While the substance of what Hillary Clinton actually proposed to do in her immigration event on Tuesday may be a bit less than it first appeared (see my colleague Greg Sargent for more on that), there was one thing she said that was absolutely clear: Whatever Republicans might try to convince you of, they don't want to let undocumented immigrants have a path to citizenship. "Not a single Republican candidate, announced or potential, is clearly supporting a path to citizenship," she said. "Not one. When they talk about legal status, that is code for second-class status." Depending on how you define "clearly," that's not completely true-the position most of them are taking is that eventually, after we've "secured the border," then we can talk about a path to citizenship.
Clinton might argue that they're full of baloney on that, which they probably are (more on that below), but in any case, Republicans seem pretty unnerved by this, as evidenced by the fact that most of the candidates can't figure out what to say in response. As Byron York reports, not only have most of the candidates not said anything about Clinton's immigration stance, they seem to be suddenly realizing anew that this is going to be a real problem for them with Hispanic voters:
The idea was that [comprehensive immigration] reform was a threshold issue-that is, Republicans would have to pass it before Hispanic voters would consider supporting the GOP's stand on other issues. Hence the Gang of Eight effort, led by Rubio. But reform, passed by the Democratic Senate with Rubio's efforts, died in the Republican-controlled House.
So Clinton has made her move. Her new position effectively trumps all other immigration reform offers on the table. Her message to Hispanic voters is: No Republican-not Jeb, not Marco, not anybody-will offer you as much as I will.
The Republican response is unclear. Can Bush and Rubio say they share Clinton's goal of citizenship for millions of currently illegal immigrants but disagree with her way of getting there? That's not terribly strong. Do they stick with the "legal status" that Clinton characterizes as "second-class status"?
The fact is, if the heart of immigration reform is an effort to win the support of Hispanic voters, Clinton's offer has trumped all other immigration reform proposals on the table. There's not much pro-reform Republicans can say: "We'll give you a little less than Hillary-but please look at our issues, like taxes and entitlement reform."
I'm not sure that this is such a sure thing. It may be true, but it will depend a lot on who the Republican nominee is. If it's Scott Walker, then yes, Hispanic support for the Republican ticket will crater. But while the substance of the issue debate matters, identity and attitude matter too.
Let's say that Marco Rubio were the Republican nominee. You'd have to expect at least some Hispanics to be attracted to the idea of the first Hispanic president, even if the Democratic nominee has a position on immigration that they find more appealing, not to mention the fact that when Rubio talks about immigration he doesn't sound nearly as mean-spirited as someone like Walker or so many other Republicans. If Jeb Bush gets the nomination, he'll be cutting ads in Spanish (which he speaks fluently) to air on Univision and Telemundo, showing off his Mexican wife and half-Mexican kids, and generally doing everything he can to communicate that he understands Hispanics and their concerns. What you certainly won't get from him is the message of outright hostility that so many people perceived coming from Mitt Romney.
It may not be possible at this point to know how persuasive all that might be. But consider that the position Republicans are offering on immigration is a sequence of policy moves, and when two candidates describe the same sequence it can sound very different, even if the substance is essentially the same. When Scott Walker describes it, it sounds a lot like "We need to crack down, secure the border, get tough on those no-good illegals. And yeah, when that's done we'll get around to making a path to citizenship, but did I mention how tough we're going to be?" When Marco Rubio describes it (and particularly as he would describe it if he's past the Republican primary and into the general election), it sounds more like, "First we'll secure the border, and then after that's taken care of we'll bring hard-working people out of the shadows and set them on a path to citizenship so they can be part of our big American community."
Again, they're describing the same policy sequence: some effort to enhance border security (without any details), then a process by which undocumented immigrants are granted legal status, which could eventually lead to full citizenship (though Walker can't seem to decide whether citizenship is actually at the end of that process; at various times he's said yes and no). But it's entirely possible that, given the right messenger and the right tone, at least some Hispanic voters could decide that what the Republican is saying is, if not what they'd prefer, at least good enough.
But what no Republican is going to admit is that the Republican Congress is never going to pass comprehensive immigration reform, no matter what the next Republican president thinks or says about it. That's because what we have now is an extremely conservative GOP caucus, particularly in the House, many of whose members personally don't want to see undocumented immigrants get on a path to citizenship, and more importantly, who know that their constituents from the very conservative districts they represent don't want that. The truth is that in all likelihood the only way such reform could pass the House is through a combination of Democratic seat gains and Clinton winning the White House, which might convince a few more Republicans that immigration really is a "threshold" issue that necessitates comprehensive reform. But no Republican candidate, whatever they think about immigration, is going to admit just how hard it will be to pass reform.
