Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Midterm Election
Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce Continues Immigration Crusade Despite Budget Crisis
01 year ago
A cog in the wheel of local enforcement legislation, Arizona state Senator and now Senate President-elect, Russell Pearce, predictably said he will continue his immigration crusade to repeal part of the 14th Amendment despite the looming state budget crisis. A recent article points out that Pearce, in the throes of last minute campaigning, pledged that he would make boosting Arizona’s flailing economy his number one priority instead of pushing yet another immigration bill. Not surprisingly, however, Pearce told reporters today that “he never promised the 14th Amendment bills wouldn’t be heard, only that he wouldn’t sponsor it.” Sound fishy? That’s because it is. Sponsor of Arizona’s controversial enforcement law SB1070, Pearce has a history of not only prioritizing immigration enforcement legislation, but accepting campaign contributions from the prison lobby who helped write it.
Conceding to Arizona Republicans who feared Pearce’s immigration enforcement fervor would top other state priorities should he be elected Senate President, Pearce pledged to put off the bill until 2012 and focus on “jump-starting the Arizona economy by working on an economic stimulus package consisting of tax cuts and incentives to create jobs.” Now, however, Pearce is walking back his pledge:
He is now telling reporters that he never promised the 14th Amendment bills wouldn’t be heard, only that he wouldn’t sponsor it. Instead, Rep. John Kavanagh will take the lead on the measure when the legislative session begins in January, and Pearce says he will do everything in his power to make sure it passes.
Sadly, mincing words seems to be least of Sen. Pearce’s problems. Pearce recently defended himself against an NPR story which “traced donations from private-prison corporations to lawmakers, saying that 30 of SB 1070’s 36 co-sponsors received contributions over the next six months.” The story connects Pearce to a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization consisting of state legislators and powerful corporations like Reynolds American Inc., ExxonMobil and the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), who apparently had a hand in drafting SB1070—a law designed to round up undocumented immigrants to fill their detention beds.
Senator Pearce is no stranger to co-authoring enforcement legislation. He’s apparently teaming up again with Kris Kobach of the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), the legal arm of restrictionist group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), to draft legislation to repeal the part of the 14th Amendment which allows for birthright citizenship. IRLI, mind you, is an immigration restrictionist organization that seems to care more about the proliferation of enforcement legislation than fixing our broken immigration system. At a recent civil rights symposium at George Mason University, General Counsel for IRLI, Michael Hethmon, brazenly admitted they weren’t getting the immigration restriction policies they wanted federally, and instead decided to try and do it through state legislatures—throwing pieces of legislation against the wall to “see what sticks.” He also commented that the Arizona law is a means to an end for the restrictionist movement, not an end in itself.
The point is that no one should really be surprised by state Sen. Pearce, his broken promises, or his involvement with private-prison corporations and restrictionist groups—because prioritizing immigration enforcement over fixing Arizona’s dragging economy is clearly a means to an end—his career .
Photo by bradcorban.
Pollsters Still Underestimating the Latino Vote
01 year ago
An interesting post-election thread is the issue of why so many polls underestimated voter turnout, specifically in races where the Democratic candidate won. The starkest example comes from the state of Nevada where the Democratic candidate for Senate, Harry Reid, beat his Republican challenger, Sharron Angle, by 5 points. Polls published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal had Angle leading by 4 points just days before—a 9 point gap. The New York Times’ Nate Silver had Angle ahead by 2.3 points, with Reid eventually winning by 5.6 points—nearly an 8 point gap. Why the disparity?
The Las Vegas Review-Journal writes today that its own polls “wound up having about as much predictive power as the Old Farmer’s Almanac in forecasting the winter snowfall.” Nate Silver wrote in the New York Times that “It’s fairly unusual, however, to have the consensus of polls off by 7 or 8 points in an extremely competitive Senate or gubernatorial general election.” Silver then went on to speculate why numbers were so off in the Silver State:
“I speculated, for instance, that the fact that Mr. Reid is the sort of candidate whom one votes for unenthusiastically might have skewed the turnout models…There is another theory, however, which was proposed to me last night by Matt Barreto of the polling firm Latino Decisions…that Latino voters—somewhat against the conventional wisdom—were relatively engaged by this election and for the most part were going to vote Democratic. Mr. Barreto also found that Latino voters who prefer to speak Spanish—about 40 percent of Latino voters in California meet this description, he told me—are particularly likely to vote Democratic. Pollsters who don’t conduct bilingual interviewing at all, or who make it cumbersome for the respondent to take the poll in Spanish, may be missing these voters.”
