resolution of immigration starts with the issue of the 11 million, with the border largely having been secured — except for the fact that the drug cartels are now the most reliable way for many immigrants to make the crossing more safely, if such a thing can be conceived.  Be that as it may, the main sticking point is the millions here illegally. The answer is to give them legal status immediately and then push them into line to get their citizenship pegged to the year they entered.  Fine them a penalty of some sort but get them legalized.

Additionally, they would not be entitled to public assistance until they became full citizens, but any additional business enforcement mechanisms should be predicated by a health insurance paid by companies caught illegally hiring other undocumented workers.  The contributions of the workers to Social Security should be held in suspense funds so that if they decided to return to their homelands before they achieve citizenship, they can withdraw most of it.

For those who want to come into the country now to fill jobs spoiled Americans do not want, give them legal permits for fixed amounts of time with the same health insurance proviso.  That solves many of the arguments about immigrants costing the public purse through indigent care.  These temporary immigrants who return should be entitled to full Social Security refunds that induce them perhaps to invest in job-creating business in their home countries.

To satisfy secure-border proponents whose views often find their origin in military thinking, perhaps the new system incorporates accelerated citizenship status for immigrants who go directly into military service if they are allowed in as temporary workers but become unemployed.  A component, too, of “immigration reform” can include language that maintains current border security expenditures at current levels.

The bottom line is to stop creating so many illegal immigrants in the first place by building a system that accentuates the positive within itself and not the negative — and does not cause human beings to die in the wild.  When we achieve that the border will be secured at last.  Border security is also about human security. 

The prospects for real progress on immigration remain unknown, but they should be higher than having to survive the drug cartels or Brooks County.

Jesse Trevino is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.