Contradictions of Comprehensive Immigration Reform

NDN, the successor organization to the New Democratic Movement, believes that Latinos and citizen immigrants are a critical part of a new Democratic coalition that will ensure a Democratic majority for decades.

NDN, through its Hispanic Strategy Center, supports comprehensive immigration reform as a kind of quid pro quo for the party loyalty of the Latino/immigrant voting bloc.

 Typical of well-heeled advocacy groups in Washington, DC, NDN commissions polls to support its political convictions. NDN, headed by Simon Rosenberg, commissioned a pre-election poll to support its contention that there is widespread public support for comprehensive immigration reform, particularly among Latinos and especially in swing states. But what is comprehensive immigration reform?

 For immigration restrictionists, it is a code liberals and the “open-borders lobby” use for “amnesty.” They’re right, minus their own labeling. Pro-immigration groups regard legalization as the central policy in comprehensive reform. When they call for comprehensive reform, they are calling for a “pathway to citizenship” for unauthorized immigrants.

Clearly, the issue of the fate of 11 million illegal immigrants who’ve made their homes in the United States is what makes comprehensive immigration reform so contentious. Rather than simply dealing with the issue straight-on, legalization supporters have included this explosive issue within a larger package in hope of winning necessary political support for legalization.

By including border security and immigration law enforcement measures with the package, legalization advocates hope to pull in moderate and conservative Democrats as well as a sprinkling of Republicans (enough so they can call it a bipartisan effort). By including proposals for expanded temporary and guestworker programs, they hope to win support from business.

And by including provisions for family reunification visas, they seek to guarantee and deepen support among immigrant communities (not just Latinos, but Asian Americans as well as others). Instead of a simple Immigration Reform Act, the latest comprehensive bill under consideration was the proposed Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Reform Act of 2007.

The inclusive nature of the bill – bringing in border control infrastructure and a complicated new guestworker program – represented the evolution of several comprehensive reform proposals (Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act (2005), Comprehensive Enforcement and Immigration Reform Act (2005), and Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006).

 The strategy to advance legalization by including it in a comprehensive reform of immigration policy and border control has led to bills that include an array of contradictory measures. On the one hand, the bills aim to close the borders and decrease immigration inflows. But on the other hand, they propose to increase immigration, both temporary and permanent, through new guestworker initiatives, high-tech immigrant worker programs, speeding-up visa processing, and new family-reunification allowances.

In this mix of “security” and “economic opportunity,” the proposed solutions for bringing immigrants out of the shadows through legalization have become increasingly more complicated and restrictive. The comprehensiveness of the bills may bring in some additional congressional support because of certain proposals in the mix.

But as immigration reform becomes more comprehensive, it also sparks new opposition, even from those who strongly support legalization. In other words, as the reform adds new elements, it sparks new opposition, as the vote against closure in 2007 showed, bringing together a bipartisan majority against the Senate bill. On Sept. 10 NDN released a poll that it said found “overwhelming public support for comprehensive immigration reform in key battleground states.” 

NDN, America’s Voice, and other pro-immigration groups now cite the polling by the Democratic Party’s in-house Latino pollster Sergio Bendixen to support claims that there is intense and widespread support for comprehensive immigration reform. But the question asked 500 people in four states (Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado) was not if they supported legislation to legalize illegal immigrants.

Rather it was if they supported comprehensive immigration reform. As the report on the polling results noted, “Different groups and individuals use the term “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” to mean very different things.”

In this case, NDN commissioned the Bendixen firm to defined comprehensive reform in the harsh yet expansive terms that it encouraged the Democratic Party to adopt in its 2008 party platform. Here’s the question as framed by NDN: “Would you support or oppose a comprehensive immigration reform that strengthens border security, sets up an employment verification plan, establishes serious criminal penalties for employers that hire illegal workers, creates a new visa program for 200,000 workers annually, substantially increases the number of family visas available for the immediate relatives of legal immigrants, and grants illegal immigrants conditional legal status for six years and then a path to permanent residency and citizenship if they meet certain requirements?” 

