Immigration Law

WASHINGTON TIMES' DINAN WRITES ABOUT MY "SCENARIO" FOR DEMOCRATS AND IMMIGRATION REFORM

By Greg Siskind

Stephen Dinan, the Washington Times reporter that regularly writes about immigration issues for his newspaper, has published a column discussing my post advising the Democrats to bring back immigration reform this year. I had a separate post advising McCain and the Republicans.

Dinan expresses some doubt:

It's an intriguing scenario, though it doesn't strike me as working out as easily as he puts it. In the first place, McCain has had to shift somewhat, embracing both an enforcement-first position that his own campaign manager says is now the consensus of the party. It would be impossible for McCain to back away from that now.

Second, it wasn't just Republicans that killed the bill. More than a dozen Democratic senators were happy to have a chance to vote against it, and on the House side, plenty of conservative-leaning Democrats will be begging their leaders not to go Siskind's recommended route.

Still, given that McCain has said he still supports the bill he wrote with Sen. Ted Kennedy ? yet also says that bill is dead ? Democrats must be at least a little tempted to prove him wrong and bring it back, just to see what he does.

I'd just note a couple of things. First, the Democrats may not care that McCain could oppose the bill. If McCain opposes it, then he can be labeled a flip-flopper and it will be a powerful reminder to Hispanics that McCain is not their friend. Presumably, a certain segment of evangelical Christians and far right Republicans will choose not to vote on Election Day. If McCain also can't win the 40% of the Hispanic vote that President Bush secured, he's going to have trouble finding a place to make up for all of those lost votes.

Second, House Democrats have apparently made a major concession over the last few days and appear willing to pursue a five year non-immigrant visa for unauthorized immigrants with no path to a green card or citizenship. In short, no "amnesty" (or at least that would be the argument since some of the antis will treat anything short of permanent exile as unacceptable). This concession could very well be enough to bring along a number of new supporters of the bill.

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