Guest Column
Immigration Quick Clips
- From National Immigration Forum
- April 3, 2006
- The Senate continues floor debate on immigration today at 2:00 p.m. Over the weekend, the news was mainly on more immigration debate on the Sunday TV chat shows, more demonstrations for comprehensive immigration reform and against overly-punitive measures in New York City, Miami, Salinas and Costa Mesa, California, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Wichita, Kansas, and elsewhere, and new polls from Time Magazine (Friday) and the Associated Press (Sunday) showing support for the basic approach of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s immigration bill.
- Meanwhile…
- The Los Angeles Times’ Ron Brownstein examined President Bush’s political strategy during the immigration debate, which he argues barrows from both good and bad lessons Bush learned as Texas Governor. While Bush has tried to build consensus on the issue as the Senate debate continues, he also endorsed the House’s enforcement-only/criminalization bill in December.
- On illegal immigration…Bush has pursued a more conciliatory course. He has rejected the baseline contention of most GOP conservatives that it is possible to control the problem through tougher enforcement alone. Instead, he has joined the center-to-left voices that maintain that real progress will come only from marrying tougher enforcement to a guest-worker program… But the second echo of Bush's Texas years diminishes his prospects… Last December, the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation that championed conservative enforcement priorities -- including a massive border fence and a provision that would make criminals of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. -- but rejected a guest-worker program. Rather than restrain the House, Bush mostly praised its efforts. (“On Immigration, Bush Mines His Texas Tactics,” April 2, 2006)
- In opinion columns this weekend, in the Wichita Eagle, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) endorsed the Senate Judiciary Committee’s approach to immigration, while in the San Francisco Chronicle, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) made a similar appeal:
- We are not being inundated by freeloaders and criminals. We are being inundated with hardworking people who want to contribute to American society and prosperity. As the Senate moves forward with immigration reform, I think a plan that combines robust enforcement with a guest-worker program is a conservative solution that the Republican Party should embrace. (Sen. Brownback, “Conservatives Should Back Immigration Bill,” April 2, 2006)
- It has become increasingly clear that we need a comprehensive plan to secure our borders and address the large number of undocumented immigrants living in the United States in a realistic and humane way. The bill approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee by a bipartisan 12-to-6 vote marks the first step forward in a difficult and consequential process to address this issue. (Sen. Feinstein, “The Immigration Debate: A plan to bring people out of the shadows, April 2, 2006)
- Finally, The New Yorker magazine’s Talk of the Town commentator John Cassidy looks at the rallies of millions of immigrants and the broader political implications:
- In California, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada, Hispanics are already the swing voters. Although traditionally regarded as Democratic supporters, an estimated forty-four per cent of them voted for Bush in 2004. “We can’t afford to do to the Hispanics what we did to the Roman Catholics in the late nineteenth century: tell them we don’t like them and lose their vote for a hundred years,” Grover Norquist, a Republican activist who is close to the White House, said. For once, good policy might coincide with good politics. (“Alien Nation,” April 10, 2006 print edition)
- The complete articles are pasted below…
- Douglas G. Rivlin
- Director of Communication
- National Immigration Forum
- 50 F Street, NW, #300
- Washington, DC 20001 USA
- http://www.immigrationforum.org/
- rivlin@immigrationforum.org
- LOS ANGELES TIMES (Brownstein Column): On Immigration, Bush Mines His Texas Tactics
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RONALD BROWNSTEIN
Ronald Brownstein's column appears every Sunday. See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times' website at latimes.com/brownstein.
April 2, 2006
Maybe it's the subject matter, but the immigration debate is bringing out the Texan in President Bush.
In his approach to immigration, Bush is reprising two distinct elements of his strategy as Texas governor.
One of those strategies has improved Bush's odds of signing comprehensive immigration reform. The second has diminished his chances of success. To coax a bill to his desk, Bush in the weeks ahead needs to employ more of what worked in Texas and less of what didn't — if it's not already too late to change course.
In the immigration debate, Bush is reverting to his gubernatorial strategy by emphasizing consensus — a word that as president he has sometimes seemed to choke on. As governor, on most issues he really did try to operate as a "uniter, not a divider," as he has described himself. He generally minimized partisan rhetoric, personally courted Democratic legislators, and offered them concessions in disputes over welfare and taxes.
