The Blue State

Bush's immigration decision: legacy or his party's future?

On the issue of immigration, we all knew that President Bush was putting himself in a difficult strategic position.  On one hand, by agreeing with the conservative House position, he would be alienating Hispanic voters, therefore electorally damaging his Republican Party in the long-term.  Or, Bush could continue to adopt the stance he has stuck with until this point: agreeing with the Senate position and refusing to negotiate with the House, which would hurt his party's chances in this November.  So it comes down to a question of whether Bush wants to think long-term or short-term?

Until now, President Bush was more likely to follow the Karl Rove route of not allowing the House to get their way.  Why?  Rove is expected to stay in politics even after Bush leaves office in a few years.  What Bush leaves for Rove will be what Rove has to clean up and fix.  With that said, the senior White House strategist has every intention of keeping President Bush from choosing a position on immigration that would reverse the strong support that Republicans received from Hispanic voters in 2004.

But things have changed.  President Bush is worried about the Democrats taking back the House.  If they do, then expect two years of the House Democratic majority using their subpoena power to get to the bottom of all the lies and deceit dating back to the decision to invade Iraq.  Bush cannot have that because those investigations would likely expose more wrongdoing on the part of the White House, hurting his legacy as a result.  With that said, President Bush has every incentive to abandon his party's long-term electoral strategy and do everything he can to hold the House -- and that means negotiating with the House to get an immigration deal done.

Wednesday's New York Times is reporting that President Bush is going to do just that:

..President Bush is signaling a new willingness to negotiate with HouseRepublicans in an effort to revise the stalled legislation beforeElection Day.

Republicans both inside and outside the White House say Mr. Bush, who has longinsisted on comprehensive reform, is now open to a so-calledenforcement-first approach that would put new border security programsin place before creating a guest worker program or path to citizenshipfor people living in the United States illegally.

"He thinks thatthis notion that you can have triggers is something we should take aclose look at, and we are," said Candi Wolff, the White House directorof legislative affairs, referring to the idea that guest worker andcitizenship programs would be triggered when specific border securitygoals had been met, a process that could take two years.

Theshift is significant because Mr. Bush has repeatedly said he favorslegislation like the Senate's immigration bill, which establishesborder security, guest worker and citizenship programs all at once. Theenforcement-first approach puts Mr. Bush one step closer to the House,where Republicans are demanding an enforcement-only measure.

"Thewillingness to consider a phased-in situation, that's a pretty bigconcession from where they were at," said Representative Tom Cole,Republican of Oklahoma, whose closeness to Mr. Bush dates to his daysas a top Republican National Committee official. "It's a suggestion they are willing to negotiate."

Ina sign of that willingness, the White House last week invited a leadingconservative proponent of an enforcement-first bill, RepresentativeMike Pence, Republican of Indiana, to present his ideas to Mr. Bush andVice President Dick Cheney in the Oval Office.

Ms. Wolff said the president found the Pence plan "pretty intriguing."

Inan interview Tuesday, Mr. Pence said the president used precisely thosewords in their talk. Mr. Pence said that the meeting was scheduled tolast 10 or 20 minutes but went on for 40, and that the president "wasquite adamant throughout the meeting to make the point that he hoped Iwould be encouraged."

The White House is realizing that striking a deal with the House of Representatives on immigration is the only shot they have left of saving the President from two years of subpoenas and investigations from the House Democratic majority.

After following the negotiations over the last several months, I can say that a deal between the White House and the GOP-controlled House of Representatives looks a lot more likely than it did in May when negotiations took a turn for the worst.  With that said, the Democrats need to be prepared to take a strong stance of their own on this issue.  Starting yesterday, Hispanic activist groups began their nationwide get out the vote effort, trying to register one million new Hispanic voters before the election.  This is a demographic that will show up at the polls in November.  If the House of Representatives and President Bush strike a deal that does not include a guest worker program, then the Senate Democrats would do themselves a huge favor by filibustering the bill once it reaches the Senate floor.  Hispanic voters need to know that Democrats are the only party that will be by their side in this civil rights fight.

