Yesterday and today, thousands of Hispanics are marching in major cities around the country to encourage Congress to loosen restrictions on immigration. Members of Congress, however, stalled out last week on their effort to get a bill passed, and have gone home for spring recess. (Robert D. McFadden, Across the U.S., Growing Rallies for Immigration, NYT, 4/10/06.) At issue in the debate over the immigration bill is whether the U.S. should have a guest worker program allowing people form other countries to come here to work, and whether people who have already crossed the border illegally should be given some sort of amnesty. Democrats generally want a more expansive policy making citizenship easier to obtain, Republicans want more restrictive laws, especially when it comes to what they see as condoning illegal immigration.
As Republicans try harder to get the Hispanic vote, this becomes a divisive issue. Moderates or those who are more tactical (President Bush and Arizona Senator and presidential candidate John McCain, for instance) are willing to relax restrictions in order to court that growing voter base, but core conservatives like Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist fight hard against it, making it a wedge issue for the party. Agreement right now is made more difficult because Democrats want to deprive Republicans of a victory so that they can point to their inability to get a law passed in the November election.
As we explain in Chapter 2, what is often at stake in immigration issues is the question of what vision of America we hold: crazy salad or melting pot. That is partly what is going on now, but there is also a real reluctance on the part of some conservatives to approve what they see as violations of law and order, and there are clearly also considerations that are less ideological and more political.
The bill being crafted in the Senate was more generous than the harsher House bill but it stalled out at the last minute at the end of last week. There are different takes on the politics involved. The Wall Street Journal says this is due to lack of leadership on the Republican side (Frist) and cunning politics on the part of Democratic leadership (Harry Reid) as Reid seeks to ensure that Republicans do not have an immigration victory to run on. (David Rogers, Dual Display of Politics Delays Senate Vote on Immigration Bill, 4/8/06, subscription required.) The LAT argues that each side is suspicious of the other, leading to deadlock. (Ron Brownstein, Immigration Bill Snared in Web of Suspicion, 4/8/06.)
An enormously interesting segment on All Things Considered on Thursday (National Public Radio) suggested that all the focus on Mexico is misplaced. As relatively highly paid workers at home, Mexicans won’t be the chief beneficiary of a guest worker program but rather Arabs and Asians, which would have the effect of making the U.S. more like Europe, with a large number of poor Islamic immigrants. The commentator, Mark Kirkorian, did a nice job of outlining the economic, assimilation, and security issues that would be likely to follow. (The Guest Worker Idea, A Non-starter in Debate, 4/6/06.)
Meanwhile, Hispanic activists hope to parlay this issue into a coherent civil rights movement (N.C. Aizenman, From Latino’s Rally, Hopes for a Movement, WaPo 4/9/06), hence the coordinated marches today. As we discuss in Ch. 5, characteristics like diversity, low socio-economic status, etc., have kept Hispanics from converting their considerable and growing numbers into political power.
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The second major issue in the news over the weekend is the revelation in the testimony of Lewis Libby that Bush gave Cheney the go-ahead to reveal classified info to counter claims that he sent the U.S. to war on faulty grounds. Bush on record against leakers (see, for one compilation of the administration’s remarks on leaking, andrewsullivan.com) but the White House position now is that it is not leaking if the president does it since he has the power to declassify anything he wants and this was done in the public interest. (Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, White House Does Not Deny Leak Claims, LAT, 4/9/06.)
Critics counter that even if the leaking was not illegal it is hypocritical and unethical to use classified info for political purposes. Although Bush is already low in polls (Richard Morin, Bush’s Job Approval Rating Continues to Swoon, WaPo, 4/10/06), the most stalwart conservatives are not likely to abandon him on this one so it is not clear it will send him down much lower. But as revelations continue to emerge from Libby pretrial process, it will make it hard for the White House to recover its equilibrium and get moving on its agenda. (E.g., Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer, A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic Prosecutor Describes Cheney, Libby as Key Voices Pitching Iraq-Niger Story, WaPo, 4/9/06.)
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A few other things worth reading in the Sunday Papers.
The LAT puts leaking into context with a piece on how it is used in Washington – when and how it works. (Richard T. Cooper and Faye Fiore, In Politics, Leaking Stories is a Fine Art, 4/9/06.)
Also, a good summary piece on the Republicans’ falling fortunes. (Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Washington’s First and Last Lesson: Power is Fleeting, NYT 4/9/06.)