That hasn't been his pattern in Washington. As president, Bush usually seeks to advance his aims by unifying Republicans; when necessary, he courts a few conservative Democrats to top off a legislative majority, but he has rarely aimed his proposals at the center of both parties.
On illegal immigration, though, Bush has pursued a more conciliatory course. He has rejected the baseline contention of most GOP conservatives that it is possible to control the problem through tougher enforcement alone. Instead, he has joined the center-to-left voices that maintain that real progress will come only from marrying tougher enforcement to a guest-worker program.
On several specific issues in the debate, Bush has landed to the right of most Democrats and centrist Republicans. But overall, he has created a tone conducive to bipartisan bargaining.
Bush has promoted such a positive environment in a more basic way. He's often accepted polarization in the country and Congress as the price of achieving his goals. Usually, he argues that a leader's job is to set a decisive direction, not build consensus.
But on immigration, Bush defines consensus as good in itself. He often emphasizes that Washington must avoid an immigration debate that polarizes society: "People should not pit neighbor against neighbor … in our country," he says.
It's part of a larger pattern with Bush; although he frequently invites conflicts on national security, economic and some social issues, he almost always avoids a confrontational approach on questions with racial and ethnic overtones, such as immigration or affirmative action.
More focus on conciliation would serve Bush well on all the challenges he confronts. But it's especially apt for immigration. Any package needs to harmonize diverse interests. And with his own party split, Bush needs Democratic support to pass a broad plan. In both those respects, Bush's tilt back toward his deal-making Texas strategy improves his chances of reaching an immigration agreement.
But the second echo of Bush's Texas years diminishes his prospects. On immigration, he's also employing a strategy he used during his greatest legislative setback as governor — a failed attempt to revamp the Texas tax code in 1997.
In that fight, Bush was far-sighted in pushing the state to confront inequality between rich and poor school districts and excessive reliance on property taxes to fund education. But his proposed changes initially drew little support. That's when he turned to the tactic he's using on immigration — embracing any bill that could keep the process moving through the Legislature.
In Texas, Bush supported Democrats in the state House of Representatives as they reconstructed and revived his tax plan. "He did not criticize us," said then-state Rep. Paul Sadler, who led the Democratic effort. "He simply said … 'You don't like my plan, bring me a better plan.' " Yet after the revised plan passed the state House, Bush frustrated Sadler by refusing to challenge the right-leaning state Senate as it produced a much more conservative alternative.
Bush told Sadler his goal was to get any plan out of the Senate so that the two sides could reach agreement in a conference committee. But Sadler accurately warned Bush that he was allowing the gap between the two chambers to widen to the point where they might be unable to agree. When that did happen, Bush was forced to accept a minimalist compromise.
Bush may have already replicated the mistake on immigration. Last December, the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation that championed conservative enforcement priorities — including a massive border fence and a provision that would make criminals of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. — but rejected a guest-worker program. Rather than restrain the House, Bush mostly praised its efforts.
His goal was to get any bill he could from the House. The administration assumed that the Senate would produce a more balanced package, allowing Bush and his allies to meld the two in conference.
But, just as with tax reform in Texas, Bush may have allowed the gap between the two chambers to grow so wide that no agreement will be possible, even if the Senate overcomes its own divisions to pass an immigration bill.
If Bush is to avoid that fate, he'll need to accept more responsibility for steering Congress toward agreement. The most valuable thing he could do now is explain, in greater detail, what kind of final agreement he believes could create consensus — even if that exposes him to more conflict with House conservatives. Without such a signal from the top, the push for an immigration overhaul could easily fragment into stalemate, just as the debate over Gov. Bush's tax plan did.
Surely, that's one element of his Texas experience Bush can't be eager to relive. - WICHITA EAGLE (Sen. Brownback Op-Ed): Conservatives Should Back Immigration Bill
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BY SEN. SAM BROWNBACK
April 2, 2006 - Ronald Reagan understood that America should reward those with the courage, will and spirit to leave their homeland to join our society. In 1989, Reagan bid farewell to the nation with a final address from the Oval Office. Speaking of America as a beacon of hope and promise, he said:
- "I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity; and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here."
