Thread: Election raises new questions about immigration

Election raises new questions about immigration

By EDWARD SIFUENTES - Staff Writer
Saturday, November 15, 2008 5:05 PM PST

Now that a new president has been elected, the local and national debate over immigration reform appears to be edging toward easing harsh enforcement efforts and possibly legalizing millions of illegal immigrants.

During their campaigns, neither presidential candidate barely mentioned immigration policy, except during Latino gatherings, such as the National Council of La Raza convention in San Diego last summer.

But Barack Obama's victory over John McCain has fueled hopes among immigrants rights activists that Congress will renew efforts to legalize millions of illegal immigrants, a debate that some say Democrats are not eager to have.

Having captured the White House and enlarged their majority in both houses of Congress, Democrats may want to focus on other matters because immigration measures may come back to haunt them in the 2010 midterm elections, one immigration analyst said.

Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Solana Beach, a staunch opponent of illegal immigration, said there is no time to wait.

Given the sour state of the economy and the growing ranks of unemployed workers, Bilbray said the nation needs to be able to identify which workers are eligible to work legally in the country and which are not.

"Now is the time to see how we're going to handle this long-term," said Bilbray, chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus, whose predominantly Republican members oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants. "Now is the time to talk about what is a sustainable, long-term policy."

Local immigrants rights advocates said they are hoping for a different kind of change under the Obama administration.

They want him to begin reversing some of President George W. Bush's policies on immigration enforcement, such as halting construction of the border fence and reducing immigration sweeps in the workplace and home.

"I really believe that President Obama and Democrats in Congress are going to have to address some of the enforcement policies, like the raids, because they have been ineffective" in reducing illegal immigration, said Christian Ramirez, a San Diego-based immigrants rights activist with the American Friends Service Committee.

Conflicting interpretation

Pro-immigrant groups and their opponents released polls last week with conflicting interpretations on what Obama's win means for the nation's immigration policy.

One side saw it as a sign of Latinos' growing political muscle and an endorsement of Obama's pledge for "compassionate, comprehensive" reform.

The other side saw his election as a sign of the troubled economic times, and not as a mandate for amnesty.

"If Barack Obama has a mandate, it's to fix the economy and get people back to work," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an organization that lobbies for stricter immigration policies.

On Thursday, the National Council of La Raza and other immigrants rights organizations unveiled a postelection survey showing that 67 percent of voters questioned said illegal immigrants should be given a chance to become citizens.

"It's smart politics and smart policy to advance immigration reform," said Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza, one of the most prominent Latino rights organizations in the country.

The telephone survey of 1,000 voters was conducted by Lake Research Partners on Nov. 5 and Nov. 8, and has a 3.1 percent margin of error.

Obama and McCain spoke at the La Raza convention in San Diego in July.

Both candidates, who supported a failed legalization proposal debated in Congress two years ago, told audiences that reforming the nation's immigration policy would be a top priority.

Mehlman said his group also conducted a poll after the election that yielded different results. That survey reported only 21 percent of voters questioned favored legalizing illegal immigrants.

The survey was conducted by Zogby on Nov. 6 and Nov. 7. It involved 1,700 voters and has a margin of error of 1.7 percent.

Change coming?

Regardless of what the public's true feelings are on immigration reform, both sides agreed it was the economy that played the most significant role in the election, and that dealing with it will be the highest priority for Obama's first years in office.

Murguia said that because immigration permeates so many other issues, Congress and the new administration must address it in to move forward on other pressing matters, such as health care and education.

"I'm not sure that immigration reform could happen in the first 100 days," she said. But "we get this issue off the table if for no other reason than to move forward on all the other issues."

After Congress failed to pass a new immigration law, the Bush administration increased enforcement of the immigration laws already on the books.

Those efforts led to an increase in the number of "fugitive operations," which involve immigration officers raiding homes, looking for illegal immigrants who have committed major crimes.