The poll showed that 66-69% of those surveyed in the four states (rising to 75-79% for Hispanics) supported such a comprehensive reform package. Legalization, rather than being a centerpiece of this package, is surrounded by other measures variously designed to appeal to different groups – border security and criminalizing hiring of illegal workers for those favoring enforcement solutions, and new worker visa program and substantially increased family visas for those favoring more legal immigration.

Rather than legalization, the package as defined by NDN provides only a highly conditioned pathway to citizenship – hardly a strong expression of support for legalizing the country’s undocumented population of 11 million.

Anti-Immigration Groups React to Obama Victory -- Part Two

While not thrilled with the prospect of an Obama presidency, the restrictionists don’t necessarily fear it. Some, including NumbersUSA and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, already are trying to leverage Obama’s promises to protect workers and create jobs During the campaign the anti-immigration groups despaired over the prospect of either McCain or Obama. But now the two leading restrictionist policy institutes, NumbersUSA and FAIR, point encouragingly to Obama’s strong positions in favor of employee verification and employer enforcement. They have also been confident that the aggressive enforcement regime instituted by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff will persist into the next administration, especially given the way that many Democratic congressional representatives have supported increases in the department’s immigration-enforcement and border-control budget. However, it’s the country’s economic downspin that gives the restrictionists the most confidence that liberal immigration reform is dead for the foreseeable future. FAIR’s Post-Election Framing The Federation for American Immigration Reform immediately jumped into the post-election debate over immigration reform with media releases, polls, and new policy analysis about the prospects for comprehensive immigration reform. Rather than focusing on how pro-immigration and anti-immigration candidates did on Nov. 4, FAIR entered the post-election debate with a new framing for its anti-immigration message. According to FAIR, “The results of yesterday's elections are a clear rejection by the voters of government of, by, and for, special interests, and policies that have brought this nation to the brink of an economic crisis.” While pro-immigration groups like the National Immigration Forum and America’s Voice were citing the heavy Latino and immigrant turnout for the Democrats as evidence that the time has come for liberal immigration reform, FAIR posited that Americans were mostly concerned about their jobs and economic stability and, as such, would not support what “failed special interest-driven policies” like immigration. FAIR asserted that “Americans are fed-up with immigration policies that have placed the interests of immigration lawbreakers, cheap labor employers, and ethnic power brokers ahead of those of struggling workers and taxpayers.”

Casting aside Obama’s promise to enact comprehensive reform including legalization in his first term, FAIR’s president Dan Stein zeroed in on Obama’s commitments to create jobs and to back “change that voters can believe in.” Instead of focusing on the cultural, national security, environmental or “rule of law” arguments that FAIR has previously favored, Stein argued that FAIR’s position in favor of restricted immigration was an economic, worker-centered stance.

"To the extent that Senator Obama received a mandate,” said Stein, “it is to put government back on the side of working Americans. A critical component of an economic recovery plan for struggling workers must be to set rational limits on immigration, enforce laws against employing illegal aliens, and resist calls for more guest workers.”

Rather than situate FAIR as a negative force opposing comprehensive immigration reform, Stein called for Obama to “put forward a coherent immigration policy that recognizes that reforming immigration is critical to getting our economy back on track.” Typical of the restrictionists that see legal and illegal immigration as a causal factor for most any problem – from climate change to the subprime crisis -- FAIR now regards restrictionism as central to economic recovery.

"At a time when the economy is faltering, when nearly a million Americans have lost their jobs this year alone, when federal, state and local governments are facing unprecedented deficits, President Obama will need to institute and enforce immigration policies that do not add to these problems.”

Like the pro-immigration forces, the anti-immigration camp brandishes polls to back its statements. In making its new pitch for a conservative reform package that would restrict both legal and illegal immigration, FAIR points to exit polls and a post-election poll it commissioned to support its contention that liberal immigration reform can’t count on widespread public support. Exit polls commissioned by FAIR show that only a third (32%) of surveyed voters voting for Obama said they supported legalization of illegal immigrants, while six in ten of those who voted for McCain opposed “amnesty.”