LatinoDecisions, the polling group which focuses on states in which the Latino vote will play an important role in elections, and who brought this to Nate Silver’s attention, writes in great detail about the challenge and ongoing undercount of minority voters on their blog:
“The problem of faulty exit poll data for Latinos is not new, yet very few in the media have expertise in polling Latinos and analyzing Latino vote data, and as a result are not in a position to assess on election night the veracity of the Latino results…the National Exit Pool surveys, systematically underestimate Latino and African-American Democratic vote share by over-representing higher income, higher education, and more socially integrated minority voters than their share of the electorate warrants.”
The Las Vegas Review Journal is beginning to agree and in taking a look at its own polling wrote:
“R-J critics think they know exactly where the breakdown occurred: Its pollster, relying on old-fashioned random dialing to land lines, doesn’t account for voters who only have cell phones, and undercounts Hispanic voters who may be reluctant to participate in surveys. Both groups are heavily Democratic.”
And they note the bottom line problem:
“They’re not drawing a population that looks like the electorate,” said Dave Damore, a UNLV political scientist who studies public opinion data.
At the end of the day, pollsters and the politicians who depend on them are at great political peril if they willfully ignore huge gaps in their poll samples. Undercounting Latinos, cell phone users, or any other group that has clearly emerged as undercounted and who are continuing to grow in size and importance each election day, is clearly political and reputation suicide.
Photo by barackobamadotcom.
Is the Latino Vote Up for Grabs? Midterm Polling and the Future of the Latino Vote
01 year ago
Last night, GOP candidates won a number of key Senate, House and gubernatorial races as well as a majority in the House of Representatives. The night, however, wasn’t a total wash for the Democratic Party who managed to hold onto a majority in the Senate. Headlining the Senate races, Nevada Senator Harry Reid held onto his seat against Tea Party flag bearer Sharron Angle, whose seemingly endless stream of anti-immigrant campaign attack ads went from bad to worse. In a state where roughly 1 in 4 residents is Latino, many are chalking up Sen. Reid’s victory to the power of the Latino vote. Early polling seems to indicate that the Latino vote helped secure several key races for Democrats out west (in CA, CO, NV), but not across the board necessarily. Although trending Democratic, the Latino vote was not enough to win gubernatorial races in New Mexico or Nevada. So what gives? What does it take to successfully court the Latino vote?
LatinoDecisions, an independent survey research firm, released early polling data today which credits the Latino vote for several key Democratic victories. According to the poll:
- In Nevada, Democratic Senator Harry Reid defeated Sharron Angle with 90% of the Latino vote.
- In California, Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer defeated Carly Fiorina with 86% of the Latino vote, as did Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown who defeated Meg Whitman with 86% of the Latino vote.
- In Colorado, Democratic Senate candidate Michael Bennet defeated Ken Buck with 81% of the Latino vote, while Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper defeated Dan Maes and Tom Tancredo with 77% of the Latino vote.
The early polling also reveals that the Latino vote is not monolithic, nor does it secure a victory or trend strictly Democratic. Florida Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban exiles, defeated Kendrick Meek with 62% of the Latino vote. Likewise, plenty of Democratic candidates had the Latino vote, but lost their elections. And while it might be easy to say that candidates who use extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric (Meg Whitman in California, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Tom Tancredo in Colorado) lost elections because they alienated the Latino vote, look at Republican Gov. Jan Brewer who signed Arizona’s SB1070 and yet still won her seat in Arizona without winning the Latino vote (Democrat Terry Goddard captured 85% of the Latino vote).
