I was kind of shocked to see Matthew Yglesias write yesterday, in response to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas outing himself as an undocumented immigrant, that "undocumented people could in principle force their way onto the agenda if there was enough will and organization."
The larger context of Vargas' piece was that potential DREAM Act beneficiaries have been outing themselves in protest for years. Prior to the union protests in Wisconsin, the immigration reform movement represented the largest left-leaning protest movement in the country, turning out in Washington DC by the thousands to press for immigration reform. They occupied congressional offices, they staged hunger strikes, they outed themselves in an attempt to counterbalance the reductive caricatures that permeate the political conversation over immigration. When the DREAM Act failed, it left potential beneficiaries who had fought their hearts out wondering if they would be deported. Vargas' story is compelling and beautifully written, but as an experienced journalist with deep ties to mainstream media organizations, he's uniquely equipped to make his story heard.
The point is that immigration reform advocates, potential DREAM Act beneficiaries in particular, have shown an extraordinary amount of courage and will in risking deportation trying to prove that the current system is fundamentally immoral. They were largely thwarted by structural forces beyond their control--former Republican supporters, petrified of primary challenges, withdrew their support. Democrats in conservative states decided voting against the DREAM Act would improve their chances of reelection. Republicans have, for the time being, mostly given up on competing for the Latino vote, instead seeking to drive up numbers among disaffected white voters anxious about illegal immigration. Democrats remained divided between committed advocates of immigration reform and those who prefer the current detente, in which they can safely advocate for progress that cannot be achieved in the near term while avoiding the potential political consequences among other political constituencies should they actually succeed.
This is really more a numbers game than an issue of will or organization. Immigration reform advocates are largely convinced that time is on their side, and that America's increasing Latino population will eventually make their concerns impossible to ignore. Immigration reform advocates are organized and committed--what they need is a tipping point, at which the current political detente over immigration policy is no longer sustainable.
