All of a sudden it looks as though we may get a comprehensive immigration bill through Congress this session. A group of eight senators, four from each party, came forward on Monday this week to announce their agreement on a general framework. They timed their announcement to try to upstage President Obama, who delivered his ideas for his own plan as scheduled in Las Vegas on Tuesday. The big questions are whether it can pass the House and whether Hispanic voters have long or short memories.
The rapid movement on an issue that has been dead in the water for years is a result of last November's election, in which according to exit polls, President Obama won 71% of the Hispanic vote to Mitt Romney's 27%. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) clearly stated that the Republican Party badly needs to repair its standing with Latinos or it will become the minority party in states like his with "changing demographics." The voters have spoken, and on the national and state levels, if Republicans continue to be the party that wants to deport grandma, they can write off the nation's largest minority group, which will also soon be its largest minority voting bloc. As Bob Menendez (D-NJ), another in the bipartisan group of eight stated, reform may well happen because "business demands it, Democrats want it and Republicans need it."
The senators' outline includes strong border enforcement, employer enforcement, allowing a system for more legal immigration to include temporary agricultural workers along with the highly-skilled, and a pathway to citizenship for those who entered the nation illegally after they pay fines, back taxes, and go to the end of the line behind those who are attempting to enter legally. They hope to have a bill drafted by March and passed before the August recess. The president echoed several of the same criteria, though he also called for the registration and immediate temporary status of those already here, a somewhat more rapid path to citizenship and called for permitting same-sex partners equal prerogatives for admission as enjoyed by heterosexual spouses. In either approach, in order to determine who is eligible to stay and work in the U.S. it is likely some form of national ID would be needed.
The potential roadblock is in the House of Representatives. There Republicans are in the majority and most are elected in safe, gerrymandered districts where they have more to worry about from tea party adherents primarying them from the right than from Democrats beating them in the general election by charging them with being too restrictive on immigration. That is why Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and McCain said they hoped they could get 80 (of the 100) votes in the Senate to show overwhelming bipartisan support and generate pressure for the House to concur.
The other question is about Latinos themselves. Their votes have scared thinking Republicans into realizing they might want to stop alienating the fastest growing population in the country. President Obama applied the heat by saying if Congress stalls he will introduce his plan in full and demand a quick vote. If the GOP refuses to vote or votes no, the next Latino election split might be 90-10. But what if a sensible and reasonably humane immigration program does manage enough Republican votes in the House to succeed? Will Hispanics and other immigrant groups so quickly forget the years of indifference and in many cases outright hostility heaped on them by the Republicans? That they finally came around dragging their feet because they had been beaten into reluctant reasonableness? And will they forget that it was the Democrats who had been the ones sticking up for them all along? Based on what I've seen here in California on the Hispanic vote after the anti-immigrant GOP-sponsored Proposition 187 in 1994, I wouldn't bet on it.
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