Thread: Immigration reform in U.S. caught in political quagmire

Immigration reform in U.S. caught in political quagmire

by Dan Nowicki - Oct. 17, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

There has been no shortage of talk about comprehensive immigration reform on Capitol Hill. But years of promises, good intentions and even all-out efforts to pass legislation so far have led nowhere. And with Congress in recess, time has run out - again - to tackle reform before the midterm elections, which could change the balance of power in Washington.

It's enough for frustrated advocates to wonder if Congress' continued lack of action is deliberate.

So far it hasn't mattered whether a Democrat or a Republican is in the White House or which party is controlling Congress. President George W. Bush failed to get reform through in 2006 when his party was in charge and failed again in 2007 after the Democrats took over. President Barack Obama campaigned on immigration reform in 2008 but even with his vocal support and commanding Democratic majorities, a long-anticipated bill has yet to be introduced in the Senate. Partisan divisions are so steep that compromises have been impossible on any issue, let alone one as complicated and bulky as comprehensive immigration reform.

Immigration-reform advocates have long pushed for a comprehensive package that would attempt, in a single bill, to satisfy all sides in the debate. Such legislation would augment border security, crack down on unlawful hiring, provide a way for undocumented workers now in the country to become legal, and set up a system to regulate future foreign labor needs.

That's a tall order for Congress in any year. But Kareem Crayton, a political scientist and associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, said a political "perfect storm" made a breakthrough all but impossible, even with Obama in the White House and pro-reform Democrats in charge of the House and Senate.
Ongoing U.S. economic anxiety made immigration reform - which critics decry as an attempt to offer "amnesty" to illegal immigrants - an even tougher sell to the public. Once lawmakers started focusing on the elections, there was little chance that Democrats and Republicans would work together on such a politically volatile topic or take any unnecessary risks.

Although immigration legislation still could come up in a postelection lame-duck session, many observers are skeptical that any major reform bill would pass under those circumstances. It could take another presidential election before the next serious effort.

"There's no incentive at all to find a place in the middle," Crayton said. "There will be talk of it, and I think the talk will be embraced by one or both sides as progress. But as far as actual policymaking, with the exception of very marginal elements, I suspect there won't be very much happening at all."


Pointing fingers

Democrats blame the stalemate on Republicans. Democrats say Republicans either pander to or fear the fiercely anti-amnesty activists in their party.

Democrats complain that their former GOP allies such as Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have retreated from the issue and suggest that the impasse will continue until they come back on board.

Republicans shoot back that some Democrats seem just as happy using the ongoing debate over broken immigration policy for the political purpose of turning out the Latino vote as they are finding a solution. Republicans also question whether Democrats, despite their rhetoric, could even line up their own votes for immigration reform, saying moderate Democrats defending vulnerable districts didn't want to take it up, either.

Meanwhile, federal inaction on immigration and border issues is cited by Arizona and other states as justification for their own laws, such as Arizona's controversial Senate Bill 1070. The Obama administration sued, and a federal judge in July blocked key parts of the law. But even the national furor over the law was not enough to prod Congress to move on immigration reform.

"Today, the folks who yell the loudest about the federal government's long failure to fix this problem are some of the same folks standing in the way of good-faith efforts to fix it," Obama said Sept. 15 in a speech at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's annual awards gala in Washington. "And under the pressures of partisanship and election-year politics, most of the 11 Republican senators who voted for that reform just four years ago have backed far away from that vote today."

But Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., an immigration- reform supporter, said Congress' "insatiable appetite to do nothing about this issue" extends to both parties.

"The great thing about immigration reform is that you either exploit it or you run away from it," Grijalva said. "We have Democrats who run away from it."

Frank Sharry, a longtime advocate for comprehensive immigration reform, acknowledged "a small but significant number of centrist Democrats from swing states who don't want to touch the issue." There also are divisions on the left over issues such as a guest-worker program and border enforcement. Still, Sharry characterized those as minor factors compared with the ferocity of the far right's opposition.

For his part, Obama could do more to signal "seriousness" to lawmakers, said Sharry, executive director of the national pro-reform organization America's Voice. "You're going to need a couple of brave Republicans saying, 'Let's get this done,' and you're going to need presidential leadership," Sharry said.


Kennedy missed

Another element that has been missing from the Hill since the last major bipartisan push for reform: a spirit of compromise.

Blame for that lack of cooperation also is spread around by those close to the debate. Generally, the all-out partisan warfare that has characterized the first two years of Obama's term made across-the-aisle collaboration unlikely. Republicans complain that Democrats returned to Congress after their party's successes in the 2008 elections with an attitude that their majorities were overpowering enough that they no longer needed to wheel-and-deal with Republicans. However, at least as far as immigration reform is concerned, the GOP's conservative base actively discourages cooperation. Republicans who support immigration reform may find themselves challenged in their next primary.

Kyl took severe heat in 2007 for negotiating an immigration-reform package with the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. He applauded Kennedy, the Democrats' longtime Senate point man on immigration reform, for his willingness to make concessions in order to try to win GOP support for the bill. For instance, Kennedy agreed to Kyl's demand to restrict family "chain migration," which allows immigrants to facilitate visas for family members.

Kennedy died in 2009, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has assumed his role as the leading Democrat on the issue.

"The consensus that existed back then no longer exists, so I think it would be very hard to put that same bill back together again," said Kyl, who is now Senate minority whip, the chamber's No. 2 GOP leader. "Without Ted Kennedy, probably impossible."

Even the Kennedy-Kyl bargain wasn't enough to ensure passage.

After Kennedy allowed Kyl to inject his conservative point of view into the 2007 bill, the bipartisan legislation still failed to clear the Senate amid a public outcry from the right. Conservative anti-amnesty activists protested outside Kyl's Phoenix office.

McCain, another champion of Kyl and Kennedy's 2007 bill, came face to face with angry voters while campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in Iowa and New Hampshire. His grass-roots fundraising temporarily dried up. The criticism prompted McCain to shift his position and start insisting on a secure border before considering other reforms such as a pathway to legalization. The reverberations continued to this year, when McCain found himself targeted for defeat in a bitter primary battle with former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, a border hard-liner.

"A lot of those who got burned on that one aren't willing to step up and do it again," said Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform who this year drew his own anti-amnesty GOP challenger in his primary. "This isn't something you do for your health, without real prospects of getting it through. I just don't know if there's any real motivation to move ahead with it."

http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/ ... z12dw48ayk

It's enough for frustrated advocates to wonder if Congress' continued lack of action is deliberate.

Opponents of CIR wonder the same thing.