Thread: Suddenly, Senate race is all about immigration

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news ... 774786.htm

Suddenly, Senate race is all about immigration

By Tom Infield
Inquirer Staff Writer

Relatively speaking, Pennsylvania isn't much of a magnet for today's generation of immigrants, mostly from Mexico.

A state that in the previous century ranked near the top in attracting waves of Italians, Irish, Poles and others to work in its mines and mills now stands just 16th in drawing immigrants.

Yet immigration - to be precise, illegal immigration - suddenly is topic No. 1 in the contentious U.S. Senate race.

Incumbent Republican Rick Santorum - looking to capitalize on an issue that has galvanized his conservative base like no other in recent months - launched a pair of 60-second radio ads last week. Santorum charged that Democratic foe Bob Casey Jr. had "joined with Ted Kennedy and other liberals in supporting a bill that grants amnesty to millions who've entered our country illegally... . That's just not fair."

Casey, after taking it in silence for five days, shot back with a pair of his own ads this week saying he favored "no amnesty" and trying to change the subject to what he said was Santorum's record of voting "with George Bush 98 percent of the time."

The flash point for all this was the Senate's 62-36 vote May 25 to approve a bill that, if it became law, would permit two-thirds of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country to eventually become citizens.

Critics called this amnesty. Proponents denied that, pointing out that only people who have been in the United States for five years or more would be eligible for legal status without returning home - and then only if they paid partial back taxes and a $3,200 fine.

Illegal immigrants who have been here for two to five years would have to go back home but could get work visas from their U.S. employers to return.

Those here less than two years would have to go home.

Though 23 of his fellow Republicans voted for the bill, which Bush endorsed, Santorum voted against it.

"This is an issue that I want folks to know I'm not where the president is on this," he said in an interview this week about his radio ads.

Casey, the state treasurer, volunteered that had he been in the Senate he would have voted for the measure.

Having complained previously that Casey was trying to dance through the campaign without pinning himself down on tough issues, Santorum jumped on the opportunity to bash Casey. Within days, he was on the air with his ads.

National opinion polls have suggested that for a majority of Americans the fairness issue Santorum cited resonates.

Independent pollsters at Pennsylvania colleges have yet to test the issue here. But poll directors said they suspect the issue also matters to a fair number of Pennsylvanians.

Christopher Borick, director of a polling center at Muhlenberg College, noted that fewer people in Pennsylvania than in many other states have to worry that an immigrant - legal or otherwise - will take their jobs.

"If you don't see a lot of illegal immigrants in your area, that's probably not a broad concern," Borick said.

But Borick noted that as the children and grandchildren of previous generations of immigrants - people they see as having played by the rules - many Pennsylvanians are likely receptive to Santorum's fairness argument.

Santorum's father, Aldo, came to America from Riva del Garda, Italy, with his parents when he was 7. Aldo Santorum is now 82.

"It's an emotional issue, like gay marriage - very similar to that," Borick said.

Backers of the Senate bill argued that the only legal alternative to giving some illegal immigrants an avenue to legal status was to jail them all or deport them all - hardly possible in either case, they said.

"For the Casey folks, it's a bit of a dangerous issue," Borick said. "There's no clear, politically obvious position to cling to."

The 2000 census found that 508,000 of Pennsylvania's more than 12 million people were foreign-born.

The state gained 102,000 immigrants (legal and illegal) between April 1, 2000, and July 1, 2005, according to an analysis of census estimates conducted by the Pennsylvania State Data Center.

California added 1.4 million immigrants; New York, 667,000; and Texas, 663,000. They rank first, second and third. New Jersey, with 290,000 immigrants, ranked sixth, and Maryland, with 109,000, stood just ahead of Pennsylvania at 15.

Berwood Yost, director of the polling institute at Franklin and Marshall College, said that Santorum recently had been losing ground in polls and that the immigration fuss enabled him go on the offensive. For the previous two weeks, the main issue in the campaign had been whether a house he owns in the Pittsburgh suburb of Penn Hills legally qualifies as his address - an issue that most political analysts said was hurting him.

"By talking tough on immigration, which is real important to conservative Republicans, he is trying to reach back to his base of support and make sure they are still with him," Yost said.

Borick had said Santorum's stance could also appeal to some moderate Democrats, especially in economically fragile Western Pennsylvania, who fear losing their jobs. The AFL-CIO, the biggest federation of labor unions, opposed the bill.

But Yost noted: "It's not big for Pennsylvania in the grand scheme of things. Voters care more about lots of other things, like health care, jobs, taxes."

Santorum, at an environmental-issues forum in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, said in an interview: "I am hearing from people all across the ideological spectrum on this issue."

He said he believed most people opposed any benefits or path to citizenship for people who broke the law to come here. And he said he believed his view was "very much in the mainstream of where Pennsylvania is."

Casey, appearing with Santorum at Tuesday's event, said that something had to be done to cope with tides of people illegally crossing the border and that the Senate bill was a reasonable solution.

"We have got to deal with it," he said. "There are a lot of tough provisions. But to do nothing would be a big mistake."

Voters in Pennsylvania, please don't for Casey. Casey supports S-2611 (see above).

Senator Santorum voted against S-2611.

Casey, appearing with Santorum at Tuesday's event, said that something had to be done to cope with tides of people illegally crossing the border and that the Senate bill was a reasonable solution

Casey must have gotten a hold of some bad rubber chicken at the dinner.