The Week
By Simon Maloy
April 1, 2014
Immigration
reform looks to be dead. Again. With the 2014 midterms bearing down and
House Republicans standing pat, activists who pushed hard to get a bill
passed in this
session of Congress are making valedictory speeches about their efforts
and looking to the future.
MSNBC's
Benjy Sarlin spoke to several pro-reform advocates who now expect
President Obama to do what he can through executive orders. The strategy
extends beyond November
to the next presidential contest. "Immigration advocates hope to repeat
the cycle by forcing the White House to take unilateral action," Sarlin
wrote, "which would set the stage for Latino voters to punish the GOP
in 2016, which in turn would pressure Republican
leaders to finally cave on reform."
The
key word from that quote is "finally." The idea that a sufficiently
brutal electoral drubbing will impel Republicans to back immigration
reform is, at this point,
quaint. As the relationship between Latino voters and the Republican
Party has steadily deteriorated over the last decade, politicians from
both sides of the aisle have more than once expressed hope that the
tipping point had "finally" been reached. And yet
it never happens. So exactly how bad politically must it get for
Republicans before we can expect immigration reform to pass?
The
answer seems to be nothing short of catastrophically bad. Since 2004,
when George W. Bush took home somewhere between 40 and 44 percent of the
Latino vote, the Republican
Party has done everything in its power to destroy its standing with
Latino voters, engaging in some of the most politically self-destructive
behavior imaginable.
After
Bush's second inauguration, conservative House Republicans defied his
proposals to implement paths to legal status and citizenship for
undocumented immigrants, and
instead passed a draconian immigration bill that beefed up security
measures and made it a felony to be illegally present in the country.
Moderate Senate Republicans joined Democrats in passing a comprehensive
reform bill, but the House GOP dug in and refused
to consider the Senate bill. The Republicans (including several
prominent anti-reform legislators) were booted out of power in 2006,
taking just 29 percent of the Latino vote.
At
the time, voices within the party seemed to understand that Republicans
needed to get it right on immigration. "There has been too much of an
anti-immigrant tone,"
said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.). "There are a lot of Republicans
who just want this issue behind us," said then-Rep. Jeff Flake
(R-Ariz.). Advocacy groups sought to capitalize on the new political
dynamic and get a bill passed in 2007.
But,
again, nothing happened. The new Democratic Congress' comprehensive
immigration reform package ran into a seething, grinding maelstrom of
opposition from nativists
and right-wing hardliners. The legislation died in the Senate, and then
the issue took a backseat to the 2008 election. John McCain, a longtime
supporter of comprehensive reform, bucked his own principles and played
to the conservative base, pushing border
security and going so far as to say he'd vote against his own
legislation. McCain took 31 percent of the Latino vote.
The
2010 midterms actually saw the GOP do slightly better with Latino
voters, taking 38 percent in House races and electing a number of
Latinos to high-profile statewide
positions. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) looked at these isolated data
points from a single electoral cycle and extrapolated a sunny future for
Republicans. "The 2010 election actually paints a very bright picture
of the Republican Party's relations with this
country's growing Hispanic population," Smith wrote in The Washington
Post.
Smith's
optimism butted up against the reality of Republican politics leading
into 2012, when the GOP standard bearer, Mitt Romney, famously adopted
"self-deportation"
as part of an immigration policy that would endear him to wary
conservatives. The Republican share of the Latino vote plummeted again
to a dismal 27 percent.
Once
more, hope for comprehensive immigration reform was spied in the
Republican political wreckage. "A comprehensive approach is long
overdue, and I'm confident that
the president, myself, others can find the common ground to take care
of this issue once and for all," Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said on
ABC the day after the election. "When Republicans lost in November it
was a wake-up call," Republican National Committee
Chair Reince Priebus said upon the release of the RNC's Growth and
Opportunity Project report, which called for passing comprehensive
reform. "It was such a clear two-by-four to the head in the 2012
election," said report co-author Ari Fleischer of Romney's
anemic Latino support.
And
yet, here we are again at an impasse. The Senate passed yet another
comprehensive reform bill, but Boehner refuses to touch it. Sen. Marco
Rubio (R-Fla.) helped shepherd
that bill to passage, but he now says he no longer supports it. The
House Republican leadership released a series of immigration
"principles," but they won't put anything to an actual vote.
This
mystifying cycle is stuck on repeat. Each time Republicans come close
to a moment of clarity on immigration, they backslide out of a perceived
need to appease the
conservative base. The GOP's projected gains in the midterms and
growing apathy among frustrated Latino voters serve only to embolden
Republicans and further delay action.
So
would another presidential defeat in 2016 be traumatic enough to get
the Republicans with the program? Perhaps. If the party sees its gains
in Congress pared back and
its share of the Latino vote dips below Romney's weak showing, then
maybe it will finally be forced to act out of self-preservation.
Then
again, such action would require active cooperation with a Democratic
president, which Republicans in Congress can only seem to manage when
their hand is forced by
an impending crisis — defaulting on debt, careening over fiscal cliffs,
and the like. Also, signing on to immigration reform would hand the
Democratic president a victory that the party denied to George W. Bush.
And if that Democratic president happens to
bear the surname Clinton, then the prospect for rational behavior from
congressional Republicans becomes all the more unlikely.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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