That being said, political parties must remain cognizant of their narrative on immigration and Latino issues—after all, Latinos comprised 7.9% (or 11.6 million) of all registered voters in the U.S. at last count and continue to grow as an essential voting bloc in winning presidential elections. The rhetoric of some notorious Republican immigration hardliners doesn’t square with the Republican Party’s more tempered stance on immigration in their recent pre-election Pledge to America—hardly the same narrative. In fact, part of the Republican Party’s challenge in courting the Latino vote is quelling the fringe right on immigration.
So while securing the Latino vote won’t guarantee you electoral victories, courting it certainly can’t hurt. For both parties, courting the Latino vote must not only involve reining in the fringe and turning down the fear-mongering, but some honest to God passes at immigration reform. Without actual efforts to address the immigration issue, Democrats and Republicans are likely lose Latinos—kind of like saying you’ll call, but never following through. And one of these days, they might not get another date.
Photo by blueacid.
Setting the Stage for Immigration Reform
01 year ago
As people head to the polls tomorrow, they will consider a wide range of important issues—the economy, health care, unemployment, deficit spending, tax cuts and immigration to name a few. Not all voters are single issue voters, nor will people vote strictly down party or demographic lines. But whomever people vote for, it is critically important that they consider their issues not only as a reflection of where we are now, but where we want to be down the road, using present day indicators as road signs. Immigration, as of late, has been wielded like a political weapon—used in campaign attack ads and across the media to slander opponents and set the political stage for what’s to come (read: more angry rhetoric and no action). As the Immigration Policy Center noted in its recent report on the New American voter, one in ten registered voters is likely to have a personal connection to immigration that may very well affect their views on candidates.
But it would be a mistake for other voters—those whose immigrant history is three, four, or even more generations removed—to assume that immigration doesn’t have an affect on their lives as well. Our broken immigration system increasingly affects all aspects of American life, particularly our economic growth, national security, and future standing in the world. The debate over SB 1070 in Arizona has shown us that immigration has also become a growing issue among civil rights activists, especially since questions of racial profiling and discriminatory treatment became central to the debate. The rise in calls to repeal birthright citizenship would, if this movement takes hold, dramatically shift our understanding of who is a citizen—meaning that the immigration issue ultimately affects every voter, New American or otherwise.
This is not a partisan assessment. Members of both parties use the immigration issue as a tool to curry favor with particular constituencies. It was Democrats, after all, who brought a $600 million emergency border security package to the Senate floor despite questions over its efficacy. And Republicans, in the traditional role as party out of power, have relentlessly dogged Secretary Napolitano on her immigration enforcement provisions.
Thus, where voting is concerned, it really isn’t an either/or kind of issue. Politicians on both sides of the aisle will continue to play politics with this issue until the American public holds them accountable. We need immigration policies that address the complex and interconnected problems inherent in immigration. But we also need people to stay engaged on the issue, to move the ball forward and actually get to a place where we can have a robust debate with all sides weighing in. Whomever people choose on Tuesday, they need to make those choices. Improving our immigration system starts with a simple step—vote.
Photo by neonbubble.
More Election Time Anti-Immigrant Antics
01 year ago
There are several things the public can count on each election season—a deluge of non-stop political advertising, daily tracking polls, and now to an increasing degree, false claims about immigrants by politicians looking for a cheap way to score political points.
The first example comes from Kansas where anti-immigrant zealot Kris Kobach (running for Secretary of State) is claiming that non-citizens are fraudulently voting en masse on election day. The charge is so ludicrous that he has not presented any evidence to support the claim. This red-herring of non-citizen voting is so flimsy that both conservative and liberal groups have responded to the myth. An October 18, 2010, story in the National Journal points out that “a five-year investigation by the Bush Justice Department…turned up virtually no evidence of widespread voter fraud.” And the Brennan Center for Justice noted in their 2006 report on voter fraud that “one is more likely to be struck by lightning than to come across an actual case of voter fraud.” Yet some self-serving political candidates, like Kobach, continue to perpetuate this myth for their own electoral gain.
