The immediate future looks a bit grim for those who work on trying to improve the lot of immigrants in the United States.

Presidential candidates are trying to outdo each other in espousing harsher approaches to handling illegal immigration.

There's essentially no chance of a comprehensive immigration bill moving through Congress until after the presidential election in November.

Many state legislatures reconvening this month will work on bills that would require local police to enforce federal immigration laws and make it harder to get jobs, housing and public services without legal papers, as well as other measures meant to push immigrants who lack documentation to leave the jurisdiction.

And the public rhetoric about immigrants just seems to be getting more and more acidic, even in The Chronicle of Higher Education, whose target audience is academics and college employees. In early January an online article in the Chronicle about Arizona's universities reclassifying some immigrant students as out-of-state under a new state law attracted a string of harsh comments about illegal immigrants.

"The debate in the United States is almost dangerous," said former Ambassador and former Assistant Secretary of State Princeton Lyman to an audience of employees of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Jan. 9. Lyman now is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University in Washington.

The one-time ambassador to Nigeria and South Africa described what's being said about immigrants by political leaders, particularly presidential candidates, as "very worrisome."

"Some of it is fed by racist inclinations, but others are just worried about the possibility of an unending flow of immigrants," he said. He described some political candidates' pledges for dealing with illegal immigration as "very worrisome," but added that he hopes such rhetoric will die down as the campaign comes to a close.