President Bush's announcement of a new immigration policy yesterday addresses several major interests of the United States.
It holds out the prospect of regularised residence to 8-10 million migrant workers, most of them Hispanic. It meets employers' needs for low-paid workers. It holds out the prospect of improving relations with Mexico. And, by regularising existing economic realitities rather than promising citizenship, it stops short of decisions which would alienate large sections of conservative opinion whose support Mr Bush needs if he is to win this year's presidential election.
The United States remains an immigrant society, not only in its historical formation but in current terms. The Hispanic community is now estimated to number 39 million and is the fastest growing section of the population. Proposals to regularise immigration from or through Mexico were frozen after September 11th, 2001, much to the annoyance of President Vicente Fox, with whom Mr Bush now hopes to mend fences. But other immigrant communities will also benefit if what is in effect an amnesty is accepted by Congress - not least some tens of thousands of Irish undocumented workers working in the construction industry, many of them from Border areas.
The most they can expect under this package is the right of residence in the US without a realistic prospect of gaining citizenship there. Mr Bush promises to increase the number of green cards giving permanent residence, but not all those benefiting from an amnesty would get them. They would first have to prove they have work, and would be assessed after three years to see if they still qualified.
So this is a minimalist measure, pitched largely at regularising the existing level of immigrant labour with a very limited extension of rights for those involved. Cynics say it is pitched carefully at an election campaign which will recall Mr Bush's commitments in 2000 to reform immigration legislation, and specifically aimed at the Hispanic communities he has courted during his political career in Texas.
It is calibrated to balance several different interests and could end up satisfying very few of them. Immigrants who go to work in the US add value to its economy and have been the traditional source of dynamism in its society and culture. That remains the case as the emphasis switches from Asian to Hispanic immigration. These proposals will stimulate debate in what looks already to be a more lively and engaged presidential campaign than recent ones in that country.