America's Voice Blog

Posted 01/30/10 at 10:23am By Jackie Mahendra

Senator Graham: Deporting 12 Million Won’t Work, Need a Comprehensive Immigration Fix

Yesterday Lindsey Graham, Republican Senator from South Carolina, stood up for a comprehensive fix to our badly damaged immigration system. Graham has been crafting bipartisan legislation with Senator Schumer for some time now, and details of the bill are expected soon.

Senator Graham makes the case, in an interview with Brian Goldsmith, that the frenzied attempts to define comprehensive reform as "Amnesty" are as ludicrous as the enforcement-only alternative to real reform: the dangerous (and costly) notion that we can deport or jail twelve million people-- the number of unauthorized immigrants currently in the U.S.

Marc Ambinder reports for The Atlantic:

BRIAN GOLDSMITH: You're one of the few Republicans fighting for comprehensive immigration reform, which most Republicans have called amnesty. Where do you think that stands?

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: Well I think the idea of border security as a confidence builder is the way to start. Most Americans are very practical and reasonable. They're upset about broken borders and our out-of-control immigration system. They will buy into a comprehensive solution if we can prove to them, and only if we can prove to them, we don't have twenty million more illegal immigrants, ten years, twenty years down the road.

And when it comes to the illegal alien population, if the definition of amnesty is you got to deport twelve million people, or put twelve million people in jail, then we'll never have a comprehensive solution, because that's just not workable, it's not practical.

To me, amnesty would be forgiving people, like Ronald Reagan did, with no consequence, and not repairing the system. Amnesty is what we have today. What I would like to see is the illegal immigrant population come out of the shadows, be biometrically identified, be required to learn English, pay the fines for their crime, and get right with the law. If they want to be a citizen, get in the back of the line, not break into line.

And to my Republican colleagues, I can understand the politics of this is difficult. Big things are hard to do. But I believe in 2008, we lost a lot of ground with the Hispanic community because of the rhetoric and the tone we set on immigration.

The cost of deporting these 12 million unauthorized immigrants has been pegged at anywhere from $100 billion (an estimate by ICE, Immigration Customs and Enforcement) to $230 billion dollars over 5 years (according to a Center for American Progress analysis cited in  the Washington Post), with a loss of 2.6 billion to our GDP. On the other hand, new studies show that immigration reform would bring about a $1.5 trillion boon to our economy.

Markos Moulitsas, founder of the progressive political blog Daily Kos, argues in "Immigration reform would be good for the economy:"

Anti-immigrant forces are hoping the bad economy gives them ammo to scuttle the common-sense legalization of 10-15 million undocumented workers in this country. The thinking goes, since so many Americans have no jobs, there would be little appetite to grant "illegals" the right to stay and work.

That may have some rhetorical power, even if few Americans are lining up to work in slaughterhouses or as day laborers. But fact is, normalizing their status would be a huge boost to the economy.

Bottom line is that the Senator is right: when it comes to immigration reform, we can't afford to wait. Or to take the simplistic "No Amnesty!" bait.

Posted 01/15/10 at 10:04am By Frank Sharry

On Immigration, Sen. John Cornyn Can’t Have it Both Ways

Cross-posted at Huffington Post.

We couldn’t agree more with Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) when he says President Obama:

"...Must lead on immigration by offering specific proposals to secure our borders, upholding the rule of law and treating illegal immigrants with justice and compassion."

But saying the right thing is not the same as doing the right thing.

Though Sen. Cornyn has consistently said we need comprehensive immigration reform, he has also consistently voted against it – even when there was a bill strongly supported by a Republican administration. Cornyn’s actions don’t match his words and that’s the kind of “consistency” real supporters of immigration reform can do without.

It makes us wonder if Cornyn has been giving these same mixed messages to his constituents in Texas. The political landscape in Texas is changing rapidly, in large part because of Latinos:

Latinos comprise 63% of the population growth in Texas since 2000 and are the single largest reason that the state is projected to gain four seats in the U.S. House—the greatest change, positive or negative, among any state in the nation.