FAIR contends that “by wide margins Americans believe that their interests would best be served by overall reductions in the flow of immigration, and enforcement of immigration laws in a way that sends a clear message to both illegal aliens and their employers that the interests of law-abiding, hard-working Americans is paramount.”

To support this assertion, FAIR points to a post-election poll (Nov.5-6) conducted by Zogby International of actual voters that found, according to FAIR, that “a decisive majority of voters believe that an illegal alien amnesty would "further harm the interests of struggling American workers.”

Obviously formulated to confirm FAIR’s own positions, some of the survey questions seemed to prompt restrictionist answers from respondents. Citing the survey results, FAIR reported that “57% of voters stated that amnesty would harm American workers and further strain public resources, while only 26% believe amnesty would aid economic recovery and ease public burdens.” While FAIR and other immigration institutes don’t dispute the widespread conclusion about Latino turnout for Democrats, they question the assessment that Latinos favor liberal immigration reform. As Stein noted in another post-election release, “Arizonans overwhelmingly rejected a deceptive ballot measure which would have made it easier for businesses to hire illegal aliens. Proposition 202 was rejected by 60% of Arizona voters, including 56% of Latino voters in the state.” Immigration proponents argue that the unprecedented turnout of Latino and immigrant voters – about 10 million – and their overwhelming support for Obama – 67% of Latinos – demonstrated the salience of the immigration issue for a large constituency angered by the immigration crackdown. What’s more, this expanding constituency proved key to moving four swing states – Nevada, Colorado, Florida, and New Mexico – into the Democratic column. But FAIR counters that exit polling, including an Univision/Zogby survey, showed that the economy was the number-one voting priority for the majority (54%) of Latino voters, while only 11 cited immigration reform as their top concern. "All voters, including Latinos, turned to the Democrats last Tuesday in the hope that they will get our economy back on track. Notwithstanding a massive spin effort on the part of the ethnic advocacy network, the electorate, including Latinos, did not vote for amnesty and more immigration. In fact, the polls show that voters believe amnesty would be an impediment to economic recovery and putting American back to work," Stein concluded.

Instead of bemoaning the victory of Democratic candidate committed to liberal immigration reform, FAIR’s Stein said they looked “forward to working with his new administration to bring long overdue changes to an immigration policy that, along with many other policies of the past eight years, were soundly rejected by voters across the country and across the political spectrum.”

Clearly, many voters went to the polls on Nov. 4 concerned mainly about the nose-diving economy, their jobs, and their savings. But immigration proponents are certainly well-founded in their conclusion that the widespread rejection of the Republican Party included, especially among Latinos and immigrant citizens, concerns about the anti-immigrant policies embraced by many in the party.

But as immigration advocates gear up for another round in the immigration debate, they would do well to follow the example of their restrictionist counterparts who are framing their message not in terms of political parties, ethnicities, or status as “New Americans” but in terms of what’s good for the economy and all workers, not just immigrants. And in their call for legalization of 11 million immigrants living and working illegally in the country, supporters of liberal reform shouldn’t shy away from injecting values into the debate.

The economic bottom line of immigration reform can’t be ignored, but reform advocates should also be talking about what’s fair and just. Values played a major role in the Obama victory, and they also belong in the immigration debate.

See TransBorder Profiles:

NumbersUSA

Center for Immigration Studies

Immigration Reform Caucus

Border Security and Enforcement First Caucus

Immigration Law Reform Institute

Anti-Immigration Groups React to Obama Victory - Part One

While pro-immigration groups are hailing the Obama victory and the Latino turnout as a victory for liberal immigration reform, immigration restrictionists are reshaping their messaging for the Obama era. Given how successfully the restrictionist institutes in Washington have tweaked their anti-immigration message in the Bush era to reflect new citizen concerns about national security and the "rule of law," it would behoove immigrant advocates and other supporters of liberal immigration policies to pay more attention to what the leading restrictionists are now saying.