- In today's debate about immigration reform, we would be well-served by asking ourselves, in the spirit of Reagan's idealism, just who these immigrants are.
- The 12 million undocumented workers in America today are motivated by a desire that we should applaud: They want to find an honest job to provide for their families. They did not come here for handouts. Like us, they are looking for the American dream.
- Social conservatives and people of faith should welcome what these new immigrants bring to America.
- Last week in The New York Times, political commentator David Brooks made several moving points about these immigrants. He talked about how immigrants value faith, hard work and a traditional family structure. He talked about how they build community groups and raise happy and productive children.
- We are not being inundated by freeloaders and criminals. We are being inundated with hardworking people who want to contribute to American society and prosperity.
- As the Senate moves forward with immigration reform, I think a plan that combines robust enforcement with a guest-worker program is a conservative solution that the Republican Party should embrace.
- Economic conservatives should support the benefits from immigrant workers, as studies show that over time, immigrants and their children generate a net benefit to the American economy. Social conservatives should appreciate the values these immigrants bring to America and also recognize that we are called to help the widows, orphans and foreigners among us.
- We all agree that our immigration system is broken. The border is too porous, the law is not enforced, and 12 million undocumented workers and their employers form a huge black market economy. We must increase enforcement at the borders, in our interior and with our employers.
- But if we just focus on enforcement, we will likely fail to solve our problems and could actually make them worse. The 1996 enforcement-only approach simply forced more workers to short-circuit the system by finding ways around the law. This is because of a basic tenet of our free market economy: The government will fail if it makes laws that ignore the law of supply and demand.
- The greatness of a society can be measured by the compassion it shows to its least fortunate. We are a nation of laws, a land of immigrants, and a place of great prosperity because of our freedom. As we consider how to solve our broken immigration system, we should craft a solution that introduces law and order but also recognizes how America benefits from the immigrants who want to join us.
- Sam Brownback is a Republican who represents Kansas in the U.S. Senate and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
- SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE (Sen. Feinstein Op-Ed): The Immigration Debate: A plan to bring people out of the shadows
-
Dianne Feinstein
Sunday, April 2, 2006 - San Francisco Chronicle
- It has become increasingly clear that we need a comprehensive plan to secure our borders and address the large number of undocumented immigrants living in the United States in a realistic and humane way. The bill approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee by a bipartisan 12-to-6 vote marks the first step forward in a difficult and consequential process to address this issue.
- If this bill is approved by the full Senate, it will go to a Senate-House conference committee to reconcile differences with the bill approved earlier by the House. This reconciliation will be difficult to achieve, so it remains uncertain whether any bill can be enacted into law in this congressional session.
- Any legislation approved by Congress has to take into consideration the reality of immigration to the United States today. Most of what is attempted by federal agencies responsible for administering immigration services and protecting our borders has failed more often than not. We have to deal with that failure: Employer sanctions have not worked; the borders are a sieve; detention facilities are insufficient for the numbers of people captured trying to enter the country; the Border Patrol is understaffed; and technology for surveillance and other purposes is inadequate for the job.
- We now have some 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Many have been here for 20 to 30 years. They own their own homes and pay taxes. Their children were born in this country and educated here. They want to live by the law, but they have no way to do so. They are forced to live furtively, deeply embedded within all parts of America.
- So, while we need stronger border enforcement, this alone will not address the enormity of the problem. The House bill, which focuses only on enforcement and criminalization of undocumented immigrants, is not a solution. Our laws need to be much more comprehensive and realistic -- we need to address the problem as it is, not as we wish to perceive it.
- First, we must secure our borders.
- The Senate bill doubles the number of Border Patrol agents -- adding 12,000 over five years to the 11,300 agents now in place. An additional 2,500 inspectors are added at seaports, airports and other border crossings.
- Digging a tunnel or subterranean passage across an international border into the United States would be a crime. Forty tunnels have been found since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- all but one on the southern border and 20 of them in California -- yet there is no law making the building and financing of these border tunnels a federal crime.
