“GOP To Latinos, Drop Dead”: ‘It’s Over, Don’t Call Me And Have A Nice Life’
Breakups are rough — regrets, pain and bitter memories. As Republicans in the House block immigration reform time after time, American Latinos get the message: It’s over, don’t call me. Have a nice life.
Incapable of producing even one GOP vote in favor of the Democrats’ last-ditch gamble at forcing an open vote of the House, the message to Latinos is crystalline. Whatever goodwill the clutch of pro-immigration reform House Republicans won in the last year since the Senate passed its bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill has now evaporated.
What remains are the weekly flip-flops by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the yelps of “amnesty” coming from a seemingly frightened Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the tiny fig leaf provided by Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s (R-Va.) seven bills he’s been talking about for a year and the shameful action to deport all Dreamers through the recently unanimous vote of the House Republican caucus’s fantasy bill, the Enforce Act.
Some 15 months after former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-Mass.) “self-deportation” turkey handed the Latino vote (not to mention the Asian-American electorate) to the Democrats, Republicans are still incapable of effectively dealing with an issue that commands big majorities of Americans — including Republicans.
Great analyses have been written by Greg Sargent, Charlie Cook, and Juan Williams, among others, about the “paranoia” inherent in the Republican Party’s refusal put forward a coherent immigration reform policy. Setting the political calculus aside, most Republicans on Capitol Hill seem to have no clue about what immigration reform actually represents to Latino voters.
As I’ve written previously, immigration reform is not a policy debate for Hispanics. It stands as a proxy for societal respect — even though most Latinos are either American-born, naturalized citizens or have a green card and will not benefit from any reform. While it’s not fair to judge the GOP based on people like Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and his anti-immigrant logorrhea, he and other anti-immigrant Republicans have become the effective spokespeople of the GOP on this issue.
Whatever good intentions may exist in the GOP House to move forward with a bill, the lack of any action by Boehner (not to mention right-wing extremists’ wholesale rejection of a reasonable compromise) is now officially the Republican position.
This is what Latinos think.
On my radio show every day, and on social media 24/7, I am part of a conversation where responsibility for both the failure of comprehensive reform, and the acrid discourse surrounding it, is laid at the feet of Republicans exclusively.
New to American politics, organic groups of American Latinos have formed online with the express purpose of increasing Latino turnout in November and dealing the GOP a blow. No longer tied to the traditional activist organizations, still espousing 1960s tactics and attitudes, these new groups are savvy Facebookers and tweeters that can spread a political message across the country with the click of the mouse — reaching tens of thousands of people in an instant, hundreds of thousands per day.
This political battle is now personal. Just like the tea party fervor of 2010, driven by a single-minded focus to oppose President Obama, these online Latino groups share a similar obsession with throwing Republicans out of office.
One such group, organized primarily through the hashtag #TNTweeters, has attracted thousands of active social media “warriors” that engage in a robust political debate — principally calling for a GOP defeat in November.
Will this new kind of political activists succeed in altering the electoral math in the midterms? No one can say, of course. Latinos have historically sat out non-presidential elections. But history is not always prologue. The level of frustration, even anger, now focused on the GOP, combined with the frictionless power of social media, represents a fundamentally new political dynamic in American politics.
Come this November 4, Republicans may just wake up to the ugly reality that breaking up with American Latinos over immigration was an easily avoidable and ultimately very costly divorce.
By: Fernando Espuelas, The Huffington Post Blog, April 25, 2014
“Deeply Foolish”: The Wrong Way To Tackle Immigration
At first blush, the fact that House Republicans actually voted on a bill related to immigration policy yesterday may have encouraged reform proponents. The GOP majority has been inclined to largely ignore the issue for quite a while.
But the legislation the House took up yesterday didn’t support reform progress; it did the opposite.
A House Republican bill aimed at forcing President Barack Obama to enforce immigration and other laws as they are written drew sharp rebukes Wednesday from the White House and House Democrats, who ripped the measure as anti-immigrant.