Post-Election Reaction of the Center for Immigration Studies

Not as close to either grassroots restrictionism or Capitol Hill as his colleagues at FAIR and NumbersUSA, Mark Krikorian, director of the restrictionist think tank Center for Immigration Studies reacted bitterly to Obama’s election while pointing to the restrictionist victories in Arizona as cause for hope. “Even if The One's minions gut immigration enforcement, it's still alive at the state level,” wrote Krikorian in his blog, “Arizona voters rejected the mendacious attempt by the business community to gut the state's toughest-in-the-nation immigration law. But unlike his counterparts at the other DC restrictionist institutes, Krikorian acknowledged that the anti-immigration forces may have a messaging problem. Noting that there is too much “bile” in the restrictionist movement, CIS’s president, author of the The New Case Against Immigration Both Legal and Illegal, observed in a post-election analysis that “too much of even the legitimate, non-bilious concern of immigration is based on the idea that today’s immigrants are somehow inferior to your grandma from Sciliy or your grampa from Lithuania.” Moving forward toward legislation restricting immigration, Krikorian recommends that restrictionists adopt a new framing of the issue. Rather than demonizing immigrants, as many restrictionists do to build their movement, Krikorian advocates a more cerebral, conceptual approach to immigration policy reform: “This is why I think there's political utility (as well as substantive truth) to the central point of my book: Today's immigrants are very similar to those of the past, but we have changed, our society so profoundly different because of modernization that mass immigration of any kind is no longer appropriate. This removes the onus from the foreigners and also allows us to place illegal immigration into a larger context rather than just gripe about lawbreaking (as bad as that is).” “A pro-immigrant policy of low immigration” is what Krikorian recommends as the new framing for restrictionists. Recognizing that many Latinos support a liberal immigration policy that supports more immigration, the CIS president observes that his framing probably won’t “attract most immigrants, or most Hispanics, or most Hispanic immigrants, but it will attract some and cause others to be less intense in their support for the other side and, perhaps most importantly, reassure native-born voters that their concerns about immigration don’t make them bad people.”

See TransBorder Profiles:

NumbersUSA

Center for Immigration Studies

Immigration Reform Caucus

Immigration Reform Law Institute

Border Security and Enforcement First Caucus

Immigration Doesn't Explain Losses of Dole and Barletta

Immigrant advocates are declaring that the anti-immigrant forces are on the run, pointing to the unpredicted electoral losses suffered by Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) and Hazelton, Pennsylvania’s immigrant-bashing mayor Lou Barletta.

Clearly, anti-immigrant politics is no sure path to electoral victory, especially if it is the central message -- a lesson that the Republicans should have learned from their 2006 losses. But neither was it the case that the victories of Dole’s and Barletta’s opponents were primarily due to their pro-immigrant, pro-immigration positions.

In North Carolina, Dole’s loss was mainly due to surge in those who voted straight-ticket Democratic. According to post-election analysis by Dr. Michael Bitzer, associate professor of political science at Catawba College in North Carolina, the 52-44% victory of state senator Kay Hagan over incumbent Dole would have been a 51-49% victory for Dole without the straight ticket votes. Also, the heavy early voting, central to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's grassroots effort to get people registered and to the polls, heavily favored Hagan in the state.

According to Bitzer, Hagan led among these one-stop absentee voters by a 57-43% spread. On election day, Hagan outpolled Dole by only 52% to 48%.

In the end, Dole lost her seat mostly because of "the Obama factor" and his campaign's "tidal wave of organization," which helped other Democratic candidates in statewide races, Bitzer said. Bitzer said exit polls showed that 61% of N.C. voters identified the economy as their biggest issue or concern.

Illegal immigration – the centerpiece of Dole’s immigrant-bashing campaign – “didn’t even make the list,” said Bitzer.

Clearly, the defeat of Dole was a major victory for Democrats, who will now occupy a seat that the Republicans have occupied since the first electoral victory of Jesse Helms in 1972.

According to analysis by the Swing State Project, Dole chose to run on what she regarded as a popular social issue, namely ending illegal immigration, but with the onset of the financial and economic crises and newspapers started pointing to Dole’s carpetbagger status, polls showed her dropping fast in the last weeks of the campaign.