Those operations sometimes netted people without criminal records beyond their legal status.

Obama mentioned the raids in his speech to the National Council of La Raza.

"When nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel, when all that is happening, the system just isn't working and we need to change it," Obama said.

Last year, immigration authorities arrested and deported nearly 350,000 illegal immigrants, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement statistics.

There are an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country; about 3 million of them are believed to live in California.

Immigrants rights groups credited Latino voters with playing a key role in Obama's victory, especially in battleground states such as Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.

They also shared in the credit for increasing the number of Democrats in Congress, said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, an organization that lobbies for immigrants rights.

Latino voters made up about 9 percent of the electorate nationwide, or about 11 million voters, according to a New York Times exit poll.

Latinos voted overwhelmingly for Obama, 67 percent to 31 percent for McCain, the poll found.

"These results lead us to the following conclusions: Republican hostility towards Latinos in general and Latino immigrants in particular is driving this group into the hands of Democrats, (and) if Republicans expect to emerge from the political wilderness, they will have separated themselves from the anti-immigrant extremists that have hijacked most of the party," Sharry said.

Though a handful of races are still too close to call, Democrats have added to their majorities in the House and Senate ---- by 20 and six, respectively.

Ironically, Democrats' control in Congress and the White House may make it more difficult to push for immigration reform, said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based group that advocates for stricter immigration policies.

Camarota argued that the reason Democrats were willing to pass comprehensive immigration reform in 2006 was because it would be perceived as a bipartisan effort.

Without Bush and key Republicans in Congress, such as Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., immigration reform could be perceived as a Democratic initiative, he said.

"The question, politically, is 'Do the Democrats want to own it?' " Camarota said. "Bush provided cover. Now it will be seen solely as a Democratic-owned issue. And for all those Democrats that sit in Republican-ish districts, are they going to want to own it?"

Contact staff writer Edward Sifuentes at (760) 740-3511 or esifuentes@nctimes.com.

http://www.northcountytimes.com/article ... 78484f.txt

Now that a new president has been elected, the local and national debate over immigration reform appears to be edging toward easing harsh enforcement efforts and possibly legalizing millions of illegal immigrants.

I don't think so!

The OBL and MSM polls usually offer the false choice of either the nice-sounding Orwellian phrase "earned legalization" (i.e., amnesty) or mass deportation. They rarely offer the true middle-ground, cost-effective (& humane) choice of attrition/enforcement of laws in their polls -- because they know the vast majority of Americans support this.

Originally Posted by Populist

The OBL and MSM polls usually offer the false choice of either the nice-sounding Orwellian phrase "earned legalization" (i.e., amnesty) or mass deportation. They rarely offer the true middle-ground, cost-effective (& humane) choice of attrition/enforcement of laws in their polls -- because they know the vast majority of Americans support this.

True, but will Big Media once again be given free reign to define the Issue---just as in the November election?

Originally Posted by Captainron

Originally Posted by Populist

The OBL and MSM polls usually offer the false choice of either the nice-sounding Orwellian phrase "earned legalization" (i.e., amnesty) or mass deportation. They rarely offer the true middle-ground, cost-effective (& humane) choice of attrition/enforcement of laws in their polls -- because they know the vast majority of Americans support this.

True, but will Big Media once again be given free reign to define the Issue---just as in the November election?

We have been fairly successful so far in (properly) defining the OBL schemes as amnesty, thanks to grass roots activism and talk radio, the blogosphere and other "new" media. The OBL and their lap dogs in the MSM will continue to twist, skew, and attempt to reframe this issue and use their euphemisms and talking points such as "pathways to citizenship" and you "can't round up 12 million undocumented workers and send them home."

It is our task and continuing challenge to cut through through the MSM filter/bias and keep getting the word out that what the OBL is proposing is amnesty, which is opposed by the vast majority of Americans, and we don't have to have mass deportations to greatly reduce the number of illegal immigrants residing in our country.