Guest columnist Keith Peterson: With general agreement on key immigration points, why is nothing done?

In recent days, the Supreme Court has blocked President Biden's proposed immigration policy that would have prioritized three groups of individuals for deportation - suspected terrorists, those noncitizens who have committed serious crimes and those caught at the border trying to enter illegally.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandtro Mayorkas argued that with 11 million undocumented individuals in the nation and limited resources, the Department cannot go after everyone, so priorities need to be set. Texas and Louisiana challenged the executive order and the court voted 5-4 against allowing the Biden administration to set these priorities, but said it would hear the case in November.

Interestingly, the court split along gender lines, with the male justices voting against the Administration and the female justices voting to allow the policy to be implemented while the court hears the challenge.

Presidents have turned to executive action on the issue of immigration because the Congress has shown itself to be incapable of sitting down together to craft comprehensive immigration reform, though the need is demonstrably great. The divisions between the two parties run deep, but the basic deal has been obvious for a long time.

Republicans get enhanced border security and the increased number of work visas that businesses crave and Democrats get a path to citizenship for the so-called Dreamers and some sort of path to citizenship for a large chunk of the 11 million undocumented in the country, a majority of whom have been in the country more than a decade and have built lives here.

However, if the Congress is incapable of comprehensive reform, there is the possibility of piecemeal reform, and there are three bills in Congress that have been passed by the House that could provide solutions that are supported by a majority of the American people.

We have just passed the 10-year anniversary of President Obama's executive order that created the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to deal with the so-called Dreamers. These are now young men and women who were brought to this country as children illegally - but have grown up here and know no other country. These 800,000 individuals are now largely young adults who have gone to college, served in the U.S. military and built lives, but those lives still remain in limbo. There is bipartisan support to do something, but nothing gets done.

A second class of young people are those who "age out" of their legal status to be in the U.S. Their parents are here legally on work visas and as long as their children are under 21, they are dependents. Once they turn 21, however, they are no longer in the country legally. Congress could fix that.

Third, there is a bill called the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. Fifty percent of all farmworkers in the U.S. are undocumented and our food system would collapse without them. Advocates for the bill say that it would help lower food prices. The bill would allow more farmers to hire farmworkers year round instead of seasonally.

Will any of this get done? A group of four senators, including Illinois' Dick Durbin, have been meeting, but the other day Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, one of the four, said the Senate calendar was too full to get anything done before the August recess. And then the midterms will come, compressing that calendar further.

There are those in Congress who regard immigration as a potent campaign issue, as the flow of both asylum-seekers and economic migrants at our southern border remains high. That kind of fear mongering is more than cynical. Is it really impossible to find enough serious members to finally get something done?

• Keith Peterson, of Lake Barrington, served 29 years as a press and cultural officer for the United States Information Agency and Department of State. He was chief editorial writer of the Daily Herald 1984-86.