Thought I should bring this here for review. It's from that change.org site. If you haven't gone there to vote for sensible immigration ideas yet please do. We have two in the top ten so far.

http://www.change.org/ideas/browse/immigration


Caroline Kennedy Echoes Immigration Messaging Misstep

by Dave Bennion

Published December 23, 2008 @ 08:00AM PST

New York senatorial prospect Caroline Kennedy recently made her views on immigration reform known through an aide. She is in favor of legalization, which is good as far as it goes. But then she strayed into familiar territory:

Undocumented workers should pay a fine, learn English and go to the back of the line behind those who came here legally.

This has become a mantra among liberal politicians. But immigrants already pay prohibitive fees, are flocking to learn English with a nationwide shortage of ESL classes, and are waiting endlessly in lines that often don't exist.

While it may be simple to remember and roll off the tongue, the mantra doesn't make much sense in the context of what we know about immigration on the ground.

Barack Obama has echoed this language since some of the big migrant advocacy orgs rolled it out early this year.

That's right, the pro-migrant orgs. As Dave Neiwert wrote at the time:

The worst aspect of it is that this framing reinforces the themes about the criminality of undocumented immigrants and the whole "toughness" approach manufactured by both the nativist and the corporate right. If Democrats are going to play this game, they're going to be feeding directly into the same xenophobic anti-immigrant language of hate, constructed by the right, that has dominated the debate.

If progressives truly want to win this debate, they need to fundamentally change the language around it -- not reinforce the old right-wing frames.

And as I later followed up:

Of all my undocumented clients, I have yet to meet one who doesn't desperately want to legalize his or her status here in the U.S. My clients have agonized over their inability to "get right with the law." Adopting this "get tough" frame reinforces the idea that most undocumented immigrants have something to hide or are worried about criminal prosecution. We know that this is not true, that crime rates among immigrants are significantly lower than among native-born Americans. Why can our purportedly progressive politicians not emphasize this fact instead of pushing forward the enforcement-only, Tancredo-lite policies that have failed so miserably so far?

I think this strategy was a mistake when it was introduced, a mistake when Obama picked it up, and it's a mistake now that Caroline Kennedy is adopting it.

http://immigration.change.org/blog/view ... ng_misstep