Since Georgia U.S. Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss helped negotiate a U.S. Senate deal on immigration reform, they've been greeted here at home by a backlash of bitterness, paranoia, anger and in some cases barely concealed racism.

The senators' patriotism and manhood have been challenged; they have been condemned as traitors to the country and to their conservative roots. The harshest criticism has come from their own party, from some of their own longtime supporters.

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Ugly as it has been to witness, that venting has been useful. At least now, the veil has been lifted. At least now the motivation of many of those behind the controversy has been pushed to the forefront, where it can be seen for what it is. Now we'll see whether our political leadership, including but not limited to Isakson and Chambliss, will pander to that ugliness or have the guts to stand up to it.

Nobody's claiming that the Senate deal is perfect, because it isn't. A bipartisan, compromise measure on such a complex topic can't ever approach perfection. But it's striking that opposition to the deal is being driven not by criticism of specific details of the deal, but by the fact that a deal exists at all.

It's also important to note that immigration reform advocates have gotten much of what they claimed to want out of a deal. They have long argued that we need to get serious about border enforcement, and they've been right. The bipartisan deal cut in the Senate addresses that problem in a number of ways, among them by doubling the size of the Border Patrol.

Enforcement in the workplace is also necessary, again as immigration reformers point out, and the Senate bill addresses that, too. It commits the federal government to creating a long-overdue worker verification system, and it requires employers to use that system.

While those steps won't make the border impenetrable, they'll help a lot. But to opponents, it wouldn't matter if you quadrupled the Border Patrol and built a wall a mile high all along the Rio Grande.

Their real concern is about the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already inside our borders. Yes, those people are here illegally, but they are also here because we the American people and we the American government made a conscious choice to join them in ignoring our own laws. By deciding to dismantle our enforcement mechanisms, we invited them in the back door to come pluck our chickens, build our houses, pick our crops and weave our carpet. Many have built lives, families and communities here, and at this stage we can no more pluck them out of our body politic than we can pluck out our own eyeball.

Nonetheless, a relatively small but vocal group of Americans insist that we do so anyway. Any arrangement that gives illegal immigrants a realistic chance to become legitimate is to their minds amnesty, and in their minds, amnesty is treason.

The number of Americans, including Georgians, who actually believe that nonsense is relatively small. But because they express that viewpoint with such vehemence and anger, they have intimidated some in public life into silence. They've created a tide of hysteria that if left unchallenged could feed and build on itself, blocking any chance of progress.

The reality is that opponents of reform will accept only one thing: the forced deportation of men, women and children by the millions. And that's the one thing that's not going to happen.

Politically, it would be easy to surrender to the hysteria. The 12 million or so illegal immigrants in this country do not vote, after all, and most never will have the chance to do so.

But as is often the case, the easy thing would also be the wrong thing.

Besides, those 12 million will have children, and someday grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and they will vote. Long after Spanish has disappeared from their tongues, those descendants will remember who had depicted their parents as leeches, and who fought to allow them to work toward becoming full-fledged Americans.

The history books will remember it, too.