The battle lines have been drawn and our opposition has told us how to beat them.


Achieving Healthy Immigration Reform

New America Media, Commentary, David Coates, Posted: Aug 22, 2009

There are times when campaigning for one thing is best done by campaigning for something else as well. This is one of those times, when those of us supporting immigration reform need also to campaign vigorously for something entirely different, namely affordable health care for all Americans.

Why? Because the great barrier to a successful reform of our immigration system in 2010 is not Obama backsliding. It is an emboldened and mobilized conservative base in 2009. It was the base that broke bipartisanship on immigration reform during the second Bush term. It was the base that led the charge against the Obama stimulus package. It is the base that is now trying to howl down the advocates of health care reform.

If conservative extremists succeed in blocking or gutting the health care bills now working their way through Congress, they will go on to block immigration reform. And they will no doubt do it by using their current tactics – deceit, scaremongering, the disruption of meetings, the funding of ultra-conservative candidates, even the implicit threat of violence – tactics that any orchestrated right-wing “grass rootsâ€