New York Times
(Editorial)
February 7, 2016
Fear
and hatred stalked the Republican debate on Saturday night, aimed at
every available target, including, as starkly as ever, the immigrant
threat.
Donald
Trump took credit for raising the alarm first — “Now everybody’s coming
to me,” he said. Senator Ted Cruz boasted that his immigration solution
was the most detailed
— “11 pages, single-spaced” — though it focuses so intently on
criminalizing unauthorized immigrants that it seems more like a
blueprint for keeping millions of people in prisons, rather than sending
them out of the country.
The
candidates kept summoning President Ronald Reagan, whose 105th birthday
it was. If only Reagan’s ghost had risen up and driven everybody from
the stage, to uphold
his vision of a welcoming America that his party has abandoned.
Only
Gov. John Kasich and Senator Marco Rubio tried to be hard-line without
the hate. Mr. Kasich said, again, that deportation of 11 million people
is unrealistic, a statement
of simple fact that in this context counts as bravery.
Mr.
Rubio was ridiculed, again, for helping to lead Congress’s last push
for big immigration reform, in 2014 — and for later disowning it. Mr.
Rubio actually does defend
the bill, in the most timid way, by slipping its tough parts into his
stump speeches and debates. When he calls, fiercely, for 700 miles of
border fence, mandatory employment verification and an entry-and-exit
visa system, he does not tell crowds that President
Obama and the Democrats were good with that, too.
Mr.
Rubio also leaves the door open for better things, like legalization
for the unauthorized, someday. If you believe what he says sometimes —
often in Spanish, to immigrants
who plead with him for help — and his vow to unite the party, it almost
sounds like he means it.
Watching
him campaign in New Hampshire, with speeches full of hope, humor and
self-deprecation, it was possible to imagine the party actually winning
back a few Latino
voters. That, plus massive voter suppression, could improve the odds
for the G.O.P. in November.
Mr.
Rubio’s odd behavior on Saturday may have changed things. It started
when Gov. Chris Christie basically called him a robot, and just then —
wouldn’t you know it —
Mr. Rubio’s software malfunctioned. His page didn’t load; he kept
repeating some strange lines about how dangerously, tragically
transformative President Obama has been. A New Hampshire newspaper, The
Conway Daily Sun, saw this coming last December, when Mr.
Rubio visited: “It was like someone wound him up, pointed him towards
the doors and pushed play.”
This
is deflating news. Republican voters need Mr. Kasich and Mr. Rubio to
survive down the road, like the man and boy in that Cormac McCarthy
doomsday novel, to keep
alive the flame of decency toward the foreign-born.
The
Democrats are dispiriting in a different way. Hillary Clinton and
Senator Bernie Sanders have strong immigration platforms, but they
haven’t been touching the issue
lately. There are questions they need to answer. What if the Supreme
Court kills President Obama’s executive actions on deportation and work
permits? How will you repair the damage of Mr. Obama’s deportation
strategy? How will you revive comprehensive reform,
and who will slay the Republicans’ nativist dragon?
Immigration,
the debate, is in a bad place. But immigration, the reality, is still
changing and challenging America. New Hampshire could do its part on
Tuesday. Mr. Trump
seems poised to win here, as he is everywhere. But the state still is
habitat for the endangered moderate Republican, like Fergus Cullen, a
former state party chairman who founded an immigration-reform group,
Americans by Choice, which offers pro-business
arguments, but hasn’t been heard from much lately. Voters there could
stand up for the non-nativists, the way they elected, barely, Jeanne
Shaheen, the rival of Scott Brown, who ran for Senate warning of
immigrants bringing Ebola into Texas.
There is a long list of things Americans are terrified of; immigrants should not be on it.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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