The next example came yesterday when a group of state legislators announced their intention to pass state-based legislation that would challenge birthright citizenship currently protected in the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Kobach has a hand in this one, too.) This is the latest attempt to introduce bills that would deny U.S. citizenship to children whose parents are in the U.S. without authorization or on temporary visas. The Center for New Community profiles the legislators behind this movement to repeal birthright citizenship and their anti-immigrant connections in a recent blog post.
The bottom line is that immigrants are not risking deportation just so they can vote, nor will ending birthright citizenship stop unauthorized immigration. These ridiculous claims show the short-sightedness and divisiveness of those who repeat them. This type of fear-mongering is just the opposite of what we want and need in our elected leaders. Immigration is a complicated issue, in need of cool and rational minds. Let’s hope America elects some.
Photo by Kevin H.
U.S. Border Czar Calls on Congress to Get Serious about Immigration Reform
01 year ago
While some candidates continue to make political fodder out of immigration and border security on the campaign trail, administration officials are pushing Congress to get real about overhauling our broken immigration system. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner, Alan Bersin, recently commented that Congress needs to ‘get serious about a post-election immigration overhaul if the nation is to deal with the duality of enforcing border security while facilitating trade.’ In the wake of the nation’s SB1070-inspired border frenzy, some may be surprised to learn that there’s more to immigration than targeting undocumented immigrants and securing the border. A big part of Bersin’s job also involves regulating the flow of trade and commerce across the border, as well as expediting travel—priorities that tend to get lost in empty debate over who’s the toughest on undocumented immigration.
Last week at the Migration Policy Institute, border czar Alan Bersin commented that we need to expand the immigration debate beyond enforcement rhetoric to address other policy areas:
In truth, neither mass amnesty nor mass deportations will solve a problem that’s rooted in labor markets, which is why President Obama has shown a “fierce determination to stop kicking the can down the road” and supported a bipartisan proposal presented by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., last spring, as well as legislation (S 3932) Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., introduced shortly before the pre-election recess.
These legislative proposals would take immigration to a place it failed to go after the 1986 overhaul (PL 99-603), which provided a path to citizenship but failed to confront illegal immigration, Bersin said. Since then, the immigration debate has centered on control and enforcement — a focus that magnified exponentially after Sept. 11, Bersin said. But, he added, enforcement and normalization cannot succeed without appropriate coordination with other policy.
Bersin’s comments echo what many immigration experts have been saying for months—that enforcement-first, border-only approach to immigration is not a winning strategy…that we need to overhaul our entire immigration system. Back in June, Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano made similar statements regarding reform, border security, and trade:
The plain fact of the matter is the border is as secure now as it’s ever been… the notion that you’re going to somehow seal the border and only at that point will you discuss immigration reform, that is not an answer to the problem … recognizing also that there’s a lot of trade and commerce we want going back and forth.
Former DHS Assistant Secretary for Border and Transportation Security Policy, Stewart Verdery, also pointed out that securing the border is an elusive goal, and that without comprehensive immigration reform, we will never achieve the real objectives needed to end illegal immigration.
So what will the immigration narrative be like after mid-term elections? More of the same go-nowhere enforcement-only rhetoric which completely ignores other policy areas like commerce and trade? Or perhaps we can expect a more nuanced approach—one that looks at economic, labor-driven and administrative realities of our immigration system? If the last few months are any indicator, however, I’m not going to hold my breath.
Photo by defense.gov.
Census Data Confirms Immigrant Voting Bloc Still Growing
01 year ago
Today, the Immigration Policy Center released its latest report documenting the size and importance of an emerging voting bloc, New Americans (naturalized U.S. citizens and children of immigrants born after 1965 when the current wave of immigration from Latin American and Asia began). In The New American Electorate: The Growing Political Power of Immigrants and their Children, IPC charts the growth of immigrant, Asian and Latino voters using Census data. The reasons to keep a close eye on this growing demographic—who now account for 1 in 10 registered voters in the U.S.—is that New Americans have a highly personal connection to the modern immigrant experience (as do many Latinos and Asians) and are part of families that live the political and economic realities of immigration today. So in other words, when you demonize an immigrant, you may be demonizing a voter.
