Immigration

Some random thoughts:

The uproar over passport backlogs misses the point: Not only are our leaders trying to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to get into this country, now they want to make it tougher for CITIZENS to get in.

If the importance of party affiliation continues to decline, would a Richardson-Tancredo ticket be tough to beat?

It was nice to see that video about a new campaign song, featuring candidate Bill Clinton and his wife. Oh. Was that a mistake?  Read more...

It's time for congressional Democrats and other national Democratic leaders to give George Bush credit on the issue of immigration reform. It is not only the right thing to do — it could help break the cycle of hyper-partisan "gotcha" politics that seems once again to have enveloped Washington now that the Democrats have taken control of both houses after the 2006 election.

My oldest son used to watch me on television defending the Clinton White House from attacks by telling me, "Dad, you have to give something up once in a while." The same advice should apply to the Democrats on Bush's stance on the immigration bill. Democrats would be wise to show the public that it can support President Bush when he has moved to the center and give him credit when he is showing the courage of standing up to his right-wing base. The end result might be not only to encourage future bipartisan approaches by the president, but also to demonstrate that Democrats are willing to stand up to their own rabid base of Bush-haters-no-matter-what.  Read more...

Pardon me if this blog seems a little messy. I’ve been digging through the muddy pudding of immigration and voter data looking for some proof that passing a “comprehensive” immigration bill would in fact help the GOP win votes among the Hispanic electorate.

Proponents of the current immigration bill — from the Wall Street Journal to former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — insist that if the GOP doesn’t get onboard the legalization bus, the party will lose the Hispanic vote. Read more...

Burdened by nagging doubts about the war in Iraq and under siege from liberals and moderates, George W. Bush's political base remained doggedly loyal despite all attempts to shake it. But now the president's stand on the immigration bill has shattered its unity and deflected its support. As a result, Bush has descended from his lofty perch — an approval rating of 35 percent — down to 29 percent as the base deserts him, disappointed and shocked by his support for what it sees as amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Bush is paying the price for failing to move swiftly to build the wall authorized by Congress last year. Each brick would have bought him more and more support for today's compromise. Allocating extra money now for border enforcement won't impress anybody. Where's the wall that we already paid for? Read more...

Bush's visit to Capitol Hill to push his immigration reform bill has, in effect, transformed the vote on the bill into the American equivalent of a British confidence vote. In a parliamentary country, he would have to resign if he lost the vote. Here, he will stay but be slowly twisting in the wind for the next 18 months.

In a sense, this vote has assumed an importance somewhat akin to the impeachment vote on Bill Clinton, also 18 months before his second term ended. If the Democrats had deserted him on that vote, he would have had to leave office. If the Republicans desert Bush on this vote, he might as well do so.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) is one of the legislative giants of a generation, and in this case, he produces a compromise that would improve immigration enforcement while providing social equity.

In response, the faction of the Republican Party that one prominent Republican refers to as bigots may well sabotage the legislation.

The most likely outcome today is:

1. President Bush achieves formal lame-duck status.

2. Hispanics, the fastest-growing demographic in American politics, continue their long-term march towards the Democratic Party.

3. The Republicans are split in half, victims of the rightist rage they have fomented for some time, now turned Republican against Republican. Read more...

Roger Gutierrez is a third-generation Hispanic living in the United States. His grandparents on his mother’s side came here illegally. Roger, now in his 30s, is married to Kate Simmons-Gutierrez, who is a fourth-generation European mutt living in the United States. Roger and Kate have two children, Tabitha and Tony, who attend private school in the suburbs. Tabitha advanced to her orange belt in karate last weekend, and Tony has a soccer game tonight at 5 p.m.

According to Dick Morris, if Republicans don’t pass immigration reform, Tabitha and Tony will never, ever vote Republican as long as they live. Nor will their children.

Oh.

I’m sitting here stewing over the fact that Bush is going to try to ram an immigration bill down our throats, and stewing over the fact that the Wall Street Journal thinks the GOP has gone “nativist” for not supporting the bill, and then it hits me what’s really going on here.

A bunch of mostly white men in Washington, D.C. with advanced degrees are in a political struggle to force 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants to take a standardized test with a No. 2 pencil. But did anyone ask these immigrants if they want to be legalized? How do we know they all want to become U.S. citizens? We just assume they want to be quizzed on obscure facts from American history and learn a new language. Read more...

I have such a GREAT idea for C-SPAN. Picture watching this: The Senate grinds on up to the point that someone announces debate is about to begin on the immigration legislation. Then the screen goes blank. Well, in this case, maybe it simply shows a 700-mile-long fence. But the point is that no one would have missed anything.

Think of the possibilities: On the cable news networks, aerial shots of Paris Hilton's motorcade could suddenly end. Fade to black.

Of course that will never happen. There would be an uproar. Besides, ratings would plummet. I mean, people really care about Paris Hilton. And as we found out, they really care about the "Sopranos"' ending, too, or the lack thereof.  Read more...

Just days after shelving the high-stakes immigration reform bill, today the Senate takes up a no-confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. Democrats are fine with it failing; they just need to get the Republicans on the record defending Gonzalez for future use in campaign commercials. We’re not getting anywhere on substance but you can sure take the political temperature of Congress these days and it’s clearly so hot they can’t do their jobs. What’s on for tomorrow? President Bush will attend the GOP Senate lunch and implore his fellow Republicans to forge ahead with the immigration package they rejected. They will listen, hot under the collar, but the reception could be chilly.

With the death of the “grand bargain” on immigration, Washington observers are mourning the death of bipartisanship. But bipartisanship is alive and well — both parties, working in concert to torpedo the bill, hated it equally. The grassroots, not the lobbyists, spoke loud and clear and the voice of the opposition was much noisier than those advocating reform.

Yes, the atmosphere is still partisan on Capitol Hill, and too politically volatile for compromise. Democrats who just won Republican seats last fall are scrambling to keep them. Republicans who just lost them are scrambling to get them back. Until there is a new president, and a new season of true bipartisan goodwill, both sides have too much to lose. In his first months in office President Bush enjoyed the cooperation of Democrats on education reform, and even some on tax cuts, and it is possible the next president will convince the Congress to pass an immigration compromise that looks much the same as the one both parties now love to hate. Read more...