Members of Congress should carry this season's sentiments of peace on earth and good will toward men into their chambers in January so they can effectively deal with what has been a divisive, mean-spirited and futile wrangle over immigration policy.

The bitter terms of battle on both sides portray the issue in stark black or white with no room for the colors of compromise. Guest worker / worker exploitation. Deportation / amnesty. Minutemen / vigilantes. Keep 'em out with a wall / enforce the law at the workplace.

The problem with many of the solutions is the cost of implementation gets little consideration. How many billions would it take to track down, detain and deport 12 million undocumented workers now in the United States? The fence Congress authorized last fall for 700 miles along the country's 1,952-mile southern border would cost between $2 billion and $30 billion and still contain a 1,252-mile gap. It's so expensive and so useless, Congress neglected to provide money to actually erect it.

The basic problem with the wall is that it treats humans like dogs to be fenced in or out. Many of the punitive proposals smack of inhumanity. They are measures that precious few of us would choose if required to enforce them personally.

Who among us would arrest undocumented parents and haul them away as their children, all U.S. citizens by virtue of their births here, sobbed in horror? Post-Gazette reporter Diana Nelson Jones interviewed such potential deportees, undocumented parents and their three American children, living in Pittsburgh's eastern suburbs. She found a growing community of Mexican immigrants living and working two and three jobs in Beechview.

When it's such real people like our neighbors, hard-working immigrants like many Pittsburghers' grandparents who arrived in this country without proper documentation and seeking a better life for their children, who among us would lock the first handcuff?

Still, it's true that undocumented immigrants impose costs on American citizens. When an undocumented worker, 32-year-old Noe Lopez Vilchis, was rescued from the Dormont Pool in July, revived and rushed to Mercy Hospital, the hospital bore the cost of treating him because he had no health insurance. Mr. Lopez Vilchis, who worked two jobs, laboring six days a week, and attended English classes weekday mornings, died at the hospital in August.

His brother, Emmanuel Lopez Vilchis, who traveled from Mexico to the hospital, said afterward, "Of our brothers, he was the good one, the best, always very worried about other people, always worried about his friends and family, more than himself."

The United States cannot afford to deport such people -- the adventurous, hard-working, good brother. They invigorate America, increasing its vibrancy, its aggression, its innovation.

Somewhere between the extremists' hard slogans and the black-and-white solutions are ways to accommodate the likes of Mr. Lopez Vilchis without overwhelming the United States with the populace of Mexico and a half-dozen Central and South American countries. Somewhere among the sound bites are innovative possibilities -- a guest worker program that doesn't exploit, a requirement that English be learned but an accommodation until it is, enabling employers to determine easily if documentation is fake while having the government enforce the law on those who don't bother to check.

Finally, cheaper and smarter than deporting millions and erecting a fence to prevent their return would be encouraging economic development in Mexico, thus reducing the enticement to travel north.

This is difficult stuff, and California Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the soon-to-be speaker of the House, did not mention immigration in her planned accomplishments for the first 100 hours. Perhaps that's just as well since negotiating comprehensive solutions will require more time than that.

But she should certainly put compassionate resolution of immigration issues on the agenda for the first 100 days.