And, Latinos care deeply about immigration reform. In fact, a recent poll of Latino voters "found that 84% of Latino voters think it is either 'important, very important, or extremely important' that immigration reform is enacted before the 2010 midterm elections."

Cornyn serves as a member of the Republican leadership in the Senate. He chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which is GOP’s campaign committee. From that perch, Cornyn should also be urging his fellow Republicans to follow suit. As a side note, when the immigration debate began back in 2006, the Senate GOP caucus had 55 members. Today, there are 40. And, the Democrat who chaired the Democrat’s campaign committee in 2006 and 2008, Chuck Schumer, is leading the effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform this year.

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Posted 11/24/09 at 03:30pm By Jackie Mahendra

GOP Reality Check: Should U.S. Be a “Shining City Upon a Hill” or an Electrified Livestock Pen?

Looks like a group of Republicans are seeking to impose a litmus test on candidates seeking party support. We think it's time for the Republican Party to ask themselves which America they want to live in: the "shining city on a hill" or the electrified livestock pen, with the $300 billion price tag.

Entitled “Resolution on Reagan’s Unity Principle for Support of Candidates,” the ten question survey includes standard conservative principles: support for smaller government and lower taxes, for instance.

But the immigration plank raises an interesting, if inconvenient, question for the resolution’s authors: would Ronald Reagan have passed this GOP Purity Test? 

According to the resolution, real Republicans should support:

...legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants. [emphasis added]

Never mind that when President Reagan signed the 1986 immigration bill into law, he stated:

The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society.  Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans.

It appears that, given the right’s obsession with “amnesty” – defined as anything short of the mass deportation of the 12 million undocumented men, women, and children living, working and contributing to our nation– Ronald Reagan himself could not have met the "principles" being peddled in his name. 

In his farewell address to the nation, President Reagan referred back to his vision for America as a “shining city upon a hill.”  Reagan evoked this sunny image:

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it.  In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.   And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get here.

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Posted 11/18/09 at 03:21pm By Frank Sharry

Latinos Poised to Shake Up 2010 Census, Politicians Beware

Note: Cross-posted at Huffington Post.

girlI'm not convinced Washington has awakened to the reality yet -- but the 2010 Census is going to shake things up politically in this country, and politicians would do themselves a favor to wake up and smell the coffee in advance.

This is about raw political power -- something politicians of all stripes understand.

Here is what a new study by my organization, America’s Voice Education Fund, has to say:  the 2010 Census, which will document Latino population growth, will have a profound effect on the U.S. political landscape. An astonishing number of states will owe new Congressional seats, in large part, to their new Latino constituents.

The findings provide a stunning political backdrop to the upcoming debate on comprehensive immigration reform, an issue of major consequence to Latino voters.

Since the 2000 Census, Latinos have become the largest minority group in the United States. A bipartisan firm, Election Data Services, Inc. used existing Census data to project which states are likely to gain and lose Congressional seats following the 2010 Census. Their projections show that eight states will gain at least one House seat, while eleven states will lose at least one seat in Congress. Here they are: 

States gaining House seats: Texas (+4), Arizona (+2), Florida (+1), Georgia (+1), Nevada (+1), Oregon (+1), South Carolina (+1), and Utah (+1).

States losing House seats: Ohio (-2), Illinois (-1), Iowa (-1), Louisiana (-1), Massachusetts (-1), Michigan (-1), Minnesota (-1), Missouri (-1), New Jersey (-1), New York (-1), and Pennsylvania (-1).

Latinos represent 51% of population growth in the United States as a whole since 2000. Latinos have driven growth in the states poised to gain House seats following the 2010 Census, especially in those projected to gain more than one seat: Texas and Arizona. In those two states, Latinos comprise a combined 59% of population growth since 2000.

As the report indicates, Latinos are not just settling in the usual major cities.

New members of Congress in states like Georgia and South Carolina, as well as Arizona and Texas, will owe their positions, in part, to the expanding Latino population. What’s more, states that are losing Congressional representation would have fared much worse had Latinos not moved there in record numbers. While their states’ Congressional delegations are shrinking overall, Latino voters are gaining power as they expand their share of the electorate.

