Bloomberg
By Elizabeth Dwoskin
January 24, 2013
President Barack Obama’s
second inaugural address was heavy on the theme of unity. He
used the word “together” seven times in the 15-minute
speech. Buried beneath the comity was the prelude to a
coming fight with Republicans on an issue that divides them:
immigration reform.
Obama couched his comments
about immigration in uplifting language.
“Our journey is not complete
until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful
immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity,”
he said. “Until bright young students and engineers are
enlisted in our workforce, rather than expelled from our
country.”
On the surface, there’s
nothing controversial about that. Increasing the number of
visas for highly skilled immigrants is one of the few policy
goals Obama and Republicans agree on. That reflects a big
change in Republican thinking in recent months, as party
leaders have softened their anti-immigration rhetoric after
almost three-quarters of Hispanic voters cast ballots for
Obama in November.
If visas for highly skilled
workers were the only issue, Democrats and Republicans could
quickly resolve it. Yet it isn’t. What Obama didn’t say in
his speech is that he will insist on tying the visas to
broader changes in immigration laws, which many Republicans
strongly object to.
Citizenship Path
Earlier in January, White
House officials told reporters that the president won’t
agree to raise the visa caps without changes that include a
path to citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million
immigrants living illegally in the U.S.
These immigrants aren’t the
“bright young” future job creators Obama lauded in his
speech. Most work dirty jobs for low wages, and many lack
high school diplomas. They’re the undocumented workers
Republican governors in Arizona, Georgia, Alabama, and other
states have tried to drive away with tough anti-immigration
laws.
Obama’s everything-at-once
approach exploits a rift in the Republican Party, which is
struggling to find a policy its factions can accept. For
many House Republicans from southern and border states,
words such as “legalization” and “citizenship” are
nonstarters.
Obama is just dangling visas
for the highly skilled as a way of pressuring conservatives
to go along with his “real goal,” Representative Lamar
Smith, a Texas Republican, says in an e-mail, “which is mass
amnesty for illegal immigrants.”
Compromise Sought
Still, party leaders and
other prominent conservatives -- House Speaker John Boehner
of Ohio, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida -- are urging a
compromise, yet to be defined, between “throw them out” and
“make them citizens.”
“There are people who are
saying, let’s look at the whole problem,” says Alfonso
Aguilar, an immigration adviser to former President George
W. Bush who is now executive director of the Latino
Partnership for Conservative Principles, a Washington
advocacy group pressing for immigration reform. “Clearly, we
can’t deport them all.”
Rubio has offered the only
concrete ideas for compromise -- requiring undocumented
workers to pay back taxes and a fine, participate in a
guest-worker program, and wait several years for a green card to avoid the appearance they’re cutting in line ahead
of legal immigrants.
Even Republicans who
generally agree with such an approach may refuse to say so.
Congress’s last major immigration bill, in 2006, failed in
part because anti-immigration groups besieged Republicans
who supported the effort with angry calls and attack ads.
Super PAC
This time, a new super
political action committee, Republicans for Immigration
Reform, is promising to give cash and political cover to
Republicans willing to back a bill.
“We want members to know
there are resources that will be available to them if they
support a broad-based approach to reform,” says co-founder
Charles Spies, a former counsel for Restore Our Future, a
super PAC that supported Mitt Romney, last year’s Republican
presidential nominee. Spies won’t say how much he’s raised
or from whom.
Aguilar voices optimism that
immigration can be retooled as a conservative issue
Republicans can get behind.
“If you’re for the free
market, which are the basic tenets of Reagan conservatism,
then you can’t be against immigration,” he says.
No one expects minds to
change quickly. That means skilled would-be immigrants
hoping for the door to open could be in for a long wait.
They’ve become the essential bargaining chip in what will
likely be a tense, protracted negotiation -- between
Democrats and Republicans, and Republicans and Republicans.
No comments:
Post a Comment