Democrats also need to point out the fact that if Bush does agree with the House, he will be engaging in one of the biggest flip-flops in history.
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Other Blogs writing about this issue: Penguins on the Equator, The Rothenberg Political Report, Random Thoughts of Mind by Dones, Daily Kos, The Ostroy Report, The Xoff Files, Latina Lista, Copeland Institute for Lower Learning.

July drive to register new Hispanic voters is a Republican nightmare

House Republicans expect to hold hearings throughout the country later this summer on the issue of immigration.  This localization of politics is designed to make the Republican party look more connected to the grassroots in the months leading up to the midterm elections.  Most importantly, the testimony of angry conservative citizens against immigration will bolster the image of House Republicans, and put pressure on the Republican Senate to bow to their radical wishes on this issue.

While the conservative base is fired up, no one should underestimate Hispanic interest groups that are trying to register new voters.  Latino rights groups are using this first day of July to kick off their nationwide effort to register millions of new citizens to vote:

"Our people are angry. They are angry at theway that Republicans have treated them. They are scared that theirfamilies will be broken up. They are angry and they are going to dosomething about it," said Christina Lopez, the deputy executivedirector for the Washington-based Center for Community Change, anational umbrella group of immigration-focused groups.

Saturday's events — some to register voters and some to begintraining volunteers to do so — will take place in at least 40 cities in17 states.

Several events are taking place around Florida on Saturday,including one in Lake Worth sponsored by the Immigrant Rights Coalitionof Palm Beach County to help legal permanent residents become citizens.

In Georgia, the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials isholding a session Saturday to train team leaders from across the statefor a voter registration drive.

In North Carolina, Communities for Comprehensive Immigration Reformwill be registering voters at nine sites in and around Charlotte onSaturday and Sunday.

In Texas, informational sessions are planned Saturday in Harlingenby the South Texas Immigration Council and in Houston by the Centro deRecursos para Centroamericanos, the Service Employees InternationalUnion and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

The goal is to harness potential new voters by educating permanentlegal residents about how to become citizens, and to register theAmerican children of immigrants.

Together, the two groups make up just over 14 million people, all ofwhom could be potential voters by 2008, according to a report publishedby the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

While House Republicans prefer to pander to their base, they will be in for a surprise if this voter registration drive is successful.  Many Latinos are furious at the xenophobia coming from the far-right.  If the Republicans cannot suppress the anger coming from within their base, which will boil over during these hearings, then expect to see a strong show of support by Hispanics for Democratic candidates in November.

Lastly, you had better believe that blogs such as this one will be tracking and exposing any effort by the Republicans to suppress the Hispanic vote.

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Other blogs writing about this issue: Out of my Mind, Double Strollers, Pro-Tech, Radio Active with Steve Mitton, Hispanic Trending, Migra Matters, Institute for Black Intellectualism, Vivir Latino.

GOP is teasing their base

There is a surprise on the immigration front.  After word came down two weeks ago that Congress had pretty much shelved any opportunity before November of solving the immigration stalemate between the House and Senate, the two sides are now talking again, says the Washington Post:

"I've really been rather encouraged about what's happened over the lastseveral days with regard to the issue of immigration," said HouseMajority Leader John A. Boehner  (R-Ohio).

The plan being negotiated on would call for the "construction of triple-layer walls, deployment of surveillance aircraft and other means of tightening the border with Mexico."  Two years later, the situation would then be evaluated and, if all went well, a quest worker program would be enacted.

But most Washington insiders will tell you that this is a big gamble.  If the GOP start talking about this issue again and gets nothing done, they will find themselves in an even worse position with their base voters than just month ago.  Every time Republicans talk about immigration, passionate feelings take hold within the conservative base, and those voters become even less tolerant of inaction.