The legal dispute over President Barack Obama’s unilateral decision to suspend deportations for people brought to the country illegally by their parents, known as “dreamers,” has split the GOP and Democrats before.
At least on paper, the legislation, which passed 233 to 181, wasn’t explicitly about immigration. Rather, this was yet another election-year “message bill,” in which House Republicans pretended to be outraged about President Obama’s entirely routine executive orders. GOP leaders put together a bill – subtlely called the ENFORCE Act – intended to make it easier for members of Congress to sue the White House, forcing the administration to prioritize law enforcement in line with lawmakers’ wishes.
It is, by any sensible measure, a deeply foolish proposal. How many House Republicans, some of whom surely knew better, had the sense to vote against this transparent nonsense? Zero.
But immigration stood at the center of the debate because Republicans put it there: to prove Obama’s tyrannical tendencies, GOP lawmakers used the administration’s deferred action on Dream Act kids as Exhibit A.
In practical terms, then, the Republican bill was part of an effort to force Obama to deport immigrant children who came to the United States with their families.
It’s almost as if House Republicans decided, as an election-year gambit, to enrage the Latino community on purpose.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was eager to criticize the GOP scheme.
“[T}his runs contrary to our most deeply held values as Americans, and asks law enforcement officials to treat these DREAMers the same way as they would treat those with criminal records, those with violent criminal records.
“We urge House Republicans to focus on actually fixing our broken immigration system to provide opportunity for all instead of legislation designed to deny opportunity to those who are Americans in every way, in their hearts, in their minds, in their experiences in every way but on paper.
“So you hear a lot of talk about where people are on this issue. It doesn’t require much to look at what House Republicans are doing today to question whether or not they’re serious about moving forward on comprehensive immigration reform.”
Looking ahead, the bill approved by the House yesterday stands no chance of success in the Democratic-led Senate and would be quickly vetoed by the president if it somehow reached his desk. GOP leaders obviously know this, but wasted time on the bill anyway, instead of doing real work (on immigration or anything else).
Why? Party leaders apparently decided it was time for a little stunt to show the party’s far-right base that House Republicans are standing up to Obama for using his executive authority the exact same way every other president has for more than two centuries.
As for the future of immigration reform, the DREAM Coalition, a group representing the children of undocumented immigrants, said the vote “demonstrates Republicans can no longer be relied upon to bring up a sensible and practicable immigration reform bill this year.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 13, 2014
“An Inconvenient Constitution”: Fighting Obama On Immigration Is Not Enough, GOP Wants To Sue Him Too
The House Republican caucus wants to sue President Barack Obama.
They say he isn’t living up to his constitutional obligations on a range of issues—and in particular, that he’s not faithfully executing immigration laws. They cite his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, put into place by executive order in 2012, which halted deportations of people who were brought to this country as children—the so-called “dreamers.” There are roughly 1.1 million of them, according to the best estimates.
To gut that measure, along with parts of the Affordable Care Act and a grab bag of other administration policies, House Republicans crafted and passed what they are calling the “ENFORCE the Law” Act. It would create what amounts to a legal shortcut. House members could file a lawsuit against the president, and it would go directly to three-judge panel of a federal district court—and from there, could be appealed straight to the Supreme Court.
The measure is unlikely to become law, since Senate leaders have declared it dead on arrival. Even if they hadn’t, it might not survive a court challenge: Experts say it openly tampers with the constitution.
Still, the vote for ENFORCE is a statement, and one that directly violates the immigration principles Republicans outlined in January. At the time, the leadership professed support for a pathway to “legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children through no fault of their own, those who know no other place as home.” But that was nearly two months ago—and ENFORCE represents the House’s first vote of the year on immigration.
It makes the vote Democrats have been demanding, on the reform bill that passed the Senate last year, seem a lot less likely. (And it’s not like prospects were good in the first place.) “It doesn’t require much to look at what House Republicans are doing today and question whether or not they’re serious about moving forward on comprehensive immigration reform,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday. That’s a departure from statements that both the president and House Speaker John Boehner have made this winter, insisting legislative reform still stands a chance. Last month, Carney called a meeting about immigration between the two men “constructive”; Boehner called it “healthy.”
