We harm ourselves every day when we deport 1,100 people. We put U.S. citizen children in foster care or the care of others or we send them out of the country. A generation of kids has grown up with the threat of deportation of mom or dad.

As frustrating as it is, the ongoing Washington stalemate on health care, immigration and almost any other essential issue should not be surprising. It is not politics as some claim. It is a deep ideological rift among Americans.

Looking to immigration, while there is an immediate material affect of fewer workers or certain visa applications being delayed, the longer-lasting effect may be a more subtle political one.

E-Verify is not ready for primetime, and should not be imposed without commonsense immigration reform that would clarify the status of millions of immigrants who are part of our workforce.

Throwing more money and delegating more powers to an immigration enforcement bureaucracy will be largely ineffective at halting unauthorized immigration, waste scarce taxpayer dollars, and harm American workers and businesses.

Tea Partiers who claim to believe in freedom and limited government should be trying to purge the big government overreach in the Senate's bill rather than cynically trying to gut the entire effort with phony concerns about the rule of law or border security.