Jeff Sessions is channeling his inner George Wallace.

Alabama’s junior senator isn’t barring the schoolhouse door, but what he’s doing is as short-sighted as Wallace’s rant “Segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! And segregation forever!”

Sessions is using every trick he can think of to block an immigration reform bill developed by a bi-partisan team of senators and supported by the leadership of both political parties. He introduces amendments he knows other senators cannot support. He raises procedural objections that keep the bill from coming to a vote. He breaks down the bill into sections and subsections and insists on debating every little piece of it. Sessions does this both in committee and on the Senate floor. He’s becoming the poster boy for Washington gridlock.

What’s his problem with the immigration reform bill? Two things. First, the bill would provide a pathway to citizenship (though not an easy or quick pathway) for 11 million immigrants now in the country illegally. They’re breaking the law, Sessions says, so they should be sent back where they came from. It’s that simple for him.

Except it’s not that simple.

We would surely all agree that the rule of law is a good thing. Laws should be obeyed and persons who break them should be punished. Usually.

But not every law is a good law. The law of the land isn’t the highest authority, and when a law is unjust, immoral, or ungodly, good people break it. Racial segregation was the law in Alabama for years, but it was a bad law and courageous people risked their lives in breaking it. They, not Governor Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door, are the heroes of that story.

Sessions’s second objection has some validity, but not much. He says that immigrants, legal or otherwise, depress wages and take jobs from Americans workers.

The immigrants Sessions has in mind have low skills. They work as field hands, hotel maids and dishwashers, and at low pay. It’s true that this is not good news for native-born workers with similarly low skills. They must either work for the same low pay or not work in those fields at all. Economists estimate that illegal immigrants have lowered the wages of Americans without a high school diploma somewhere between 0.4 and 7.4 percent (don’t ask me why those estimates are so far apart).

But for the economy as a whole, immigrants, legal or not, bring great benefits. Here’s how it works:

Poorly educated immigrants don’t compete with skilled workers, but complement them. Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations explained that economies prosper when all workers devote their time to doing what they do best.

Imagine a construction site. Electricians and carpenters are at work there. After they do what they’re trained to do at $20 an hour, they pick up the debris and clean up the site, still earning $20 an hour. Unless someone else does that for them. That may be a low-skilled immigrant paid at a lower wage. In that case, the electricians and carpenters can devote all their high-paid hours to using their skills.

This reduces the cost of a new home. More homes will be built and sold, which is good for the economy. Were it not for immigrant workers, your produce at the supermarket, meals out, hotel rooms, and a hundred other things would cost you more.

Moreover, immigrants don’t send their money to off-shore tax shelters. They spend most of it where they earn it. That keeps groceries, laundries, restaurants, hardware stores, and small shops open for business. And illegal immigrants (this doesn’t count legal immigrants) contribute an estimated $15 billion a year to Social Security through the payroll taxes they pay, according to Stephen Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration.

But what of the unskilled American workers who can’t find work? That’s not an immigration issue, but an education issue. Good jobs are available, but we aren’t educating our workers to do them. Fix the schools!

The 11 million undocumented immigrants within our borders contribute to our economy and to the wellbeing of most U.S. citizens.  They are part of us. It’s time to welcome them fully into our civic life.

Senator Sessions, wake up and smell the coffee. Then please sit down and be quiet.

Richard H. Schmidt is a retired Episcopal priest, editor and author who lives in Fairhope. He can be reached at courier@gulfcoastnewspapers.com.