Republicans may have been trying to underscore a message with the vote: that Obama should not even consider addressing deportations with executive authority, as he did with DACA, and as immigrant-rights groups are demanding he do again. “If he stopped deporting people who are clearly here illegally, then I think any chance of immigration reform is dead,” Senator Lindsey Graham warned in February. But as the prospects for immigration reform dim, Obama may wonder why he’s waiting for the House to meet him partway.
By: Nora Caplan-Bricker, The New Republic, March 13, 2014
“Is The GOP Giving Up Tea?”: It’s An Illusion For The GOP To Think Bashing Obamacare Is An Elixir
The botched rollout of the health-care law has called forth some good news: Republicans are so confident they can ride anti-Obamacare sentiment to electoral victory that they’re growing ever-more impatient with the tea party’s fanaticism. Immigration reform may be the result.
The GOP is looking like a person emerging from a long binge and asking, “Why did I do that?” The moment of realization came when last fall’s government shutdown cratered the party’s polling numbers. Staring into the abyss can be instructive. For the first time since 2010, the middle of the House Republican caucus — roughly 100 of its 233 members — began worrying less about primaries from right-wing foes and more about losing their majority status altogether.
Obamacare’s troubles reinforced the flight from the brink. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is telling his rank-and-file that they can win the 2014 elections simply by avoiding the stupid mistakes their more-ferocious colleagues keep urging them to make. In this view, the health insurance issue will take care of everything, provided Republicans end their tea party fling.
In fact, it’s an illusion for the GOP to think that bashing Obamacare is an elixir, especially if Democrats embrace and defend the law. Now that its benefits are fully kicking in, Republicans should be asked persistently, “Who do you want to throw off health insurance?”
Also: Do you want to go back to denying people coverage for preexisting conditions? And: What about those 3 million young adults now on their parents’ health plans? “Repeal Obamacare” is not as popular as it seems in GOP bastions. Some Republicans know this, which is why they are trying to cobble together much narrower alternatives to the law.
Nonetheless, some illusions are useful. Boehner is using them aggressively. The immigration principles he announced at his caucus’s retreat last week in Cambridge, Md., are a breakthrough because they are potentially more elastic than they sound. This is why many immigration reform advocates were elated, and why President Obama, sensing what was coming, offered not a hint of partisanship on the issue in his State of the Union address.
The principles have been loosely described as favoring the legalization of undocumented immigrants without a path to citizenship. But what the statement actually opposes is a “special path to citizenship” for the roughly 11 million who are here illegally. Everything hangs on the implications of that word “special.”
A bill barring a path to citizenship would be a nonstarter for Democrats — and it ought to be a nonstarter for Republicans and conservatives. Creating a vast population of legal residents who lack citizenship rights undercuts the rights of those who are already citizens. It would undermine the commitment of a democratic republic to equal treatment and self-rule.
But reform advocates inside and outside the Obama administration note that even without a “special” path, many immigrants, once legalized, could find ways of gaining citizenship eventually.
Changes in visa allocations, including more generous rules for the spouses and parents of citizens, could help as many as 4 million undocumented residents, as The Post’s Pamela Constable has reported. Republicans have already signaled openness to a path for “dreamers” — their numbers are estimated at between 800,000 and 1.5 million — who were brought to the United States illegally as children. The bill already passed by the Senate would put as many as 8 million people on a path to citizenship. A compromise that found “non-special” ways of reaching a number reasonably close to the Senate’s is now at least possible.
It’s also possible, of course, that Boehner could make a play to improve his party’s image with Latinos by appearing to be flexible at the outset but in the end appease hard-liners by balking on a final bill — and try to blame Democrats for not compromising enough. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) warned on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday that passage of a bill was “clearly in doubt.”
But the GOP consists of more than the tea party. Both business interests and conservative evangelical leaders really want a reform law. Most of the intra-party tiffs have been over tactics: whether to use shutdowns or debt-ceiling fights to achieve shared objectives. The immigration battle, by contrast, will expose more fundamental rifts among party constituencies along philosophical lines.