I will give the GOP Congress credit for one thing: they are taking chances, something that Democratic strategists usually are too chicken to even consider.  If this thing does not work out, even after talking about it to death once again, the GOP will have voter turnout problems this November.  By not getting anything done, it would be like teasing their base.  Really, who likes to be teased?  Think of it as a baseball analogy.  Losing a game 8 to 3 is one thing.  But losing it 8 to 7 after the bullpen blew the lead can be worse.  Sometimes good intentions coupled with good effort can lead to high expectations.  If those expectations are not met, then everyone gets angry.  That is the gamble that the GOP faces by revisiting this issue.  Either they get their base revved up before November, or they anger them and millions of them stay home.

If an immigration compromise is made, expect the GOP to have a better shot at narrowly maintaining control of Congress.  But if no immigration deal is reached, then say "good-bye" to the Republican majority this November.
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Other blogs writing about this issue: Blog Reload, The Ford Report, Hot line Blog, The Influence Peddler, Beltway Blitz, The Hedgehog Blog, Blog for Arizona, Class Struggle.

Democratic presidents tougher on companies that hire illegal workers

When a Republican friend of yours claims that Clinton was weak on border enforcement, maybe you should cite the following statistics:

Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaledback 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, whichsubsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. Thenumber of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrantsdropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declinedfrom $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.

In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies. In 2004, it issued fine notices to three.

Of course, do not expect Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter to admit this anytime soon.

GOP immigration failure exposes state and local rifts

Immigration is off the table until at least next year.  But by then, the Republicans might be a minority in both the House and Senate, leaving the window open for the Democrats to solve this issue once and for all.

Republican Congressional aides were trying to find a way to compromise on a comprehensive immigration package, while also using this issue as a political weapon against Democrats:

"The discussion is how to put the Democrats in a box without attackingthe president," said one aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The major problem with that plan stemmed from the fact that both President Bush and the Democrats held the exact same positions on immigration, making it impossible to attack one without attacking the other.  So it came as little surprise late yesterday that any hope of an immigration compromise between the Republican House and the Republican Senate was erased.

How did the two sides differ?  The House leadership was unwilling to support any plan that allowed a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.  They also wanted to deal with strong border enforcement first, and immigration second.  The Senate leadership, on the other hand, wanted a comprehensive  package that dealt with border security and immigration at the same time, while also giving illegal immigrants an earned path to citizenship.

So who was to blame: the Republican House or the Republican Senate?  The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday hinted that it may have been the House that was responsible for the inaction:

"Odds were long that any so-called compromise bill would get to thepresident's desk this year," said Tancredo, citing the tightlegislative schedule and the distance between the House and Senateapproaches to immigration. "The nail was already put in the coffin ofthe Senate's amnesty plan. These hearings probably lowered it into thegrave."

Tancredo added that the hearings were designed to build support for anenforcement-only approach adopted by the House in a bill it passed inDecember.

These hearings are going to take place later this summer in parts of the Southwest, but will only end up encouraging the House not to budge on immigration at all.

But, unlike the broad reporting by the mainstream media, this issue needs to be taken one step further.  The divisiveness over immigration truly comes down to the difference between local and national politics.  Immigration, more than almost any other issue, is extremely localized.  When you look at the Senate and the House, the latter is more localized than the former.  Senators serve their entire state.  The representatives in the House have to speak on behalf of constituents in their local districts, meaning that they are more connected to a specific demographic.  Concerned citizens on both sides of the debate are responsible for fueling the rhetoric in the House of Representatives.  If you are a representative from a conservative southern town in Arizona, there is no way that you can get away with supporting a bill that allows what some consider to be "amnesty" for illegal immigrants.  You would be burned at the stake.  With conservative Republicans among the House majority, they used the rhetoric coming from their town hall meetings each weekend to add to the divisiveness.  The Senate, on the other hand, is much less localized, and was allied with the President and Democrats in both chambers of Congress on immigration reform.  So in the end, it was the localization of anti-immigration groups that put pressure on the House Leadership that caused there to be no compromise between branches of Congress.

In other words, this immigration debate explains quite well the purpose of having two chambers of Congress in the Legislative Branch.  They are vastly different from one another, represent different geopolitical groups, and are equally as important.

