Immigration Misery

As the country waits for Congress and the president to enact immigration reform, the indecency of existing policies is becoming intolerable. The immigrant underclass is in a growing state of misery and fear. States and localities have rushed to fill the vacuum of Congressional inaction with a jumble of enforcement regimes. Farmers are worrying about crops rotting as their immigrant workers retreat further into the shadows. Officials in Colorado have settled on one solution: replacing those workers with prison chain gangs.

The above paragraph is taken verbatim from an editorial printed today in the New York Times. Otherwise, you might be justified in believing it to be pulled out of an Arthur C. Clarke sci-fi work of political bent. What are we coming to??