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Arizona 1070, should there be a stake or a bridge


Denise Dresser

According to mythology and tales for children, the vampires die when they nail a stake through the heart. And anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona is just that: a sharp stick, sharp and deadly. But instead of killing a creature of the night, Governor Jan Brewer, has ended the possibility of comprehensive immigration reform in the United States this year. Arizona has stuck a stake through the heart of something that I should live and which many consider essential: a reform able to take Mexican immigrants of darkness and put on the road to full citizenship. But that was just emerging creature placed in a coffin and only revive when Barack Obama is willing to use both your head and your heart to get it out, assuming a strong leadership in favor of legalization. But for now probably will not.

First, because as the saying goes, you should not interrupt your enemy when he is destroying himself. And going after the immigrants as it is doing, the Republican Party begins to politically suicidal, but did not understand. The demographics runs against him because the U.S. is becoming an increasingly Hispanic country. But Republicans have chosen to stoke anti-immigrant anger of his conservative base, as evidenced by the rhetoric of Sarah Palin and members of the Tea Party Movement. Instead of expanding its electoral coalition, they're shrinking. As the journalist Ron Brownstein writes in The National Journal, "the tightening of the Republicans (on immigration) shows how the game has been pulled into the 'native' while his coalition becomes more monochromatic."

Second, given that Barack Obama understands that the immigration issue is divisive and that using it as they are doing in Arizona, Republicans are playing with fire, the president can wait and see how they burn. Arizona, paradoxically, is a great gift for the occupant of the White House. He did not want to push comprehensive immigration reform in this period and now I have to. Those who argue that the law passed will be a "catalyst" and a "spur" that will force Obama to act on behalf of immigrants do not understand how it has changed the political dynamic in recent days. What happened in Arizona will allow Obama and Congressional Democrats come out in defense of immigrants without being forced to do something, legislatively speaking, for them. Obama will say he is committed to the subject, will mount a legal counterattack, other legislators present partial initiatives in Congress and the Democratic Party decide, so passionately in defense of the rights of Mexicans in the United States. They use the opportunity to bash Republicans and praise the Mexicans. But it will implement an ambitious reform in its favor. Arizona has shown that now would not achieve the necessary Republican votes for that.

Third, as Obama himself said in an interview last week, the U.S. Congress has "no appetite" for immigration reform now. So saying, implicitly acknowledging that Obama is not going to push his party's legislators on this issue at this juncture. He surely knows that there is a wide-ranging immigration reform must occur three things: 1) the U.S. economy should recover enough to lower unemployment below 7%, 2) people need to feel that America is in control its border and that have implemented effective security measures there, 3) will be essential to create employment and verification system in which Mexican workers are subject to the same rights and obligations than their U.S. counterparts. In short, there will be no immigration reform until-together-Republicans and Democrats to resolve the issues of economic recovery, border security and legalization and verification of employment.

Meanwhile, the stake is there, stuck in Arizona for the Republican Party's right to hate Mexicans prefer, rather than getting voters. It's a stake that will exacerbate social and political tensions that Arizona will eventually be revealed and remove a difficult but essential for a president described in masterly biography of David Remnick - The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama - as "a interpreter who can explain one side to another. " A president who represents the very diversity of American life: multi-racial, multi-lingual, immigrant, kaleidoscopic. A man to be consistent with his speech, with his campaign promises and his own history, you must remove the stake of the division and use that piece of wood to start building a bridge, by which Mexican immigrants can walk too.

Denise Dresser is a professor of political science at the Technological Institute of Mexico.