Video: The immigration debate

My cousin sent this video to me.  It asks what would it be like if the same exact discussion we are currently having about immigration took place when European columnists first immigrated to America:

I guess history has an interesting way of repeating itself.

Bush flip-flops on immigration

Bush wants to have it both ways on immigration.  This might be his attempt to help blur the Republican position for voters so that immigration is less of a factor during the upcoming November elections.

During a speech at the Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the House plan, Bush said that "unscrupulous" firms are to blame for the illegal immigration problem -- contradicting the Chamber of Commerce's rhetoric.  So if Bush is against employers hiring illegal immigrants, then why does he support the Senate version of the immigration bill, which does not penalize employers for hiring illegal immigrants? 

The President needs to pick a position and stick to it -- the same thing he criticized John Kerry for not doing in 2004.

Personal note about lack of direction in the Senate

I will always call myself a student of political science first, and a Democrat second.  The realism-driven political science half of me, which cares less about ideology and more about results, had a red light go off while evaluating the job of Senator Arlen Specter over the last week.  I have always given him credit.  He is a moderate.  He was a member of the "gang of 14" that prevented his own party from invoking the nuclear option last year.  He also breaks from GOP party ranks from time to time when it comes to the issue of warrantless wiretaps.

But Specter's self-driven, inconsistent attitude over the last week has hurt both his own party and all those in favor of getting this immigration proposal passed both houses.

In the first case, he scheduled a hearing about a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage in a room specifically designed to keep audience members out.  There were hardly even enough chairs for all the Senators.  When Democratic Senator Russ Feingold questioned Specter about it, the Pennsylvania Republican went ballistic.  The two argued until Feingold picked up his stuff and left.  Even though Specter himself opposes the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, he caved into pressure from the far-right of his party to move the hearing to a room where no political activists were welcome.

Secondly, one year from now when we look back on this immigration debate, Arlen Specter might be the one credited for destroying the great chance we had to get something done on this issue.  Right before the Senate immigration bill passed late last night, Specter inserted an extra amendment that would require the United States government, OUR government, to seek permission from Mexico before building a border fence.  Personally, I do not see how a fence will shut off the constant flow of illegal immigrations.  Border smugglers can just dig under the fence.  However, if we are going to build one, why do we have to first ask permission from Mexico?  I am a progressive and I still think that is a mindless amendment.  With conservatives all over talk radio pissed off at Arlen Specter for inserting that amendment, there is no way that the GOP-controlled House will vote to approve the Senate's version of the comprehensive immigration bill that most of the country supports.  Thanks a lot Arlen Specter!

It is counter-productive Senators like Arlen Specter that make me want the Democrats to take back the Senate even more than the House.

House support for immigration bill may hinge on Hastert bribery probe

President Bush made a very compassionate gesture to House Speaker Dennis Hastert yesterday.  As the Speaker faced an almost certain Justice Department probe, Bush decided to cut his fellow Republican a break by ordering the Justice Department to seal for 45 days the documents seized from an FBI raid on the property of a Democratic Congressman involved in Jack Abramoff's bribery scandal -- which Hastert is likely part of.

Of course, there was much more to it than that.  Here is how we got to this point:

• May 20th: Democratic Congressman William Jefferson's property raided by FBI because he was connected to the Abramoff probe.
• May 23rd - 24th: House Speaker Dennis Hastert complained about the raid, citing too much Executive power over Congressional lawmakers -- while knowing that he too had connections with Abramoff.
• Late May 24th: Executive Branch sources told ABC News' blog that Hastert was also part of the Abramoff probe.
• Early May 25th: Hastert complained on the radio about both the Jefferson raid and how Administration officials tried to embarrass him by leaking information to ABC News.
• May 25th: Bush agreed to seal for 45 days the documents seized from William Jefferson's property.

What many political news and blog sites all over the internet have overlooked is how incredibly significant this is.  The question everyone is asking is exactly why would the Administration want to go after the House Speaker like this?  Even though Hastert did complain about the increase in Executive power because of the raid, the Administration would not have raised the ante on the Speaker if they did not want something from him.

