After three decades or so of bickering about immigration, we at last have a president who's taking action, a president who might get something done.

No, not that one. Although President Barack Obama has vowed to do everything in his power to repair our broken system of determining who gets to stay in this country, he's been thwarted at every turn by recalcitrant Republicans. He's unlikely to get anything done this year, if ever.

No, the president we have in mind presides over our closest southern neighbor.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, as Gov. Rick Perry noted recently, has set in motion a series of economic reforms that may result in undocumented immigrants in this country streaming home for jobs in Mexico's revitalized energy sector.

"The landscape on immigration is fast changing," Perry told the Washington Post. "My instinct is that immigration and immigration reform are going to be substantially less of a flashpoint than they have been in the last several years."

What the governor has in mind is the likelihood that Mexico's energy industry is set to take off now that Mexico's Senate has ratified outlines of legislation that would allow private investment in Pemex, the state-owned oil monopoly. Outside analysts predict that the new rules could make Mexico one of the world's largest oil producers in coming years.

Perry, who's no stranger to the immigration feud, predicts that the energy boom will create new jobs and that a portion of the labor force that once felt compelled to cross the Rio Grande for work will then stay home.
"At that point in time, this whole issue of immigration reform, I think loses a lot of steam," the governor told the Post. "And then the immigration debate may become, how are we going to efficiently allow people into this country to fill the agricultural or hospitality or construction jobs that these people had historically been filling."

As Perry's comment suggests, there's more to comprehensive immigration reform than building border walls and stationing "boots on the ground." We still have numerous immigration issues that need to be addressed: the record number of deportations under the Obama administration; drug smuggling and human trafficking; streamlining legal immigration opportunities; and determining what to do with the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants - about half of that number from Mexico - who have been living in this country for years.

The governor, we suspect, is right about the mutual benefits of President Peña Nieto's historic initiative. But Mexico's willingness to do the right thing for itself is no excuse for Perry's fellow Republicans to continue delaying what needs to be done about comprehensive immigration reform.