Andres Martinez, director, Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program, New America Foundation

We no longer have the luxury of pondering that question. I know it is becoming a quaintly outmoded concept, but sometimes the government needs to address serious problems. Our leaders need to actually govern on this issue and set aside tactical partisanship.

It undermines the nation’s rule of law to have our economy rely on a massive underground labor market. The United States should create a legal flow for the workers its economy needs, enforce its borders and extend to all its residents our democracy’s full panoply of civil and labor rights.

Immigration reform is crucial not only for our economic well-being but for the fabric of our democracy. The desperation of Arizona, which is embracing Gestapo-like policing in the absence of a coherent federal immigration reform, is a call to action — a call for Washington to govern.