It’s hardly surprising then that a major “Get Out the Vote” effort is underway, aimed at mobilizing immigrant voters—particularly in key battleground states. On a conference call today hosted by America’s Voice, civic participation organizations highlighted a $5.4+ million engagement and mobilization effort targeting more than one million Latino, Asian, and immigrant voters in at least twenty-three states, including Florida, California, Illinois, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, New York, Virginia, Colorado, Washington, Ohio, Wisconsin, Idaho, North Carolina, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Utah.
These voter registration campaigns appear to have had an effect. Between 1996 and 2008, the number of New American registered voters jumped 101.5%. As with most voters, the hurdle appears to be registration. Once registered, however, they are likely to turn out to vote. Breaking that down a bit more, 60.5% of naturalized U.S. citizens who were eligible to vote actually registered. Of that group, 89.2% turned out to the polls and cast their ballot in 2008. Similarly, 61% of children (born after 1965) of immigrants who were eligible to vote registered; 84.9% of those registered cast their ballot.
These numbers can turn into an important new constituency that politicians need to remember. The number of New American registered voters exceeded the victory margins in the 2008 presidential election in 12 states (AZ, CA, FL, GA, IN, MO, MT, NV, NJ, NC, TX, VA). In other words, these voters can mean the difference between winning and losing an election.
At a time when elections are often decided by small voting margins, New Americans have been consistently overlooked and politically underestimated. The ranks of registered voters who are New Americans have been growing rapidly this decade and are likely to play an increasingly pivotal role in elections at all levels in years to come. Candidates perceived as anti-immigrant are unlikely to win their votes.
Lynn Tramonte with America’s Voice also explained why their high registration and turnout rate is not surprising at all: “Immigrant voters are Americans by choice. They love this country and are proud to be a part of it.”
Photo by Thomas Hawk.
From Bad to Worse: Immigrant Smearing in a Time of Midterm Cholera
01 year ago
Well it’s finally here—open season on immigrants. You don’t even have to stare into the headlights of campaign politics to observe how blithely some candidates have taken aim at their opponents and managed to catch immigrants in their crosshairs. Two recent campaign ads portray undocumented immigrants as darkly-clothed thieves—like in one of those overly-dramatized alarm system commercials where just when you turn your back, Hispanic immigrants apparently come sneaking across the border, receive over-sized checks, and steal your children’s college tuition. Right.
Aside from the blatant racial stereotyping, the authors of these ads don’t even get their twisted “facts” straight. But even more troubling is the ubiquity of immigrant-bashing in the run up to midterms. Ever since Arizona’s SB 1070—and some would correctly argue well before—demonizing immigrants has evolved into the latest political strategy in campaign warfare. At least we’d expect this from restrictionsist groups, who by the way, are still hard at work scapegoating immigrants with their usual broken logic, loose facts and ludicrous conclusions. But now it’s going mainstream.
Let’s start with senatorial candidate, Sharron Angle (R-NV), who approved this message:
And this ad was approved by Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), who’s running for re-election:
So in the first video we have tax breaks, Social Security benefits and preferred college tuition rates for undocumented immigrants—and footage of Latino immigrants sneaking across the border. The second video features, footage of immigrants sneaking across the border (with flashlights, mind you), welcoming marching bands, and this is my favorite, undocumented immigrants receiving a Publishers Clearing House-sized check, riding away in a limo, as the band plays and fireworks burst overhead. There may also have been a high five, but you’ll have to check.
Clearly, as America’s Voice references in a blog post, fact-checkers and journalists have dissected these spurious claims and found them to be terribly misleading, if not untrue. But what did we expect? Facts often end up on the cutting room floor, especially when political gains are possible by ignoring them. It is, as Adam Sewer of the American Prospect points out, “a transparent attempt to gain political support by demonizing Latinos.” Which gets us where exactly? Sure, some candidates will likely ride the anti-immigrant wave into office, but what happens when we DO eventually decide to tackle immigration once and for all? It’s not like our broken immigration system is going anywhere and it’s clearly not feasible to deport nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants? Are we really going to begin a serious policy debate with race-baiting and immigrant-bashing?
