Washington Post, 2/15/2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-morethan-25-years-its-never-been-the-right-time-for-immigrationreform/2014/02/15/90a4ff08-93f9-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html
Why it never seems to be the right time to
reform the nation’s immigration laws
Rojelio Bojorquez, 9, foreground; Laura Bojorquez, 11, and their mother Laura Veronica
Perez, visit with the elder Laura's parents - Juana Alicia Bojorquez and Manuel de Jesus
Perez Lopez - at the fence that separates Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Mexico in
Nogales, Arizona, United States. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
By David Nakamura[1] February 15, 2014
Thirteen years ago, President George W. Bush welcomed Vicente Fox of Mexico[2] to
Washington to lay the groundwork for an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws — sensing
that fellow Republicans were finally ready to go along with a new legalization effort.
The push included a rare address to Congress [3]on Sept. 6, 2001, when Fox declared that
immigrants “invariably enrich the cultural life of the land that receives them.”
Five days later, jetliners hijacked by foreign terrorists crashed into the World Trade
Center and Pentagon, heightening security fears and scuttling Bush’s immigration plans.
For more than a quarter century, it has never been the right time for immigration reform.
And the biggest stumbling block always seems to be concerns, primarily among
conservatives, that border controls are not tough enough [4]and must be strengthened
further before anything else can be done.
On Wednesday, Obama will travel to Toluca, Mexico, for an economic summitat a time
when his own immigration campaign, launched a year ago, has stalled in Congress amid
another backlash over the border[5] . White House officials said that Mexican President
Enrique Peña Nieto has pledged to do all he can to help, and Obama predicted to
Univision[6] that immigration reform will still happen before he leaves office.
But the situation is largely out of Obama’s hands, and the latest impasse has frustrated
longtime advocates.
“When you hear someone say the key to immigration reform is to secure the border, it
tells me they either don’t understand the issue or they’re just using it as a pretext,”
Carlos Gutierrez, Bush’s former commerce secretary, said in an interview last week. “If we
secure the border and do not have reform or a new legal system, then the economy is
really going to be in trouble.”
It is a debate that has raged since President Ronald Reagan signed the last major overhaul
of immigration laws in 1986, a bipartisan achievement hailed as a solution to the crisis of
5 million immigrants living in the country illegally. The Immigration Reform and Control
Act[7] put 2.7 million people on the path toward citizenship, marking the largest
legalization program in U.S. history.
But in many ways, the law has been deemed a failure — and stands as one of the chief
impediments to a new round of reform. The bill denied legal status to more than 2 million
others who had recently arrived in the country, and failed to create a guest worker
program large enough to handle the surge of workers streaming across the border over
the next two decades.
The number of people living in the country illegally rose again quickly, reaching more
than 11.7 million[8] last year.
Former senator Alan Simpson, a Wyoming Republican who helped lead the 1986
negotiations, said a proposal to include a national identification system for workers —
aimed at preventing employers from hiring illegal immigrants — was eliminated over
Democratic civil-liberties concerns.
“That took out the guts,” Simpson said last week in a telephone interview from his home
in Cody, Wyo. Asked when he knew there were flaws in the bill[9], he replied: “The minute
it passed.”
Since then, many Republicans have blamed the law for granting “amnesty” for millions
without stemming the flow of undocumented immigrants — and they have vowed not to
repeat the mistake.
This month, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) cited “widespread doubt”[10] in his
caucus over Obama’s willingness to enforce tougher border controls as the chief
impediment to a deal.
“The biggest objection I heard is the legalization will happen but the enforcement never
will, and we’ll be right back here in 10 years with another 12 million people,” Sen. Marco
Rubio (R-Fla.) said recently[11]. Rubio helped craft a Senate-approved immigration
plan[12] last spring that included a 13-year path to citizenship, but he has since
withdrawn his support.
Democrats view such talk as a canard for Boehner’s inability to control an unruly caucus,
and they note that the Obama administration has deported more immigrants[13] than his
Republican predecessor.
But conservatives used similar reasoning to reject immigration deals under Bush. In early
2006, after Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) had
introduced a bipartisan bill the previous year, Bush saw the momentum he needed to
relaunch his push.
