New York City's Mayor, Michael Bloomberg (I) wasn't simply being dramatic and blunt but he was truthful about the madness that saturates the opposition to immigration reform in the United States.

Economic suicide is exactly what the country would be committing if it embraced the Republican party's wrong-headed agenda on the future of an estimated 12 million people who are in the country illegally and the tens of millions more who are praying for the day when they would be able to join their relatives already living in the country! For if the House of Representatives and the Senate in Washington went along with the critics of immigration reform, they would be denying the nation the vital human resources it so badly needs to keep it on the road to continued prosperity in these very difficult financial times.

The Mayor, now in his third and final four-year term as chief executive at City Hall, has garnered the vigorous support of some of the nation's largest corporations in a national initiative on immigration reform. It's a bold, albeit not too unexpected, partnership led by a billionaire business executive who knows what the country's corporations need to get them back to the boom days of yesteryear.

Specifically, Bloomberg announced a partnership of mayors and corporate executives who have agreed to make the case for changes to America's laws that would provide a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented in our midst and for others dreaming of entering the country. At the same time, reform would put in place safeguards against illegal immigration.

Disney, Boeing, the New York Mets, Walt Disney and Hewlett-Packard, which have signed on to the plan, may seem like an odd group to join mayors and others in a call for dramatic reforms. After all, businesses often give the impression that their sole preoccupation is the bottom line and not humanity. In this case, they are mixing their corporate needs with common sense and with an understanding of what's best for the country.

That may explain why Helen Marshall, Queen's long-serving Borough president and a daughter of a Caribbean immigrant, has whole heartedly embraced the Mayor's initiative.

"As the child of a Guyanese immigrant, I know how immigrants contribute to this country," she told this paper while attending the annual "Green Gala" of the Guyanese-American Business and Professional Council, an organization headed by Leyland Hazelwood, President, and Shanie Persaud, the Council's Executive Director. "They routinely help to transform communities by injecting ideas, skills and enthusiasm into communities. Just look across the City and you couldn't miss the revitalization that is taking place with immigrants at the center. Our country needs immigrants in the same way that they need the United States."

The partnership struck by Bloomberg and fellow mayors from Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Antonio and Philadelphia is an indication of recognition of the importance of immigration to the nation's well-being.

Marshall, a former New York State lawmaker who spent several years on the City Council before becoming Borough President, outlined the reasons for her support of the initiative, or partnership if you will. She cited the entrepreneurial skills, a penchant for hard-work and creativity that societies need and that the foreign born bring to the table.

Neither the Mayor nor his partners should be deterred in their quest for reform by the dim prospects for passage in the current session of Congress. With the House and the Senate hopelessly divided along partisan political lines, the chances of getting reform through this year are quickly disappearing. But the pressure on lawmakers must be maintained, if only to show that far too many elected officials don't place the best interest of the country ahead of their narrow political interest.

The Bloomberg partnership would heighten the awareness of the need for reform, the benefits to the country, and an understanding of the humanity inherent in the proposals to give immigrants what they have earned: a permanent presence as contained in the green card.

The New York Immigration Coalition and its executive director, Chung-Wha Hong, put it succinctly the other day when they said that with this partnership, the voices of the business community and local leaders will highlight the economic and community benefits of reform.

Their backing too would ensure that U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat of New York and the chief architect of the reform measure, doesn't feel as if he was left alone, twisting in the Congressional wind, out on a limb for a cause which is just and makes eminent sense.