Practical policy solutions to our immigration problems won’t be found by exploiting and distorting an emotional issue. All politicians need to move out of a framework of “who’s the toughest on immigration” and into “what are the problems and how do we fix them,” or our immigration problems, much like television campaign ads, will only get worse.
Photo by Arenamontanus.
Utah Leaders Balk at Arizona-esque Immigration Enforcement Bill
01 year ago
With midterm election campaigning well underway, some local candidates are lifting up state and local immigration enforcement legislation as a means to garner public support. Unfortunately, as is often the case when politics meets reality, not everyone is on board with local enforcement laws like Arizona’s SB1070—key provisions of which were enjoined by a federal district judge in late July. Over the last few months, state leaders in Ohio, Idaho, Nebraska and Houston have either heavily edited or voted not to pursue state immigration measures, citing costly lawsuits, court battles and the dubious constitutionality of such laws. This month, state leaders in Utah are also balking at an immigration measure modeled on the controversial Arizona law.
Utah made headlines in July when state Rep. Stephen Sandstrom vowed to move forward on a local immigration enforcement bill in light of the DOJ lawsuit against Arizona’s SB1070. Sandstrom’s bill—the Illegal Immigration Enforcement Act—would require Utah police to check the immigration status of anyone they arrest if they have “reasonable suspicion” that the individual is undocumented. Also recall that shortly thereafter, a vigilante group called “The Concerned Citizens of the United States” published a list of 1,300 alleged unauthorized immigrants—including birth dates, workplaces, and social security numbers—accompanied by a letter instructing government agencies to “begin deportation now.” Although the Utah Attorney General and Governor condemned the list, and pledged to work for more comprehensive immigration solutions, Rep. Sandstrom continues to pursue his enforcement measure.
Last week, Rep. Sandstrom led a delegation of Utah lawmakers on a field trip to gauge public sentiment on immigration and found “popular support for Arizona’s controversial legislation.” Some Utah legislators, however, aren’t buying it. They join a host of other state lawmakers who question whether implementing a local immigration enforcement law is worth the economic and political fallout.
Michael Clara, chair of the Utah Republican Hispanic Assembly, likens Sandstrom’s bill to a “witch hunt.” Clara also said the measure stands in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, would cause a negative economic impact and punishes “a single group of people” rather than the unscrupulous employers who hire undocumented workers. Furthermore, Clara contends that he doesn’t see a lot of public support for the bill in Utah:
“Unless I’m blind, I’m just not seeing a lot of support for this. I think it’s just the fringes and the extreme right that supports what he is doing.” Clara says. “There is more support nationally on what he is doing than what he is going to get locally. Sandstrom’s bill is going nowhere. It’s dead as far as I can see.”
Similarly, Utah Democratic senator Luz Robles said the bill is “fiscally irresponsible” and worries, like many other state legislators, that the bill would be too costly if passed—and for good reason. Arizona, with a state budget deficit of roughly $4.5 million, is spending thousands on a PR campaign to boost Arizona tourism which has sharply declined since the passage of SB 1070. Fremont, Nebraska, is currently considering a property tax increase proposal to help shoulder the projected legal fees resulting from the city’s restrictive immigration ordinance. Similarly, Farmers Branch, Texas and Hazleton, Pennsylvania have spent millions of dollars defending their restrictive immigration laws in court. Now that a Federal Appeals Court has ruled that Hazleton’s law is unenforceable, many of its citizens must be wondering if the law was worth its hefty price tag.
So while state and local immigration enforcement measures continue to create a splash for politicians seeking the limelight, the benefit appears short-lived if they take the time to see what these “popular enforcement laws” are costing other states, both economically and politically.
Photo by qbac07.