“The debate over immigration reform has reached a time of decision,” Bush declared in a
prime-time Oval Office address[14] in May of that year.
Bush dispatched Gutierrez and Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff to Capitol Hill
to make the case to Republicans, focusing on the economic and security benefits.
“Part of what I used to say to people is that absolutely people should pay back taxes, pay
penalties, acknowledge they did something wrong, but in our system even if you break
the law, you do not go to jail forever,” Chertoff said in an interview last week.
The backlash among conservatives was visceral. Lou Dobbs, then with CNN, launched a
recurring feature called “Broken Borders,”[15] in which he railed against the economic
costs and criminal dangers of illegal immigrants entering the country.
“The environment was so hostile. We didn’t imagine the opposition would get stronger,”
Gutierrez recalled. “It actually grew as we got closer to the vote. Letters going to
members of Congress were 100 to 1 against.”
In June 2007, the Senate bill fell 14 votes shy of the 60 it needed to survive a filibuster.
After leaving office, Bush cited his failure to achieve immigration reform among his
greatest disappointments[16].
Obama and his allies believed this time would be different.
Although he failed to make much progress on immigration in his first term, the president
was reelected in 2012 with more than 70 percent support from Latino and Asian American
voters. After their loss, Republican leaders signaled they were open to immigration
reform as a way to broaden their appeal to the fast-changing electorate.
Obama launched his immigration campaign with a speech in Las Vegas in January 2013,
then stepped back amid fears that his direct involvement could scare away Republicans.
He left the details to a bipartisan Senate group led by Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and
McCain, along with Rubio and several others.
Their bill[17], approved by a healthy bipartisan majority last June, mandates 700 miles of
new border fencing, doubles the number of Border Patrol agents to 40,000 and employs
aerial drones.
But the proposal has languished in the House, whose Judiciary Committee instead
approved a controversial provision[18] that would give federal agents more power to
arrest illegal immigrants, patterned after state laws in Arizona. Boehner has sent mixed
signals on the prospects for legislation, declaring most recently that Republicans were
unlikely to pass reforms because they did not trust Obama.
“This is always going to be a hard issue because it’s just an emotional issue,” said
Margaret Spellings, Bush’s former education secretary who now runs the George W. Bush
Center in Dallas. Although some of Washington’s lead players have changed, she added,
the debate remains the same.
“It’s like a Greek tragedy,” Spellings said. “Here we go again.”
David Nakamura covers the White House. He has previously covered sports, education
and city government and reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Japan.
Links
1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/david-nakamura
2. http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010905.html
3. http://www.channelingreality.com/nau/Fox_Address_To_Congress.htm
4. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/key-question-in-immigration-debate-is-usborder-secure/2013/01/30/0c20b168-6afc-11e2-95b3-272d604a10a3_story.html
5. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/boehner-immigration-reform-stallsbecause-gop-has-widespread-doubt-about-obama/2014/02/06/233b497a-8f55-11e3b46a-5a3d0d2130da_story.html?hpid=z1
6. http://fusion.net/leadership/story/obama-immigration-reform-happen-presidency427531
7. http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/ca_irca.htm
8. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/09/23/population-decline-of-unauthorizedimmigrants-stalls-may-have-reversed/
9. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401179.html
10. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/boehner-immigration-reform-stallsbecause-gop-has-widespread-doubt-about-obama/2014/02/06/233b497a-8f55-11e3b46a-5a3d0d2130da_story.html?hpid=z1
11. http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/01/30/transcript-and-video-breakfast-with-sen-
marco-rubio/
12. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/with-endorsement-of-immigration-planrubio-makes-first-major-policy-gambit-of-his-career/2013/04/14/20997e84-a51911e2-a8e2-5b98cb59187f_story.html
13. http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21595892-barack-obama-has-presidedover-one-largest-peacetime-outflows-people-americas
14. http://www.c-span.org/video/?192506-1/immigration-reform-address
15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lidrk54zSbc
16. http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Politics/story?id=6354012
17. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/06/20/senators-reachdeal-on-border-security-proposals/
18. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/06/19/house-panelapproves-controversial-immigration-bill/
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