- The Senate bill also authorizes additional unmanned aerial vehicles, cameras, sensors and other new technologies to surveil the border. It allows the Department of Homeland Security to work with the Department of Defense so that the latter can carry out surveillance activities at the border to prevent illegal immigration.
- The bill also meets some very real needs of our economy, which cannot be ignored. The first of these is agriculture. California is the largest agricultural state -- the industry accounts for more than $37 billion in revenue in our state alone. More than 560,000 people work in agriculture in California, yet much of the agricultural workforce is undocumented. Efforts have been made for years to get Americans to do the work, but they simply won't do it.
- This bill remedies that issue by establishing a new "blue card" program that, over the next five years, would enable 1.5 million workers who are working in agriculture now to gain legal status.
- Under this program, undocumented agricultural workers could apply for a blue card if they can demonstrate that they have worked in American agriculture for at least 150 workdays within the previous two years. After receiving blue cards, individuals who can prove that they have worked in American agriculture for an additional 150 workdays per year for 3 years, or 100 workdays per year for 5 years, will then be eligible for a green card.
- The Senate bill also deals with a very difficult subject -- the millions of people who are not in the country legally. If they pay a $2,000 fine and any back taxes, learn English, continue to work and pass a criminal and national security background check, then they will be able to apply for a green card, but only after the 3.3 million people now in line ahead of them. It is estimated the entire process will take about 11 years.
- The Senate bill brings these people -- already here and not returning -- out of the shadows. It enables them to embrace the American dream. And, I believe, it provides the only realistic option. Think about it! How would you find 12 million people, round them up, and transport them out of the United States? And even if you could put aside the moral issues involved, how could you prevent many of them from returning to the only home they know the next day? This is their home. This is where they work. And most of them have become a vital and necessary part of the American workforce.
- Yes, we need to build a border infrastructure that is modern and effective -- that uses new surveillance technology, that employs adequate manpower, and that includes a fence -- such as that used in Operate Gatekeeper -- when feasible. But we also need to find an orderly way to allow those people who are already here, who are embedded in our communities and our workforce, to be able to become full members of our society. This bill does that in a realistic and humane way.
- Dianne Feinstein represents California in the U.S. Senate.
- THE NEW YORKER (Talk of the Town commentary): Alien Nation
- COMMENT
- ALIEN NATION
- by John Cassidy
-
Issue
of 2006-04-10
Posted 2006-04-03 - In a jaded and stage-managed political culture, it is rare to see the eruption of a genuine popular movement. That’s what happened in Los Angeles the other week, when hundreds of thousands of people protested against congressional efforts to crack down on illegal aliens. The marchers, most of them Hispanic, set out from the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Broadway. By the time the stragglers reached City Hall, California had witnessed the biggest demonstration in its history.
- Even more stunning was the sound of a once marginalized community finding its voice. For years, the immigration debate has been exercising politicians, economists, TV pundits, and editorial writers, not to mention the self-styled militia known as the Minutemen, which patrols the southern border. Here, finally, were the janitors, maids, dishwashers, babysitters, garment workers, office cleaners, shelf-stackers, busboys, cooks, gardeners, pool boys, and fruit pickers who do the work that American citizens generally won’t do—at least, not at the wages being offered. Shedding their customary aversion to publicity, the immigrants lambasted the House of Representatives for approving a bill at the end of last year that would make living in the United States without a visa an “aggravated felony,” impose heavy fines on firms that employ illegal aliens, and order the Department of Homeland Security to build a tall fence along sections of the Mexican border.
- News of the demonstration spread across the world. Many commentators were heartened by the spectacle; an Irish newspaper saw “the face of a joyously multicultural America.” Not everyone shared that view. On Fox News, Bill O’Reilly accused the demonstrators of intimidation. On talk radio, angry callers claimed that the marchers were “anti-American,” citing the profusion of foreign flags and Spanish-language placards. In fact, many marchers were carrying American flags, some of which were emblazoned with pictures of family members serving in the United States military. (For young immigrants, the surest way to secure American citizenship is often to join the armed forces.) Other marchers brandished signs that said, “We love USA, too.”
