Thread: Shifting Stance to Back Immigration Overhaul, Reid Reaps Benefits

By CARL HULSE
Published: July 5, 2013
The New York Times


Drew Angerer for The New York Times
Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, has come to favor a new immigration law, a position that has aided him politically.

WASHINGTON — Senator Harry Reid was as outspoken on the need for new immigration laws 20 years ago as he is today. But his viewpoint was markedly different.

“If you break our laws by entering this country without permission and give birth to a child, we reward that child with U.S. citizenship and guarantee full access to all public and social services this society provides, and that’s a lot of services,” Mr. Reid said in a 1993 Senate speech that would mesh easily with the current opposition to the newly passed Senate immigration overhaul.

Now Mr. Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, is a chief advocate of creating a path to citizenship for millions of unauthorized immigrants. Not only did he embrace the cause of Hispanics to help him win a difficult re-election race in 2010, he has shown national party leaders the advantages of a strong pro-immigration stance.

Behind the scenes, he put intense pressure on the Obama White House to ease deportation rules in 2012, a policy change that stoked Hispanic voter enthusiasm crucial to President Obama’s re-election.

It is a remarkable transformation, one Mr. Reid readily acknowledged recently as he began to press the House for action on immigration.

“I came to the realization that I was way off base,” Mr. Reid said of his prior stance, one he said he reversed after his wife, Landra, reminded him that she was the daughter of a Russian immigrant. “I am so glad she righted the ship.”

Immigration is not the only issue on which Mr. Reid has evolved. He has shifted to the left on gun control and gay rights over the years and now he is threatening to force through a rules change on filibusters, something he has been reluctant to do in the past.

Given his leadership role, Mr. Reid’s about-face on immigration had significant consequences for both the policy and politics surrounding the topic. His ability to build a winning campaign around an issue that Democrats in swing states typically tried to avoid provided a road map for Congressional candidates as well as the Obama campaign.

“He was able to speak to them as someone who had risked his political career on leaning in on a controversial immigration issue and lived to tell about it,” said Frank Sharry, head of the pro-immigration group America’s Voice. “He spoke with authority and this undeniable credibility.”

With a rapidly growing Hispanic population back home, Mr. Reid had ample incentive to try to increase his appeal to that constituency and organize Hispanics politically even when others advised against it or saw it as fruitless.

“People immediately started making fun of me in their own way,” he said. ‘Why are you wasting your time? No. 1, most of them are illegal. And even if you get some to register, they never vote.’ ”

As he made inroads, Mr. Reid said he reminded Hispanics that the only way to gain political power was to vote. Through his efforts to encourage greater political participation, Mr. Reid said he developed deeper personal ties and a new affinity for the community as he regularly attended local festivals and Christmas and Cinco de Mayo celebrations.

“They were kind of fun,” he said of the events. “They had music and food and people were happy.”

When it came to the music, Mr. Reid saw a way to help. Never one to shy away from pushing an earmark through the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Reid in 2004 secured a $25,000 grant for Clark County schools in Las Vegas to begin a mariachi program. The federal spending was ridiculed by Citizens Against Government Waste as “La Pork-a-Racha,” but it was immensely popular with Hispanic students and their parents.

“That is one of the best things I have ever done in my political life,” said Mr. Reid, who still cannot help smiling about the earmark.

For Mr. Reid, the true test of growing Hispanic political might in Nevada came in 2010, when he was deemed to be in jeopardy of losing his seat.

With Nevada among the states with the highest concentration of unauthorized immigrants, Mr. Reid’s opponent, Sharron Angle, a Tea Party favorite, moved aggressively to undercut Mr. Reid on his immigration stance with ads and mailers that described him as “the best friend an illegal alien ever had.”

Mr. Reid, who ended up carrying Latino and other minority votes while losing white voters to Ms. Angle, saw it as a gift. “They thought I was dead,” said Mr. Reid, who likened the ad to a “big piece of red meat that I couldn’t resist like a tiger out there starving.”

“They were so mad,” he said of voters, “not only Hispanics, but it made everybody mad. I got huge support.”

With jubilant shouts of “si se puede” (yes, we can) breaking out at his victory rally, Mr. Reid was suddenly the new example of how to channel Hispanic voting clout, a lesson that was not lost on organizers of Mr. Obama’s campaign.

Still, in 2012, Senate Democratic leaders began to worry about declining enthusiasm among Hispanic voters, with activists arguing the White House was not doing enough to stem the pace of deportations of young unauthorized immigrants. The administration was telling lawmakers it was uncertain of its legal authority and feared an electoral backlash.

Unhappy with the situation, Mr. Reid summoned senior White House aides to his Capitol conference room in April 2012 to bluntly and sternly make the case that the administration needed to be more aggressive in reducing deportations.

Mr. Reid put even more pressure on the White House when he went on a widely viewed Spanish language news show on May 15 and, ignoring the advice of his aides, told his interviewer that Mr. Obama was going to invoke executive authority to slow deportations and “that should happen fairly quickly.”

Subsequently, in mid-June, Mr. Obama announced that the government would allow even more discretion in the deportations, preventing action against thousands of young immigrants who had been brought over the border as children.

The decision helped seal the Hispanic vote and contributed to the current bipartisan push for new immigration policy.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who helped write the Senate-passed immigration proposal and works closely with Mr. Reid in the leadership, concedes Democrats have gained substantially from their immigration stance. But he said that for Mr. Reid, the turnabout has been about more than just politics.

“Harry is a naturally empathetic person,” Mr. Schumer said, “and the more deeply he became immersed in the Hispanic community, the more sympathetic he became to their causes, and it transcended politics.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/us...anted=all&_r=0

“Harry is a naturally empathetic person,” Mr. Schumer said, “and the more deeply he became immersed in the Hispanic community, the more sympathetic he became to their causes, and it transcended politics.”

I thought it was because the casinos made so much of the money that they contribute to Harry by employing illegals. JMO