Hagan’s immigration platform was not as well-defined as that of Dole, whose first television ad featured fear mongering about Latino immigrants by county sherrifs. But Hagan did say that she supported stronger border security and employer sanctions, and she offered qualified support for the 287(g) program of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which enlists local police and deputies in enforcing immigration law. Hagan said that the program should be fully funded by ICE, saying that local governments are now paying for part of the federal-local enforcement program.

While Dole charted out a strong anti-“amnesty” position, Hagan, while not promoting a strong comprehensive reform position, did say that she supported bringing illegal immigrants “out of the shadow economy” and advocate reforms in guestworker programs.

Dole, given an “A” on her “immigration report card” by the anti-immigration NumbersUSA, won’t be missed by immigration advocates, but Hagan probably cannot be counted on to back a reform bill that includes legalization. The backlash against immigration in North Carolina, one of the largest per capita recipients of immigrants in the last eight years, is just too strong and widespread for Hagan to ignore.

The defeat of Hazelton mayor Lou Barletta by incumbent Paul Kanjorski for Pennsylvania’s 11th congressional district is being widely hailed by pro-immigration groups as a signal that immigration restrictionism is on the wane. Barletta, a restrictionist hero for his drive to rid Hazelton of illegal immigrants, was polling 5-10 points ahead of Kanjorski until the final weeks of the campaign, when Kanjorski started to erode Barletta’s lead as the economy became more of an issue.

Barletta had berated Kanjorski for his support for comprehensive immigration reform and legalization. However, Kanjorski started to move to the right on immigration issues as the race progressed. He bucked Democratic leadership, signing the discharge petition for the tough immigration enforcement bill pushed by Republicans, the SAVE Act, and started taking a tougher position on the campaign trail against immigration. Late in the campaign, the Scranton Times ran an election report headlined "Kanjorski, Barletta see immigration similarly."

Kanjorski campaign manager Ed Mitchell said campaign’s polls showed the importance of Barletta’s immigration stance waned as the election neared due to the souring economy. “People had other things on their minds,” he said. “In October and November it was the economy, the economy, the economy.”

Photo: Sen. Elizabeth Dole

FAIR's Many Faces

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has founded or has been a founding partner in an array of national coalitions, state or local restrictionist groups, or national groups that have achieved independent identities.

Critics like the Center for New Community calls many of these affiliated organizations “front groups” while FAIR terms them affiliates.

One recent example of a coalition in which FAIR played a leading role is the anti-immigration environmental coalition which calls itself America’s Leadership Team for Long Range population-Immigration-Resource Planning. Other members include NumbersUSA, Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), and Social Contract. This coalition placed ads in the New York Times and The Nation that purported to show the direct link between immigration and environmental destruction and urban sprawl.

Other similar coalitions include such groups as Coalition for a Secure Drivers License, 9-11 Families for a Secure America, United to Secure America Coalition, and Coalition for the Future American Worker. FAIR also played a role in sparking the creation of State Legislators for Legal Immigration, a Pennsylvania-based grouping of state legislators vehemently opposed to the “invasion” of illegal immigrants. This group promotes the anti-immigration legislative initiatives shaped by FAIR’s Immigration Reform Legal Institute.

While based in Washington, FAIR has a national reach. Whether it’s a campaign to introduce an anti-immigration law at the state level or a local effort to crack down on illegal immigrants, it’s likely that FAIR is involved at some level – ranging from providing financial and logistical support to assisting in the drafting of bills and in filing court cases. With funding and logistical support, FAIR has sparked the creation of numerous grassroots organizations. In its 2006 annual report, FAIR provides the example of MFIRE as a typical local effort supported by FAIR. MFIRE, says FAIR, is a “grassroots group FAIR helped launch in Mississippi collected thousands of signatures throughout the state on a petition which calls the Mississippi legislature to adopt state legislation that will stop benefits to illegal aliens.”

