ELECTION 2008: THE ISSUES

Revisionism on immigration

By Wayne A. Cornelius
September 19, 2008

The McCain-Palin campaign has embarked on an effort to court Latino voters by trashing Barack Obama's record on immigration reform. To accomplish this, they are running ads in Spanish-language media that engage in gross political-historical revisionism.

The historical reality is that comprehensive immigration reform failed in the U.S. Congress in 2006 and again in 2007 mainly because President George W. Bush couldn't deliver enough Republican votes for it. While both sides were guilty of weakening the legislation that was eventually voted upon – especially in 2007 – through restrictive amendments, the weight of the evidence is clearly that we could have gotten a bill that would have been less than perfect but a major improvement over the status quo if the anti-immigrant wing of the Republican Party had been tamed.

True, there were some conservative Democrats who played a less than constructive role in the Senate debate. But it seriously stretches the truth to argue that the outcome of this legislative struggle was determined by “poison-pillâ€