For four decades, I have wondered why Americans couldn’t find a way to legally welcome people they need to power ranches across the southern United States.

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It was snowtime. It was showtime. It was no time. To be lost in downtown Toronto.

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Those are the opening lines to James Taylor’s song about a Toronto winter evening (where “the sunshine just doesn’t want to”) and a surprise encounter with a distinctly southern celebration. A mariachi band “swinging for the fences” warmed Taylor and the partiers.

Taylor’s description of the people he encountered that cold night struck a chord with me. He said they were “Exiled Mexican textile working, punching two clocks, sending two paychecks home. Hard-working, law-‘biding, bus-riding........

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