Similarly,”IFIRE, a grassroots immigration reform group FAIR helped launch in Indiana made provided several legislators in the state the model legislation produced by IRLI.” Other local groups launched with FAIR’s support include Protect Arizona Now, Texans for FAIR Immigration, Mayors and County Executives for Immigration Reform, and Citizens of Dade United. Through its paid and volunteer field staff, FAIR plays a key role in organizing local efforts to pass anti-immigration laws at the local and state levels. It sponsors anti-immigration conferences, such as the Impacts of Illegal Immigration on State and Local Governments conference in March 2006 in Kansas City, Missouri. The same year it sponsored the Southern Regional Immigration Reform Summit in Nashville, Tennessee. FAIR says it “maintains three full-time field coordinators who blanket the entire nation, supporting and educating with activists, incubating new local organizations and working with them to address issue as they arise in their communities and states.” The Georgia legislature approved a comprehensive set of state laws aimed at discouraging illegal immigrants from settling and working in that state. During the effort to enact this law, FAIR field and legislative staff worked closely with key members of the legislature to craft effective policies, and with local immigration reform activist groups to generate public support and to blunt organized efforts by the pro-illegal alien lobby to derail the effort.” “By the end of 2006 FAIR had established volunteer state coordinators in nearly every state. These on-the-ground eyes and ears tracked local developments, helping FAIR’s field staff allocate their time and budgets as effectively as possible. The state coordinators have also afforded FAIR the ability to reach key activists in every corner of the country whenever local immigration issues arise,” boasts FAIR.

Immigration Problems and Plan from Obama Transition

It’s only a sketch but it’s enough for a first assessment of how the Obama/Biden Transition Team see the immigration issue. As part of the transition, the transition team has opened a nifty government website – http://www.change.gov/ --that concisely outlines the problems and policy solutions, as they see them, and invites viewers to provide feedback.

The problem is three-fold, according to the transition team:

“Undocumented population is exploding: The number of undocumented immigrants in the country has increased more than 40 percent since 2000. Every year, more than a half-million people come illegally or illegally overstay their visas.

“Immigration bureaucracy is broken: The immigration bureaucracy is broken and overwhelmed, forcing legal immigrants to wait years for applications.

“Immigration raids are ineffective: Despite a sevenfold increase in recent years, immigration raids only netted 3,600 arrests in 2006 and have placed all the burdens of a broken system onto immigrant families.”

True enough that illegal immigration has rapidly expanded since 2000, but what is not recognized that according to U.S. census figures, the influx of undocumented immigrants has slowed since 2005 and the population of illegal immigrants has actually declined by some half-million in the last year. The Pew Hispanic Center reported: “Inflows of unauthorized immigrants averaged 800,000 a year from 2000 to 2004, but fell to 500,000 a year if you average from 2005 to 2008 with a decreasing year-to- year trend. The unauthorized immigrant population grew more slowly in the period from 2005 to 2008 than it did earlier in the decade.”

Some combination of new enforcement practices (including steady rise in deportations – up 20% over 2007 to 349,000 in 2008) and the economic downturn makes the statement that the “undocumemted population is exploding” appear alarming and supportive of restrictionist fear-mongering.

Yes, the immigration bureaucracy is plodding, but that’s to have been expected after the old and maddeningly slow INS was folded into the entirely new department of Homeland Security in 2003. A recent DHS announcement that the system for visas and residency documentation is being computerized may mean that help is already on the way. Main problem, though, is that the immigration bureaucracy is now part of a national security bureaucracy.

The assessment that raids “have placed all the burdens of a broken system onto immigrant familes” is welcome indicator that the new administration will move beyond a policy with a simplistic enforce-the-law logic, and will shape a new immigration policy that has heart and is concerned with justice not just law enforcement. One can only hope that the new administration will instruct Homeland Security to end the raids on selected worksites that while netting relatively few illegal immigrants have terrorized and devastated entire communities

Now what’s the “Barack Obama and Joe Biden Plan” for immigration and border control?

Create Secure Borders Obama and Biden want to preserve the integrity of our borders. They support additional personnel, infrastructure and technology on the border and at our ports of entry.

