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Changes in immigration law in election year unlikely

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

But early indications are that Bush’s proposal for millions of temporary work visas will fall between two stools — as opposed to goalposts.
Many Democrats don’t like the president’s plan because they feel it doesn’t go far enough in bringing legal status to illegals. Some Republicans agree.
Many Republicans see the Bush plan as nothing more than amnesty and the opening of a floodgate. Some Democrats agree with this view.
Add into the this heady mix the fact that this is an election year, with all 435 House members and one third of the Senate up for reelection, and the potential for little or no immediate progress on immigration reform looms discouragingly large.
Still, many gave the Bush statement a cautious, if not entirely enthusiastic welcome. One to see the positive side was Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen, whose department has to be most concerned about the undocumented Irish in the U.S.
“This initiative gives renewed hope to those who, for whatever reason, have been unable to regularize their status in the U.S.,” Cowen said in response to the Bush speech. “We will need to study the details of the president’s proposals carefully before we can assess their implications for undocumented Irish nationals in the U.S.
“However, I believe that President Bush’s initiative represents an important first step in addressing the situation of undocumented foreign workers in a pragmatic and compassionate way.”
This response was warmer than many from Capitol Hill and more restrained by far than that of Sen. Edward Kennedy.
Kennedy has been mulling an immigration reform bill in recent months and his participation is seen as crucial in any debate leading to a workable compromise.
Kennedy described the Bush proposal as “woefully inadequate” and a package that fell far short of the kind of “serious reform” the country needed to fix a “broken immigration system.”
Kennedy, like a number of Democrats, is wary of a flood of cheap, temporary labor that could potentially undercut better-paid union jobs.
Kennedy has also been looking at the kind of reform that would make legal residents, and eventual citizens, of many of the undocumented living within the nation’s borders.
On the other side of the aisle, GOP Rep. Elton Gallegly from California, a member of the House Immigration Subcommittee, gave the Bush plan a thumbs down on the basis that it would cut lawbreakers the kind of break they didn’t deserve.
“This clearly is an amnesty,” he said. “It provides not only amnesty, but a reward for people who committed a felony by coming here illegally. If this is what the president is offering on this issue, the proposal is dead on arrival up here.”
Gallegly’s partymate Tom Tancredo, from Colorado, went further. Tancredo described the Bush proposals as “dangerous and unworkable.”
“The president’s proposals add new incentives for illegal immigration, which inevitably means increased risks of terrorism,” Tancredo said. Like Gallegly, he also predicted that the Bush plan would be rejected by Congress.
“The President and his advisers are totally ignoring the nation’s experience with the ill-fated 1986 amnesty program, which did not deliver on its promises of border security and only encouraged a new wave of illegal immigration,” Tancredo, who chairs the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, said. “I don’t think Congress will make this same mistake again.
“The president says he opposes amnesty but his plan is exactly that. He tries to redefine amnesty as meaning a grant of citizenship, but that has never been the case. His plan will allow people already here illegally to gain access to legal status, and that is amnesty.
“The president’s praise for the values brought to America by many generations of legal immigrants is a sentiment shared by all Americans. But this sentiment cannot justify allowing a continued flow of illegal aliens across our porous borders.”
Tancredo and his caucus colleagues, about 70 mostly GOP House members, represent a serious obstacle to any reform that might be favorable to the Irish or anyone else. His group takes a scattershot approach to the immigration issue. Little escapes its attention.
For example, various Irish immigration advocacy centers have been supportive of state-based initiatives aimed at granting driving licenses to the undocumented. Massachusetts is one state currently considering a bill that would allow the undocumented to secure licenses.
Tancredo is the author of a bill currently before Congress that would actually block federal highway funds to states that pass laws allowing the undocumented, or illegal, to obtain licenses.
“Giving driver’s licenses to illegal aliens has serious implications for our national security,” Tancredo said when he announced his bill.
President Bush has been dismissive of the criticism of his proposal and has refuted suggestions that it is simply a sop to Hispanic voters in an election year.
He might be standing on firmer ground this week if the White House had invited a more eclectic mix of immigrant representatives to hear his immigration speech.
All present were indeed representative of the Hispanic immigrant community. There was nobody representing the Irish, or any other non-Hispanic group.
So it’s a fair guess that the much-vaunted and growing Hispanic vote is the reason why the White House is taking an interest in immigration at this moment.
It is forgotten by most that a few days before 9/11, Bush met with President Vicente Fox of Mexico. There was an expectation of an announcement by Bush of an initiative aimed at making life easier for millions of undocumented Mexicans and, by extension, undocumented immigrants from other countries, Ireland included.
It didn’t happen. 9/11 is not the only reason why the immigration issue has been in cold storage these past couple of years. It was never really warm to begin with.
Still, elections have a habit of changing everything. Bush will compete in a national election in November. The members of Congress will be running at a more local level.
It is easy to see why there could be a sharp divergence of view between the White House and Capitol Hill, and within the Congress itself.
But argument is better than the near absolute silence we’ve been witness to since 1996, and that year’s highly restrictive immigration legislation.

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