Thread: Political tide turning on illegal immigration

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... LBFP31.DTL

Political tide turning on illegal immigration
- Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Saturday, September 23, 2006


(09-23) 04:00 PDT Washington -- House Speaker Dennis Hastert stood before the cameras Thursday placing big red check marks on a list of nine border-enforcement bills that have passed the House -- including a 700- mile, double-layer fence ridiculed by critics all year but headed for the Senate floor next week.

At least for now, House Republican leaders have succeeded in their take-no-prisoners approach to immigration despite nationwide protests by Latinos last spring and White House warnings that they are endangering their party's future.

Refusing to compromise with the Senate and their own president to widen paths to legal entry and give the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country now an avenue to citizenship, Hastert and other House GOP leaders have successfully framed that approach as amnesty.

The House has prevailed "because that's where the country is," said Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Gold River (Sacramento County). "This is a situation where members in both the House and the Senate have listened to the folks back home."

Critics conceded a setback but argued that it would be temporary. They said enforcement alone won't stop illegal immigration but will alienate Latino voters, the nation's fastest-growing voter bloc. They said it will turn Republicans into a minority party, much as when former Gov. Pete Wilson won re-election in 1994 on an anti-immigrant platform that ultimately helped make California a Democratic-majority state.

"There are very serious political implications to what they are doing today," said Cecilia Munoz, chief lobbyist for the National Council of La Raza. "If 40 percent of my community supported Bush in the 2004 elections, it's very hard to imagine in this environment that proportion of Latinos voting for candidates from a party which continues to insult them."

For now, however, the political tide clearly favors enforcement first, legalization later.

"Not even a year ago, if you talked about a fence, you were an extremist who wanted to wall off the United States," said Rosemary Jenks, government affairs director for Numbers USA, a group opposing immigration on population grounds. "Now the fence is a no-brainer."

By large margins, with the votes of as many as 105 Democrats, the House passed three enforcement bills Thursday. One, which was approved unanimously, outlaws building an unauthorized tunnel across the border.

The measures were plucked from a larger bill by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., that passed the House in December and sparked widespread protests that brought millions of Latinos and their allies into the streets of major cities. That bill would have made illegal presence in the country or aiding illegal immigrants a felony -- ideas House Republicans dropped after sharp criticism.

Two other bills would allow state and local law enforcement authorities to enforce immigration laws, and a third would allow indefinite detention of illegal immigrants considered dangerous and would speed deportation of those who have committed crimes or belong to gangs.

House leaders plan to attach those measures to the homeland security spending bill.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who with Bush and a minority of Senate Republicans supported coupling tougher enforcement with legalization, has cleared the way for Senate consideration of the fence measure next week.

Recalling the brief Senate moment in May when Republicans and Democrats joined in a comprehensive legalization and enforcement bill, Frist said the "fundamental sticking point" was what to do about the 12 million undocumented immigrants now in the country.

Frist said everyone agrees with border enforcement.

"We can't have hundreds of thousands of people running across that lower border of the United States of America," Frist said. "Let's go ahead and do what we all agree ... needs to be done, and that is to focus on securing our border."

Lungren said his conversations with GOP colleagues in the Senate lead him to believe that "they now understand the magnitude of the feeling out there that we've got to get control of our border."

He said the current legislation is "Not Pete Wilson redux ... because of the overall recognition that you've got to do something about enforcing the border."

Their majority status in danger -- in part because of their failure to control spending -- Republicans have made immigration a campaign theme for 2006, hoping that anger over illegal immigration will bring otherwise disheartened conservatives to the polls in an off-year election.

Still, national polls released this week found immigration far down on voters' concerns behind the war in Iraq, terrorism and the economy. Asked by New York Times/Bloomberg News pollsters to select their most pressing issue in the upcoming midterm elections, only 4 percent of registered voters chose immigration.

Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant group, conceded that if Republicans retain their House majority, their tough stand on immigration will be given wide credit, posing a serious hurdle to the push for broader legalization.

He predicted his side eventually will prevail nonetheless.

"I'm glad it's being tested in this election because we're going to be around for a long time," Sharry said. "The population of undocumented immigrants is going to continue to grow, the political clout of the Latino community is going to continue to grow, the American people are going to continue to be frustrated, and the people building the fence are going to be held to account."

Ironically, the fence legislation coincides with the Department of Homeland Security's award of an $80 million contract to Boeing -- the first stage of a plan expected to cost much more than $2.1 billion -- to construct a "virtual fence" along all 6,000 miles of U.S. land borders, north and south. The new technology -- including sensors, ground radars and other technology in addition to physical barriers -- will begin in a 28-mile sector near Tucson, Ariz.

Asked at a briefing why additional fence legislation was necessary, Michael P. Jackson, deputy secretary of homeland security, said, "The bill is a sign of the commitment and the focus that Congress is bringing to the border."

Jackson repeatedly stressed that a fence is far from the only method the department is considering. "It would be a mistake to try to infer from that 28 miles that you now just take that and spread it across the border in some ham-handed way," Jackson said.

E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at clochhead@sfchronicle.com.

lets hope the senate and our traitor president see the freaking light and pass these through.

Lets hope!

The transparency of Cecilia Munoz's comments is astounding.
She says latinos will vote against lawmakers who insist on
people following the laws the lawmakers made! So, why have
lawmakers? Why have law & order? Why not have a 3rd world
human rights paradise?

"If 40 percent of my community supported Bush in the 2004 elections, it's very hard to imagine in this environment that proportion of Latinos voting for candidates from a party which continues to insult them."

I guess she forgot that 47% of Hispanic voters voted for anti-illegal measures in AZ. A lot of Hispanics think you are an insult to them, Ms Munoz.

LaRazas tax-exempt status doesn't allow them to lobby....but they DO!