At 19.5 percent, New Jersey's foreign-born resident population is America's third largest, according to the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network. Our state is home to 1.7 million immigrants who, with their children, comprise 40 percent of the overall population, and who can be found in virtually every one of our 21 counties. Like many of our own Jewish parents and grandparents, approximately 27 percent of New Jersey residents speak a language other than English at home.

As a people accustomed to outsider status and generational displacement, the Jewish community in New Jersey — and throughout America — should naturally take an active interest in the current immigration debate.

For several years we at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society have been in the thick of the comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) debate, helping to rally local and national Jewish community involvement, and playing an active part in the national interfaith efforts. Though the CIR movement was delivered a serious blow when the bill failed to pass the Senate in late June, the American public knows that this is an issue that will not simply go away. Polls continue to show that 80 percent of Americans believe a comprehensive approach to immigration is the right way to go, and more than 70 percent of the public believe that the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants should be able to get on a path to citizenship after meeting certain criteria.

The collapse of CIR in Congress has since been followed by renewed rumblings around the country. Since May nearly 1,200 immigration-related bills and resolutions have been introduced in state legislatures, and dozens of localities have passed draconian, anti-immigrant measures. In July, congressional opponents of CIR moved toward creating piecemeal/patchwork legislation, aimed at enforcement issues only.

Many who opposed CIR have abandoned working in a bipartisan manner. Instead, they have launched an attack on immigrants and Latinos by pushing an enforcement-only agenda. They are abandoning straight talk for the politics of scapegoating, division, and simplistic, short-term solutions to complex, long-term problems.

The proposed legislation coming from CIR opponents goes back to last year's playbook to supercharged immigration arrests, raids, and detention to rip families apart while rolling back legal protections, due process, and checks and balances on government power. Their plan would criminalize immigrants in an effort to marginalize and ostracize them, while also politicizing the issue and throwing red meat to the most rabid anti-immigrant activists.

Their approach appeals to the base instincts of the most ardent opponents of legal and illegal immigration. In the Senate, for example, we are now seeing a slow but clear deterioration in its approach to immigration. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) are eschewing the bipartisan reform effort to join Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) in opposing immigrants.

Making matters worse, earlier this month, President Bush released a 26-point plan that focuses entirely on enforcement-only measures while completely ignoring myriad other issues that would truly create comprehensive reform. The administration's enforcement-only plan effectively demonstrates the White House's surrender to the contentious issue of CIR.

I am alarmed and saddened that Bush, who has all along touted the absolute necessity of CIR, has decided to pursue a course that disregards the many fundamental problems of our broken system. This new plan completely misses the mark by ignoring the existence of approximately 12 million undocumented immigrants living and working in the country and the economic realities that draw workers here.

The administration's new proposal includes provisions that will amplify detention and deportation without addressing existing abuses within the system; reduce access to court hearings to contest erroneous deportation orders; base worksite enforcement on a notoriously unreliable federal database; expand the implementation of an error-prone and insecure employment eligibility verification system nationally; and escalate the dangerous practice of recruiting state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws.

Collectively, these actions only add to the system's overall dysfunction. Rather than fixing our broken immigration system, these measures would only serve to invoke fear, suspicion, and anti-immigrant fervor in our communities, as well as ostracize and mistreat immigrants. Furthermore, the absence of comprehensive immigration reform is an obvious abdication of the federal government's responsibility to repair a seriously flawed national immigration system, leaving state and local governments without the solutions they need.

This anti-immigrant backlash is reminiscent of the same backlash that we Jews have historically faced upon reaching America's shores. Since the first Jewish immigrants arrived in America more than 350 years ago, Jews have understood well what it means to come to this country in search of opportunity and freedom. Our ancestors benefited from these freedoms and opportunities and in the process made contributions to American society — economically, politically, culturally, and in many other ways.

From these experiences and based on our religious and ethical values, we have a clear and firm foundation for Jewish involvement in immigration. The Jewish community recognizes today's immigrants as a part of our national fabric and as Americans who contribute to our country and make it stronger, and has advocated for fair and human policies, nationally and locally.

We agree that our borders must be secure. However, if we are really serious about securing those borders, we need to pursue a national policy that is comprehensive and will fix our broken laws once and for all.

Only by channeling the current undocumented flow into a legal and orderly system that is secure and protects human rights at the same time will we truly be able to secure our borders and more easily tell the difference between those who mean to do us harm and those who only seek to work or reunite with family. On an issue of life-or-death importance — which this truly is — accepting defeat is simply not an option.