None of this heralds the dawn of a new Moderate Republican Age. Shifts in the Republican primary electorate and the tea party insurgency dragged the party so far to the right that it will take a long time to bring it within hailing distance of the middle of the road. But change has to start somewhere, and the GOP’s slow retreat from the fever swamps may turn out to be one of Obamacare’s utterly unintended effects.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 2, 2014
“A Two-Tier Nation”: The GOP’s Citizenship Suppression
Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, says he is against creating “a special path to citizenship” for undocumented immigrants. The path he refers to — which many of his Republican House colleagues also oppose — is the one laid out in the immigration reform bill the Senate passed this summer; it would enable the undocumented, after paying some fines and learning English, to get green cards in 10 years and apply for citizenship three years after that.
But by opposing this special path, House Republicans may create a special category of American: legal but permanently non-citizen. Able to work, required to pay taxes but not able to vote. Subject to taxation without representation. In a word, second-class.
While House Republicans have been busily working on shutting down the government and defaulting on the debt, they have not neglected their duty to screw up immigration reform. Just how much they’ll mangle it remains unclear. Some oppose any legalization at all. Some support extending citizenship to the Dreamers — undocumented immigrants brought here as children — but no one else. Goodlatte says he is open to legalizing additional undocumented immigrants, but it’s not clear that he wants a bill that would enable them to become citizens. (This last option was recently endorsed by Tamar Jacoby, who heads a business group, ImmigrationWorks USA, that wants to take employers off the hook for employing undocumented workers but is apparently indifferent to whether those workers can win any political rights and the bargaining power that goes with it.)
By opposing a “special path,” Goodlatte has set himself against the provision in the Senate bill that would enable the law-abiding undocumented to obtain green cards after a 10-year wait. Instead, he is reportedly working on legislation that would put them in the existing line for green cards, where the wait would be closer to a century. With green cards for low- and semi-skilled workers limited to just a few thousand each year, millions of the undocumented would never obtain the cards or the subsequent opportunity to become citizens.
This non-solution solution might have a certain appeal to Republicans. Legalizing the undocumented would relieve businesses that employ immigrants at low wages regardless of their status. Not granting citizenship to the undocumented would limit the number of Latinos and Asians in the electorate, two groups which increasingly back Democrats at the polls. Could there be a more effective form of voter suppression than citizenship suppression?
But therein lies the Republicans’ dilemma. The political imperative behind embracing some kind of immigration reform is the Republicans’ need to convince Latinos that their party holds them in the same regard as other Americans. Carving out a special sub-citizen category for the disproportionately Latino undocumented doesn’t do that. “What makes them think this solves their problem?” one leading immigrant advocate asked me this week. “It just creates a new problem, since it’s deeply insulting to Latinos.”
Still, the immigrant groups see a way that Goodlatte’s approach might work — if it allows for a major increase in the number of green cards the government issues. Their hope is that the House passes something — a Dream Act, or some bill creating at least in theory a path to citizenship — that would go to conference with the Senate, and that a compromise bill emerges that would create a real path to citizenship. Advocates of immigration reform believe that the Republican leadership may discreetly favor such a course, but they also note that House Republican leaders have shown no discernible ability to actually lead their caucus.
Most GOP House members are safely cocooned in lily-white districts, many of which Republican state legislators carved out for them. Nonetheless, so long as Republicans treat Latinos as second-class Americans — whether prohibited from legal status or merely from citizenship — the GOP’s ability to win elections at the state and federal levels will decline with each passing year. To advocate the creation of a two-tier nation is almost surely to incite the enmity of those relegated to the bottom tier, not to mention their friends and relations and lots of stray egalitarians.
“We don’t cotton to having a permanent second-class group just here to work,” said Tom Snyder, who manages the immigrant reform campaign for the AFL-CIO. “At least since we abolished slavery, it’s not been the American way.”
By: Harol Meyerson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 26, 2013
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