"We will never have fully effective law enforcement or national security as long as so many millions remain in the shadows."

With those words and many more, the Barack Obama administration, in general, and Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, in particular, re-affirmed their commitment to an overhaul of the nation's immigration system.

It was a much-needed and timely bit of assurance, given at a time when immigration advocates, and others interested in the welfare of the millions of people from more than 190 countries who are living in the United States illegally, are becoming anxious about a commitment which the President gave while on last year's campaign trail that took him to the White House.

In a speech at the Center for American Progress in Washington, Napolitano went to great lengths to explain the main pillars on which the Administration's [reform framework rests] and they ranged from the much needed pathway to legalization for an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants now living in the country, and tougher enforcement of existing and new laws to a streamlined immigration system.

The timetable for immigration reform would be 2010 and not 2009, as candidate Obama had pledged during the presidential campaign, when he promised to put the legislation before Congress during his first year in the White House. While we would have liked to see the set of reform proposals before the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2009, the decision to set its introduction to next year is understandable but not without perils.

Clearly, the contentious health care reform package is the top plank in Obama's platform and it would have been unwise to try to get both measures passed in the same year. They are both highly controversial measures, which can and would split the country. But the White House runs the grave risk that the anti-immigration forces would use the 2010 mid-term elections to erode support for the President and thus significantly weaken him.

According to Napolitano, the much anticipated reform would include:

• A legalization program designed to enhance national security and ease competition for jobs at a time of high unemployment by protecting Americans from competition from lower-paid foreign workers who can easily be exploited.

• A provision to strengthen law enforcement's ability to punish employers who knowingly and aggressively hire undocumented workers.

• A measure that introduces a pathway to legal status that would be both tough and fair.

• A plan that would compel undocumented immigrants interested in changing their status to register, pay a fine for being in the country illegally, to be able to speak English, and meet all outstanding tax obligations. In addition, they would have to pass a thorough criminal background check

These measures may not be new but they can impose insurmountable barriers to poor immigrants who have been living and working in the country for several years, even decades. A heavy fine can discourage people from coming out of the shadows to join the ranks of green card holders, naturalized citizens and other legal residents. With the threat of deportation hanging over the heads of people who have broken the nation's criminal laws early in their sojourn in the United States but who have led exemplary lives ever since, they would be offered few if any concessions. In essence, many of these undocumented immigrants would have little reason to step forward and end their underground existence.

What's really needed is an injection of compassion into the process. Unfortunately, it's missing. Admittedly, the idea of asking Congress to approve what, in effect, would be an amnesty will make it extremely difficult to gain Congressional approval. In addition, the mix of tough enforcement measures and the softer immigration approach seems to be a contradiction. For, on the one hand, the Administration proposes to allow 12 million people to stay in the country while, at the same time, opening the door to even more expulsions than we have now.

Little wonder, then, that the New York Immigration Coalition seemed perplexed by it all when it said, "We continue to struggle to reconcile the Administration's repeated statements supporting comprehensive reform on the one hand, with its devastating escalation of immigration enforcement tactics on the other – tactics that have resulted in more firings of immigrant workers, more deportations, and more fear and dislocation in immigrant communities than even under President George W. Bush."

The hard-line policy position should be reviewed before it reaches either the House or the Senate. We are aware that the opponents of reform are waiting in the wings to stir up any controversy over immigration, but at the end of the day, America benefits significantly from having these undocumented workers on its soil.