Immigration Law

I BEG TO DIFFER

By Greg Siskind

Some readers have emailed me expressing their disappointment that ILW.com effectively endorsed John McCain in its editorial in today's Immigration Daily:

If we get President Obama, Democrats are going to be euphoric on Jan 20, 2009, and rightly so - being back in the White House, at last, after 8 long and bitter years. Democrats have not been able to pursue their priorities for 8 years and we can expect them to act aggressively on their big priorities immediately after a President Obama takes office. There are at least four Democratic priorities ahead of immigration: the Iraq war, universal health care, budget/taxes and energy policy. These are all large, complex issues and Congress will take most of a President Obama's first term to work on these. In such a scenario, we will not see any significant immigration benefits in the foreseeable future.

If we get President McCain, we will still have a powerful Democratic majority in Congress on Jan 20, 2009. This Congress will be at loggerheads with him on all the major Democratic priorities. Democrats will want to bring the troops home whereas Mr. McCain wants them in Iraq for 100 years; Democrats see a health care crisis whereas Mr. McCain sees none; Democrats will want increased taxes whereas Mr. McCain would like to cut them; Democrats want to conserve oil and work on alternative sources of power whereas Mr. McCain would like to drill for oil all over the map. Democrats and a President McCain will be 180 degrees apart on all major Democratic priorities. In this bitter fighting hardly anything will get done legislatively, and both Democrats and Mr. McCain will be looking for opportunities to show the country that they can work on something together.

While there are a few areas of agreement between Mr. McCain and Democrats, immigration is the largest issue on which Democrats and McCain agree. While the current Republican Party platform is the most anti-immigrant one in memory, there were news reports that Mr. McCain, who has a long track record of being pro-immigration, tried to make it more immigration-friendly and failed. This is the issue on which he is most likely to stab his party's anti-immigrationist wing in the back both in his political interests and due to his own convictions (Mr. McCain had to fight his party's anti-immigrationists tooth and nail during the Republican primaries). We expect to see almost all of the original McCain-Kennedy bill become law during the first six months of a McCain Presidency.

The Bush era has been the worst in memory for immigration advocates. However the combination of a powerful Democratic majority in Congress with Mr. McCain as President offers the best hope for speedily obtaining desperately needed immigration benefits.

I strongly disagree with this conclusion. While I think that in their hearts, both McCain and Obama are pro-immigration, I do not agree with the editorial's conclusion that McCain will reach across the aisle and push through a reform bill in order to show he can get something done.

First, it's not clear that he would even try. During this presidential campaign, he had the opportunity to reach out to Democrats and choose Joe Lieberman as his running mate. Instead, he chose a candidate designed to appeal to his base. When governing, the same pressures will exist.

Second, Democrats are not likely to cut McCain very much slack in general and McCain will need to maintain strong allies in his party in order to have any hope of moving his agenda along. I very much doubt he'll alienate them when he'll be governing from a weak position from day one.

Third, McCain will not want to be seen as flip-flopping yet again and reversing his position that he wants to pass enforcement legislation first. He has already lost a great deal of credibilty by abandoning his earlier support of immigration reform and to reverse again will be impossible to defend as anything other than an admission that he lied to get elected.

As for Obama, as I noted the other day, if he wins it will probably be because of the Hispanic vote. And he'll have only one way he'll be able to pay back that community - with a push for immigration reform. He stated in the party platform that he would pass immigration reform in the first year. The McCain platform didn't even endorse immigration reform, much less commit to a timetable. Obama also knows that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has blocked popular immigration bills in the current session of Congress as a protest against not moving comprehensive reform legislation and they could very well expand that effort to block the new President Obama's broader legislative agenda if he turns his back on his promise. My guess is that Obama will turn to immigration reform almost immediately and get this issue out of the way.

The editorial's statement that immigration is not a major issue for the Democrats is simply incorrect. It is likely to be THE issue that gets Obama elected. And it is likely to be the toughest issue he'll have to address. That's why he's likely to deal with it during his honeymoon period rather than wait on it to come up in the middle of his term when he'll be thinking about re-election. Hispanic voters are going to be absolutely critical to Obama getting a second term - probably even more so than this year.

If immigration is your number one issue, I think Obama is the better candidate.

Full post as published by Greg Siskind's Blog on September 16, 2008 (boomark / email).