- A few days after the L.A. protest, which followed similar events in Chicago, Miami, and other cities, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a proposal that was much friendlier to illegal aliens than the House version. The new measure would give illegal workers the opportunity to apply for work visas, green cards, and, eventually, American citizenship. It also would create an expanded guest-worker program, allowing four hundred thousand more people a year to enter the United States legally. (Under the current system, about eight hundred thousand immigrants arrive here legally every year; another half million or so arrive illegally.) Although the new Judiciary Committee proposal has the tacit support of the White House, Senate Republicans remain split. Six Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voted against the proposal. In the full Senate, and in the House-Senate conference, which will attempt to reconcile the House and Senate bills, the proposal will encounter conservatives who favor a battendown-the-hatches policy.
- For some Republicans, especially those facing midterm elections in predominantly white districts, acting tough on immigration has certain diversionary advantages. “Would I rather be talking about immigration reform with these voters or the war?” the Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio said to Ruth Marcus, of the Washington Post. “Immigration reform or gasoline prices?” Other immigration hawks have more substantive points to make. At a time when the federal government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the war on terror, it hardly makes sense to have such porous borders.
- There are also legitimate questions about the economic impact of illegal immigration. Academic studies suggest that the presence of so many illegal immigrants—an estimated twelve million—depresses the wages of poorly educated Americans, who face more intense competition for menial jobs. Still, the vast majority of Americans don’t compete for work with illegal immigrants. And the studies count only the effects of immigration that can be readily measured, such as the losses to workers from lower wages. They don’t take into account long-term gains like a broader tax base, more investment, and an influx of entrepreneurial talent. Silicon Valley, for instance, is home to tens of thousands of Indian engineers, and it badly needs more. Google was co-founded by a Russian immigrant, Sergey Brin; your iPod was designed by Jonathan Ive, from London. The New Economy is, in no small part, an immigrant story.
- Brin and Ive came here legally, but, even when it comes to undocumented aliens, there’s reason to doubt the alarmist warnings about their coalescence into a permanent underclass. In California, an increasing number of Mexicans get identity cards from their government, which allow them to apply for U.S. bank accounts, credit cards, and mortgages, and to obtain a tax-identification number from the I.R.S. Many neighborhoods in cities like Los Angeles now have a property-owning, tax-paying middle class of illegal aliens.
- New research by the Berkeley economist David Card confirms that recent immigrants are assimilating pretty well. Card looked at the experience of immigrant families in the past four decades, and found that, on average, the children of immigrants have higher education and income levels than the children of non-immigrants. Meanwhile, the children of the least educated immigrants have pulled almost even with the children of natives.
- Over the course of its history, the United States has gained enormously from its image as an open society: open to new commodities, open to new ideas, open to new people. President Bush, to his credit, regularly defends this tradition, and urges voters to reject the rival tradition of insularity and isolationism. “No one should play on people’s fears, or try to pit neighbors against each other,” Bush said at a recent ceremony where thirty immigrants received American citizenship.
- If it weren’t an election year, the makings of a sensible compromise would be obvious. Hire more border guards, both to enhance security and to put some limit on the influx of cheap labor. Relax restrictions on educated foreigners whose expertise we need. (In 2004, the Department of Labor approved more than six hundred thousand requests for high-tech-worker visas; Congress, however, limits the number to sixty-five thousand.) And, finally, do right by resident illegals—many of them with American children, many of them already paying U.S. taxes.
- It’s possible that enough Republicans in Congress will support such a bill to make it law. Nativist efforts to take on immigration can backfire, as Pat Buchanan and Pete Wilson discovered. Some Republican strategists look at the marchers in Los Angeles and see a voting bloc that makes up about an eighth of the population and, by 2045, will represent nearly a quarter of it. In California, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada, Hispanics are already the swing voters. Although traditionally regarded as Democratic supporters, an estimated forty-four per cent of them voted for Bush in 2004. “We can’t afford to do to the Hispanics what we did to the Roman Catholics in the late nineteenth century: tell them we don’t like them and lose their vote for a hundred years,” Grover Norquist, a Republican activist who is close to the White House, said. For once, good policy might coincide with good politics.
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