President Barack Obama laid out his new immigration reform pitch yesterday, reiterating his support for the DREAM Act which Senate Democrats just reintroduced. With a Republican majority in the House however, one that has granted its restrictionist wing leadership on immigration matters--its passage seems unlikely.
On the one hand, the conditions for pursuing immigration reform seem to have been met. Illegal immigration is down dramatically as is the undocumented population, there are more personnel and resources devoted to the border than ever, and the administration has racked up high numbers of deportations. The administration has also resisted, to the frustration of immigration reform activists, any administrative solution that might grant relief potential DREAM Act beneficiaries. They're acutely aware that thus far, the administration's accomplishments on immigration have all been on the enforcement side.
Obama joked in his speech yesterday that Republicans would never be satisfied, saying, "Maybe they'll say we need a moat. Or alligators in the moat." Indeed, immediately after the president's speech, Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain released a statement asking, "but what about our broken borders? There simply aren't any conditions under which Republicans would be willing to help pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill--even a more right leaning one--under a Democratic president.
Jonathan Tobin writes that "The fact that he didn’t lift a finger on this issue until the Republican victory last November made passage of reform an impossibility makes it hard for even the most partisan of Hispanic Democrats to take Obama at face value on immigration." It's a fair point, but it understates the degree of division among pro-reform forces, who were conflicted over whether to pursue comprehensive reform and whether focusing on the DREAM Act would make the former less likely. The alternative is also not the pro-reform GOP of 2006, but the GOP of 2011, which has committed itself politically an ideologically to "attrition through enforcement."
Is the current push mostly politics? Sure. But "politics" is not the same as empty pandering. With Republicans pursuing restrictionist policies, immigration advocates want Democrats to have an alternative to avoid allowing Republicans to dominate the conversation. That's part of why immigration advocates, while aware that the president's push might not be successful now, support his putting immigration on the agenda. It helps that the president's general approach is more popular than enforcement alone.
“I think it's always helpful to have a bill that represents what our alternate goals are policywise, and the bill that [Senator] Durbin is introducing today really represents our values and what we want to see happening with our undocumented students," said Marissa Graciosa, Director of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement.
"I think the President's aggressive push to smoke out Republicans on comprehensive immigration reform helps a lot," said Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America's Voice. The reintroduction of the DREAM Act, Sharry says, "rallies the movement."
That doesn't mean immigration reform advocates are completely happy with the administration. "They want legislation and don't want to take bold administrativeaction," said Sharry, who wants to see the administration halt deportations of potential DREAM Act beneficiaries.
"[Obama] said we're not supposed to be in the business of separating families. he said that in his speech, but yet he's deporting more people than President Bush," said Graciosa." We know it's happening. Either president Obama is ignoring that fact, or he doesn't know what's going on in the Department of Homeland Security.”
