Above and beyond our continued leadership deficit when it comes to our national elected officials, on immigration policy reform or an many other critical issues, a basic question in the mind of all immigrants and many other people truly concerned about our current broken, inhumane and wasteful immigration policy is the following: Will the march translate into decisive comprehensive immigration policy reform action in 2010? The answer is probably NO.
It is an answer difficult to understand, unless one happens to be familiar with the larger political and legislative trends that effectively dominate the nation nowadays. In as much as one would like to see immigration policy reform become the next big policy priority for President Obama and for at least every Democrat in the Senate and the House, every major indication suggests otherwise. With the exception of health care reform, which has been all along a paramount political priority for President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership; the other top priorities are job creation/economic recovery management, financial system reform, education reform, and energy reform. The reason why every one of these policy areas are so important is because each one of them has great potential to be major assets for the Democratic Party heading into the midterm elections to be held this coming November.
One of the reasons it has been so hard for Democrats to line up behind their leaders in support of health care reform is that many of them fear a backlash in their respective localities coming next November. They are desperate now to take the lead on issues that can effectively put behind the contentious nature of the health care reform debate. Given the growing number of democratic seats in the House and the Senate considered at play, Democrats are desperate to put their arms around issues that can effectively place Republicans on the defensive. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has not been able to redefine the national narrative and the nature of the policy proposals when it comes to immigrants and immigration policy. Consequently, the Republican Party continues to have the upper hand in the way immigration policy gets to be framed and debated.
The framework presented by Senators Schumer and Graham, is not that different from the premises that led to the policy reform bill filed in May of 2007 and defeated in June of the same year. Even if the Democratic Party wanted to go it alone on immigration policy reform, as they did with health care reform, the rules of the Congress does not allow it. There can only be one bill passed via the budget reconciliation parliamentary rule in any given year. Besides, chances are they would have a hard time lining up all Democrats in Congress behind any immigration policy reform bill, let alone one that would truly take us in a humane, truly common-sense driven path when it comes to immigration policy. Therefore, a national debate on this topic before the midterm elections is highly unlikely, and perhaps undesirable, as it is likely to be dominated by Republicans.
The downside of not moving forward legislatively is the potential of alienating a segment of Latino voters for whom immigration policy reform is a central motivating element when it comes to deciding whether they will vote and for whom will they vote next November. To the extent that most Democratic House and Senate seats considered at risk next November happen to be in districts and states where the Latino vote commands a decisive weight, the chance of influencing what gets to be a legislative priority increases. Otherwise, the Democratic Party will conclude that it is enough to provide indications of their commitment to an eventual immigration policy reform in the hope Latino voters consider this to be enough. After all, it is no secret that many voters (particularly registered Democrats) tend not to vote in midterm elections, Latino voters included.
While there is an unprecedented well-funded national campaign to reform immigration, unfortunately the political moment is not propitious for such a campaign to be successful. It is indeed quite a paradox that having an unprecedented well funded national campaign to reform immigration should happen at such a difficult political moment. Sadly, while the pro immigration reform lobby has come to be more robust and diverse than ever before(to the point of having dedicated organizations exclusively working the media and communications, electoral grassroots mobilization and legislative fronts, all properly decentralized and generously staffed); this unprecedented operational strength does not translate into legislative traction. Furthermore, this unprecedented strength has not translated into a decisively different, pro immigrant, national narrative when it comes to how immigrants and immigration policy are talked about. The fact that the adjective “illegal immigrant” continues to be widely used to refer to human beings who happen to be immigrants without immigration authorization is one way to measure how little things have changed. Immigrants and immigration policy reform continue to be as toxic in the way they are talked about now as they were in the summer of 2007.
In spite of the odds of advancing a positive, all inclusive legislative reform agenda, there is room for progress. First of all, if all immigrant rights organizations manage to laser-focus on the Obama Administration’s discretionary authority, we could bring about a significant change in the way immigration enforcement is implemented over the next couple of years. There is so much more President Obama can do in the service of alleviating the life of immigrant communities. From backing off in terms of I-9 audits, to suspending collaboration agreements between ICE and local police department, to reorienting the use of human resources from going after absconders, to going after abusive employers. These changes alone would bring much needed relief to immigrant communities. The bottom line is that there is so much more that could be done administratively without having to wait for Congress to act.
In the area of limited scope legislative changes, there has been a lack of creativity and political boldness. When the Republican Party commands the numbers Democrats do now, in the House and the Senate, they manage to get away with many changes without having to concede much to the other side. The standard answer provided when the notion of an incremental approach to immigration reform is suggested, is that the enforcement quid pro quo would be too costly. This is only true if the Democrats were to be far more generous with the other side than Republicans have ever been over the past three decades. In other words, there is potentially great room to advance gradually in the course of 2010 towards the kind of immigration policy reform the country needs and immigrant communities deserve.
