March 20, 2008, 11:16PM
Calm and collective
Less immigration hysteria means next president can lead productive reform.

Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

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The temperature of the immigration debate has cooled noticeably, both among voters and the leading presidential candidates. That bodes well for everyone.

With Sen. John McCain, Sen. Hillary Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama in the White House next year, the mix of political capital and a clear perspective will mean that real reform of the nation's immigration policy can finally take place. Voters can look forward to a calm, reasoned policy discussion in place of the circus that passed for debate last time around.

According to a recent Zogby International poll commissioned by the Houston Chronicle, this measured attitude is exactly what Americans want. The survey showed that only one in 10 Harris County voters called immigration the most pressing issue in choosing a candidate in the general election. Republicans, predictably, felt more urgency: Illegal immigration ranked first for 20 percent of likely GOP voters, but for only 3 percent of Democratic voters.

Overall, 35 percent of likely voters in Harris County said the economy is their first concern.

Locally and nationally, voters already have acted on those priorities. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former N.Y. Gov. Rudy Giuliani — immigration hard-liners all — either jumped or were pushed from the presidential race this winter. In Houston, the usually level-headed former district clerk, Charles Bacarisse, lost his bid to become the GOP's nominee for county judge in part because of his sudden zealotry about legal immigrants' medical bills.

Bacarisse clearly got some bad advice on what would energize local voters. Like his national counterparts, his alarmism on immigration ended up distracting voters from his record of competence in office.

That's not to say that illegal immigration — as a societal, security, labor and economic question — is irrelevant. Although fear of illegal immigrants was flogged to life as a bogeyman for partisan purposes, the United States does have to face the schism between what we want — affordable houses, onshore business, cheap food and labor — with the way we have been achieving it: exploiting human beings who live among us but can't take part in our society.

Clinton, Obama and McCain all acknowledge this challenge. And they largely share the same philosophy about it: Each favors a comprehensive reform. McCain, whose name was on the early bipartisan reform bill, has triangulated a bit: In recent speeches he's called for border security before installing overall reform. But each candidate accepts the need for a multifaceted approach. All three see the lunacy of mass deportations, a cockamamie idea that extreme voices in the past year tried to force into the mainstream.

The three front-runners instead favor a regulated path to legal residency and citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants who are already here. Only immigrants with a clean record would be eligible, and they wouldn't be allowed to shove aside those who have applied to come here legally.

This, again, clearly reflects the wishes of most Americans. According to a May poll by the New York Times and CBS, 62 percent of those who answered wanted illegal immigrants who had been here more than two years to be eligible for some form of legal status. In Harris County, where many candidates thought a hard line on immigration would be a winner, 48 percent of respondents told Zogby that they favored a path to citizenship; in contrast, 42 percent didn't.

This relative calm about immigration, both nationally and locally, doesn't mean a lack of interest in this important issue. Instead, it suggests something more promising: a mainstream consensus on how to approach it — and a frame of mind in which reform can be reasoned through and finally passed.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/edi ... 37113.html

Comments left after the article.
One poster called ALIPAC A HATE GROUP.

Texano78704 wrote:
Well, I see from Bettybb's post, we just heard from the ALIPAC hate group. Who's next?3/21/2008 4:25 PM CDT