44 days from now, the Justice Department will unseal the evidence found as a result of the raid on Jefferson's property.  The talk about Jefferson will mean everyone else being probed in the Abramoff scandal, such as Dennis Hastert, will face political trouble as a result.  In this election year, the Republicans cannot tolerate another member of their leadership being in trouble with the law.

Think about it though.  Bush has the upper hand on Hastert when it comes to controlling what happens in 44 days.  However, Hastert has the upper hand on Bush when it comes to immigration.  The Speaker is refusing to bring the comprehensive immigration bill, which the Senate approved last night, to the House floor unless a majority of House Republicans support it.  Both the Senate and the White House have asked the Speaker to lift that rule just once.  Hastert has refused.  But with the certain Abramoff probe looming 44 days from now, Bush has his trump card.

This evaluation of the situation would conclude that a Bush-Hastert deal is in the works.  Bush would have to protect Hastert from political trouble in exchange for the House Speaker agreeing to bring the immigration bill to a vote.  Protecting Hastert means that Bush would order the Justice Department to keep sealed anything that might hurt Hastert politically.  As a result, by the power invested in the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert would introduce the immigration bill regardless of how fussy things would get between himself and anti-immigration social conservatives like James Sensenbrenner.  The minority of Republicans in support of the bill would then vote with Democrats, ultimately resulting in the passage of the bill.

Putting it simply, the Republicans are desperate to pass the immigration bill featuring the guest worker program.  They need something to tell voters not to vote for an alternative this November.  Until now, there seemed to be no way that social conservatives in the House would budge on a guest worker program.  But because the Speaker of the House controls when bills can be introduced, the White House might use Hastert's possible political troubles as a bargaining chip to get him to act on immigration.

For political science students out there, such as myself, this is a prime example of power politics at its trickiest.  On a positive note for Democrats, a very decent immigration bill would get passed.  On the down-side, the Republicans would obtain their first major legislative victory since before the Social Security fallout last year.

Study: Senate immigration proposal would save U.S. Treasury $32 billion

A study put together by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shows how the Senate's bipartisan comprehensive immigration package, which would give undocumented workers a path to citizenship, would actually be a net positive for the U.S. Treasury. 

The progressive think-tank CBPP did an analysis of that CBO study, and showed the economic benefits of the guest-worker program between the year 2007 and 2016:

                                           

Table 1:     Effects of Senate     Immigration Bill, 2007-2016             (billions of dollars)
Increases in Income and Payroll Taxes	62.1
Outlays for Refundable Credits	-29.4
Net Effect	32.7
Source:  Congressional     Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation

The CBPP elaborated further:

The CBO cost estimates show that, as a group, the new population of legal immigrants would pay more than twice as much in income and payroll taxes as they would receive in refundable credits.  In fact, the increase in revenues due to bringing these new filers into the tax system would exceed the total increase in costs for federal benefit programs that CBO projects would result from the legislation (including costs in the Food Stamps, Medicaid, and other federal programs).

Of course, being that the Congressional Budget Office is trusted by both parties, this adds legitimacy to critics that have questioned the conservative Heritage Foundation for recently releasing a faulty statistical report about how the guest-worker program will increase the number of immigrants by 103 million.  The Brookings Institution explained how the Heritage Foundation report was skewed:

To reach 103 million, Rector "assumes the maximums, pulls out all thestops for every loophole, possibility, and makes some assumptions -some unrealistic - about how many family members will be brought in,"said William Frey, a demographer for the Brookings Institution, acenter-left policy-research center. "It's widely unrealistic. Youcannot assume the maximum numbers for some of the provisions. He(Rector) is pushing it to the extremes."

The Congressional Budget Office says the number will be more like 8 million new immigrants by 2016, not 103 million.

(Maybe it's just me, but I think that I would rather trust the Congressional Budget Office over some conservative think tank that adjusts their facts to fit an already established agenda.  Gee, that reminds me of a foreign policy I know!)