There are about 12 million reasons for this, the estimated number of illegal immigrants now living in the United States. So long as there is no system to bring these folks out of the shadows and into the light of lawful conduct, they will be ripe for exploitation by unscrupulous employers. That drives wages down for both illegal and U.S. citizen workers.

The bill that the Judiciary Committee recommended Monday would allow illegal immigrants who have been in the United States since before 2004 to apply for a three-year work visa after paying a $1,000 fine and passing a criminal background check. The visa would be renewable for another three years. After paying another $1,000 fine and back taxes, and learning English, people could apply for permanent residence.

New immigrants would have to have temporary work visas; some 400,000 would be offered each year to foreign workers. A special program would supply 1.5 million work visas to agricultural workers. These folks also could seek permanent residence.

Immigration hard-liners say this program amounts to an amnesty on a six-year time delay. They criticize it as being folly because it would only encourage more foreign workers to enter the country illegally. The reason is that all promises at immigration enforcement have been hollow in the past, and there is no reason to believe that this attempt at reform will be any different.

What the United States needs, they say, is an immigration reform bill like the one the House passed in December, which emphasizes strict enforcement by making anyone who is in the country illegally guilty of a felony. They argue that this approach, and denying illegal immigrants social services, would gradually cause them to return to their own nations.

We agree that any reform must include much tougher enforcement, both against people who enter the country illegally and against employers who hire them.

But workable reform must include both a broader path to legal immigration and tougher penalties for those who stray.