Immigration is shaping up as one of the key domestic issues in the 2008 presidential elections. One of the only issues rivaling it is healthcare, and the two topics are connected in some ways, as I will discuss later in this column.

There will be a lot of talk about immigration in 2008, but what are the odds that substantive immigration legislation will be passed this year? A look at the recent past indicates that the odds are long indeed. After all, 2007 was supposed to be the year Congress finally addressed the challenge of comprehensive immigration reform. It didn’t happen.

Though the Senate did pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2006 by a vote of 62 to 36, the bill died in a House-Senate Conference Committee. In 2007, the Bush Administration drafted an immigration bill which seemed to promise something for everyone; strict border and workplace enforcement coupled with a guest worker program and a long and difficult path to green cards for undocumented workers. However, the bill was labeled an “amnesty” for illegal aliens and was defeated.

The Administration then adopted an enforcement-only approach to immigration, beginning construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, conducting a series of highly publicized workforce raids, and proposing to crack down on the hiring of undocumented workers through “no-match letter” regulations targeting workers using false social security numbers.

Even legislation that formerly enjoyed great bi-partisan support such as the “Dream Act” could not escape the rising anti-immigration mood. The Dream Act would have provided a way for the children of illegal aliens who were brought to the U.S. by their parents and by no fault of their own to legalize their status. These young people could have obtained green cards by pursuing a college education or by joining the military. However, the Dream Act could not obtain the required 60 votes to ward off a filibuster in the Senate.

Other proposed immigration legislation specifically addressing the recruitment of foreign born workers never even came up for a vote in Congress in 2007. The agriculture jobs bill, legislation to recapture unused immigrant visas for nurses and therapists, and a bill to increase the cap on H-1B visas for foreign professionals were never considered.

This is an area where health care – the other top domestic political issue referenced above – and immigration intersect. One of the biggest challenges in healthcare today is staffing – particularly nurse and physician staffing. Under the current immigration system recruiting nurses takes years and the line for doctors also is lengthening. Foreign healthcare professionals are certainly not by themselves a solution to healthcare workforce shortages, but they are a valuable stop-gap on which many hospitals depend. Nevertheless, the impetus to keep illegal immigrants out of the country has become so strong it has embraced legal immigrants, even nurses and physicians who save the lives of U.S. citizens every day.

In an election year, it is unrealistic to expect that Congress will pass the type of comprehensive immigration reform that proved untenable in 2007. However, with the shortage of nurses expected to swell to 800,000 by 2020, it is imperative that something be done to open the door to foreign-born nurses. In addition, something is clearly wrong with our immigration system when it takes a foreign physician working in a medically underserved area eight years to obtain a green card while a high school graduate who wins the “visa lottery” can obtain a green card in a matter of months.

Perhaps it would make more sense to address our immigration challenges one step at a time, by separating out the issues of legal and illegal immigration. There is still relative unanimity in both political parties regarding the traditional benefits to the U.S. of legal immigration. It is not too much to ask that Congress take this common-sense approach, even in an election year, while deferring the problem of illegal immigration to the next Administration.