After a week of intense immigration reform back-and-forth between Senate Democrats and Republicans, with the occasional White House statement thrown in for flavor, Democratic Senators Reid, Schumer and Menendez released a 26-page blueprint yesterday for immigration reform legislation. (AILA’s got the proposal up here and see the YouTube highlights of the Democrats’ press conference here).

Considering there weren’t any Republicans in the drafting of the bill and federal Democrats’ nonstop howling over Arizona’s new law, it’s gotta be awesome for civil rights, right?

Not so much.

With nearly half of the document devoted to the Schumer-Graham national biometric identity card plan, no apparent due process or judicial discretion fixes, no significant changes on federal-local enforcement programs like 287(g), and nothing apparent on expanded alternatives to detention, the bill leaves a lot to be desired.

But just so you know we’re not complete Debbie Downers, the bill does include mention of new uniform detention standards , a path to legalization for many undocumented immigrants, and will allow for LGBT bi-national “permanent partners” to sponsor each other for immigration purposes.

So what now?

Well, we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got to fight like hell to shape this bill into one that protects basic rights and freedoms and truly fixes the broken immigration system.

Will Republicans support a bill? Will Democrats? Can we get the ID card scrapped? Many questions, few answers. But what’s clear is we’ve got to push and push hard to get real reform this year.

See the NYCLU’s statement on the bill here.

Our colleagues at the ACLU also put one out here.