Sen. Menendez Aims for Lame Duck, Urges Advocates to Focus on Policy of CIR 2010
01 year ago
There can be advantages to going it alone. Despite two years of repeated attempts to get a bipartisan immigration reform bill in the Senate, Senators Menendez (D-NJ) and Leahy (D-VT) finally said “enough” and introduced the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2010 (CIR 2010) last week. Plenty of people have pointed out that the bill was introduced just as Congress left Washington to go into full-time campaign mode, leaving Sens. Menendez and Leahy virtually alone in Washington to promote their new bill. On a conference call Friday, however, Sen. Menendez said he aims at moving the bill during lame duck session or next Congress, but urged advocates and the media to focus on the merits of the bill, rather than the timing. (Other immigration bills passed during lame duck include the LIFE Act and NACARA.)
CIR 2010 doesn’t stray too much from the general framework we have seen since 2006 and builds on much of Sen. Menendez’s own work in the past two years. Analysts are digging away at the details of this massive bill (the official summary alone ran 73 pages) but the outline should be familiar to everyone by now.
The bill is broken into six parts—titles—addressing the major elements of reform: 1) Border security 2) Interior Enforcement 3) Employment Verification 4) Reforming Legal Immigration 5) Legalization of the Undocumented and 6) Integration and Citizenship. It adheres to many of the major principles outlined in the bipartisan REPAIR proposal released by Senators Schumer, Graham, Menendez and others earlier this spring. It incorporates many provisions of past and current legislative proposals that have had bipartisan support in the past—AgJobs, DREAM Act, Strong STANDARDS Act. It also includes provisions long advocated by Senator Grassley (R-IA) on routing out fraud in the immigration system.
CIR 2010 pushes the envelope, too, most notably by including the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA)—a bill which provides equal immigration protection and benefits for permanent partners of LGBTQ U.S. citizens. It includes the creation of a Standing Commission on Immigration which would have the authority to dig deep into the impact of immigration on our economy, national security, and labor markets. The bill also creates a new temporary worker program, but leaves the politically delicate question of how many new workers to the Commission to solve.
The Menendez-Leahy bill also offers an extremely generous legalization program, making anyone in the country as of September 30 eligible to apply. Like the Gutierrez-Ortiz bill in the House, it offers a more streamlined approach to legalization than the complicated and bureaucratic approaches that emerged from bipartisan bills in 2006 and 2007. In a nod to the continuing sluggishness of the economy, however, CIR 2010 abandons all pretense of requiring gainful employment during the Lawful Prospective Immigrant phase (the six to 11 year period before someone could qualify to get a green card). That’s not to say that people won’t work—but by eliminating that provision and focusing on the basics—paying taxes, learning English and civics, passing all criminal and background checks—CIR 2010 offers a clear-headed process for getting people registered and moving the country beyond the rhetoric of amnesty.
The generosity at the front end is tempered, however, by some extremely tough requirements regarding challenging denials of LPI status or the validity of the law itself. The bill, for instance, keeps the registration program open for only one year—a source of concern to service providers who know how difficult it is to ramp up a program and move ten million people through it. It continues the trend of denying access to the program if the applicant ever committed a crime subject to a sentence of one year or more (there are more generous waivers and exceptions than in the past, however). The ability to challenge denials in administrative and judicial settings is available, but strictly limited.
Similarly, the inclusion of triggers relating to operational control of the border—no matter how achievable—is disturbing. While the program to give people LPI status will be able to go forward unimpeded, the decision to link border security to legalization is a significant reminder that Sens. Menendez and Leahy aren’t exactly going it alone. The political baggage of our enforcement driven culture has become a seemingly unavoidable part of immigration reform.
People will find far more to critique and argue about before too long—that’s the nature of a massive bill like CIR 2010. But that’s also the beauty of it. Theories, proposals, and principles advance the debate only so far. An actual piece of legislation, real text that people can debate and analyze, gives advocates something to rally around and policy folks something to build on. In going it alone, Sens. Menendez and Leahy aren’t truly alone, of course. CIR 2010 is a snapshot of where the Senate is today—a calculation about what makes sense to the sponsors but also about what is most likely to bring more people to the bill. Sometimes you just have to take the plunge, knowing and believing that others will follow.
Photo by menendez.senate.gov.
