Immigration

The Hill's A.B. Stoddard takes your questions on immigration reform and President Obama's second-term agenda. 

For too long, the only Republican plan to deal with immigration reform was to tighten border security. This tack was a helpful dodge, not requiring a politician to detail what we would do with the 11-12 million illegal immigrants already here.
 
But in winning about 30 percent of Hispanic votes in 2012, the Republican Party has been forced to move to the middle with a more sensible, forward-looking plan that addresses the many complicated factors involved in immigration reform.

Romney’s immigration stance created an enormous gap among Latino voters.

The biggest discussion within the GOP now is how to court more Latino voters into the party. Romney won less than 30 percent of all Latinos, and one exit poll in Florida said he even lost Cubans, who tend to be extremely conservative.

You don’t have to win Latino voters over as a whole, but you have to cut the gap. Bush won 44 percent of Latinos in 2004 and that allowed him to have victories in Nevada and New Mexico.

After appearing on BET's T.J. Holmes show last night and engaging in a very intense debate with actress Rosie Perez regarding immigration, it forced me into deeper examination of this issue.

You know why immigration brings people to a boiling point, separates races and creates classes in our society? It's simple, really: OWNERSHIP. Hard-line Mexicans and Latin Americans coming across the border to Texas and California believe the states belong to them.

As the governor of Arizona, Republican candidate for president and United States Supreme Court tell Hispanics to "show me your papers," they have given Democrats a windfall in a close election. This latest attack on Lady Liberty, who holds the torch in the harbor of New York, is bad news for Mitt Romney, who wants to make the Arizona law a national model, and bad news for House Republicans, who now have even more trouble in key states with large Hispanic populations. Marco who?

Comprehensive immigration reform may be dead in the 112th Congress, but cynical tactics using the issue as a political weapon against the Obama administration, scapegoating immigrants at the state level or deploying a “toughness” litmus test among Republican presidential contenders are alive and thriving. As with the other domestic wars we are fighting — economic inequality, the cradle-to-prison pipeline, educational opportunity, etc. — children are being victimized by ideological warfare and the failure of adults to agree on a fair, sensible solution.

Is it possible to be pro-immigration in this country and still support the principles of the state of Alabama’s immigration laws, dubbed some of the strictest in the nation?

Absolutely.

Sound paradoxical? Not at all.

First things first. Yes, the state’s laws are tough, and in some cases, questionable, as in one provision that requires students to document their immigration status before enrolling in school. The fact that a significant percentage of Hispanics failed to do so in recent weeks shouldn’t come as any surprise, if you believe that close to 10 percent of Alabama’s Hispanic population is here illegally. I don’t know the exact number in the state, but it’s not as if no one of Hispanic origin showed to school that day.

I agree in part, and disagree in part, with Cheri Jacobus's post yesterday. I disagree with her that opponents of Sarah Palin have anything to do with race. I agree with her that the Joe McGinniss book is trash. What does this have to do with my view that Rick Perry is right about immigration?

We have reached the state in America that a politics that most Americans deplore, full of derision and insults toward political opponents, no longer allows respectful debate.

Regarding Palin, the issue has nothing to do with race, and much to do with the idea that if one does not like Palin one is supposed to hate her, and use any weapon to defeat or destroy her. Ditto the attacks on Obama, which in my view have little to do with race, and much to do with the lack of jobs, and the obsessive attacks from the right against many leading Democrats, white or black.

Anders Breivik’s rampage in Norway last week has intensified scrutiny of the EU’s attitude toward immigration. Many Europeans are increasingly vocal in declaring multiculturalism a failure and complaining that immigrants exploit their generous welfare systems without attempting to assimilate.
 
America’s also in the midst of an important immigration debate — but one that is mind-boggling compared to the one taking place across the pond. While we debate incessantly about how to stop illegal immigration, we barely talk about how to ensure that we continue to attract the world’s best: the brightest students, the most productive researchers and the most innovative entrepreneurs. At a time when our leaders can’t seem to agree on anything, one would think policies to bring and keep such talent here would earn nonpartisan support (there are some who joke that we should staple a green card to the visa of every immigrant who graduates from an American college or university).

Illegal immigrant labor is a performance-enhancing drug with wide side effects. By hiring illegals, companies get an edge over other firms that don’t. They buy cheap labor from individuals who have no civil rights whatsoever; they cannot complain if they are cheated on their paycheck, protest unhealthy working conditions or reject wages beneath the minimum federal wage level. If they do complain, they can be immediately detained and sent back to their countries of origin with none of the due process that would be accorded an American citizen. And so this keeps them in their place — a place of legal limbo — and gives U.S. firms access to what is essentially slave labor.