Improve Our Immigration System Obama and Biden believe we must fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy and increase the number of legal immigrants to keep families together and meet the demand for jobs that employers cannot fill.

Remove Incentives to Enter Illegally Obama and Biden will remove incentives to enter the country illegally by cracking down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants.

Bring People Out of the Shadows Obama and Biden support a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.

Work with Mexico Obama and Biden believe we need to do more to promote economic development in Mexico to decrease illegal immigration.”

“Control Our Borders” – long a rallying cry of U.S. nativists and anti-immigration forces – is now a core piece of the liberals’ immigration policy agenda. Virtually all the freshmen members of the 110th Congress have said, like Obama and Biden, that border security is the top priority. And the Democratic Congress keeps throwing Homeland Security billions of dollars more for the “personnel, infrastructure, and technology” that the transition teams calls for. But this is problematic, just as employer crackdowns are, because the control and enforcement budget keeps expanding without any reform that keeps people in the shadows. What needs to be stated is that enforcement can’t come first. If we are to enforce “existing laws”, as DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff has repeatedly said, we must at the same time “bring people out of the shadows” with a reform that makes them legal. Otherwise, we will simply see the immigrant crackdown continue. Not enforcement first, not enforcement only, but legalization and enforcement as part of same package.

Image: Feedback icon on www.change.gov

Emanuel's Immigration Report Card

Rahm Emanuel, a former aide to President Clinton and Obama’s pick for chief-of-staff, will come back to the White House with a failing record.

During his first year in Congress, the Federation for American Immigration Reform gave Cong. Emanuel (D-IL) a 0% rating – with the number reflecting the percentage of time that Emanuel voted FAIR’s preferred position. Other restrictionist organizations that track congressional votes have confirmed FAIR’s assessment that Emanuel is irredeemably liberal when it comes to immigration reform.

NumbersUSA, the organization that spearheaded the grassroots mobilization against the Senate’s 2007 immigration reform bill, gives Emanuel a failing lifetime position. He flunked the NumbersUSA test, receiving an “F” on his “immigration-reduction report card.” U.S. Border Control gave Cong. Emanuel an 8% rating, indicating his “open-border stance.”

In other words, Emanuel, picked to exert control over Obama’s team and its policy agenda, is about as bad as you can get. He has, after all, cosponsored the McCain-Kennedy reform proposal, voted no on building a border fence, and even cast a “no” vote on a bill that would require hospitals to notify immigration agents when treating illegal immigrants.

But immigration restrictionists aren’t particularly worried. That’s because Emanuel, after the drubbing that immigration reform received in mid-2007, let it be known that the Democratic leadership in Congress wouldn’t be pushing comprehensive reform in 2008 or even in the first term of the next administration.

Calling immigration the “third rail” of American politics, Emanuel began backing away from comprehensive reform in 2007, even as he continued to oppose overly restrictive immigration and border bills.

Emanuel has come under fire from Latino columnist Ruben Navarrette for keeping immigration reform off the table this year. “House Democrats, under orders from Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., kept the controversial issue off the legislative agenda in 2008. Why? Organized labor. Democrats' slavish adherence to unions required that they derail any proposal that includes guest workers, as any bill with a chance to win Republican support would have to do,” wrote Navarrette. At the annual convention of the National Council of La Raza, Juan Salgado, board chairman of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, shocked participant, stating: "Congressman Rahm Emanuel said to me two weeks ago, there is no way this legislation is happening in the Democratic House, in the Democratic Senate, in the Democratic presidency, in the first term.” Emanuel’s office confirmed the congressman’s position. Emanuel’s spokesman Nick Pappas told the Washington Times: “Congressman Emanuel has worked hard to make comprehensive reform a reality and that work continues. However, President Bush and congressional Republicans’ failure on this critical matter has set back efforts to enact real reform.”

In turn, Salgrado said, “I was caught off-guard by the statement. I interpret his comments as a lack of courage on what they know is right. Listen, we’re here at the NCLR conference, and what it’s to take is not the attitude of Rahm Emanuel, if this is a second-term issue. What it’s going to take is boldness by the president.”