These population figures translate into significant new voting power, too.

Nationwide, Latino voter registration grew 54% and Latino voter turnout grew 64% between 2000 and 2008. In the eight states poised to gain seats, Latino voter registration grew 45% and Latino voter turnout expanded 50% between 2000 and 2008.  In the eleven states poised to lose seats, Latino voter registration grew 50% and Latino voter turnout expanded 62% between 2000 and 2008.

So what does this mean for immigration reform?

Click here to read more.
Posted 11/11/09 at 09:22am By Greg Staff

GOP Doesn’t Flog Immigration in House Health Care Vote—King Asks, Where’s the Wedge?

KingIn the aftermath of Saturday's landmark passage of a health care reform bill in the House of Representatives, many Republican Members of Congress are scratching their heads and wondering how they could have allowed the bill to pass. They are questioning why their leadership didn't agree to use the immigration issue to kill the bill by offering a tough anti-immigrant amendment at the end of debate.

As Roll Call reports, "conservative Republicans were perplexed and angry Monday that their leaders decided not to force Democrats into a tough immigration vote that they believe could have brought down the bill." Chief among these conservatives decrying his leadership's decision is Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who stated:

"I wanted to put everything into killing the bill. I wasn't interested in anything that had later political calculations. Whenever you get something this bad, when you have a chance to kill it, you have to kill it."

Clearly, Rep. King is not interested in strategies with "later political calculations" -- if so, he wouldn't have designed his party's horrendous Latino and immigrant scapegoat strategy that is threatening to turn the GOP into a regional party for the foreseeable future.

Click here to read more.
Posted 11/06/09 at 03:17pm By Frank Sharry

Q: How Much Taxpayer Money Will GOP Waste to Fire up an Anti-Immigrant Base?

CashA: Billions upon billions, if some Republicans get their way.

Fortunately, they didn't get their way on the Census yesterday.

The Vitter-Bennett census amendment to the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill became a moot point yesterday afternoon when the Senate ended debate on the bill in a nail-biting procedural vote of 60 to 39, which comes as a relief to advocates who worked non-stop, through hubs like DontWreckTheCensus.org, to help sink the unconstitutional, impractical, and expensive measure.  

Senators Vitter (R-LA) and Bennett (R-UT) were adamant that the 2010 Census ask about the citizenship and immigration status of respondents, a change which would have cost the government millions of dollars. All Republican Senators voted to keep debate going, save Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who was absent for the vote.

If the latest antics of Senators Vitter and Bennett are any indication, no cost is too high when it comes to stoking the immigration issue for an unquenchable hard-line base.  Their threat to derail our nation’s decennial census had been panned by nearly every census expert and would have cost billions of taxpayer dollars.  Senate Democrats deserve credit for standing up to the extreme wing of the Republican party that continues to bring up immigration as a wedge strategy in debate after debate-- like a bad broken record. 

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Posted 11/05/09 at 01:07pm By Dara Lind

In NY-23, Anti-Immigrant Groups Proved They’re Out of Touch With the Mainstream…Yet Again

Before Tuesday’s special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional district, we reported that the nativist extremist Minuteman PAC had predicted third-party Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman was “positioned to win a landslide victory.”

The Minutemen -- and the rest of the right-wing fringe groups that endorsed Hoffman over moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava -- grew even more confident about their chances when Scozzafava dropped out of the race the weekend before the election.

As usual, however, immigration restrictionists turned out to be out of touch with reality. Not only was the election not a “landslide,” but Hoffman’s opponent, Bill Owens, beat Hoffman 49% to 45%. Owens is the first Democrat to hold the seat in over a century -- a sign of just how badly the right wing has alienated mainstream Americans.

Immigration wasn’t a major issue in the campaign, but that didn’t stop the Minutemen from using it to try to scare up support for Hoffman. Unsurprisingly, the PAC’s claim that Hoffman was the “only candidate for Congress opposed to amnesty and government handouts for illegal aliens” failed to turn out voters -- Hoffman did worse than expected even in the parts of the district considered his “base.”

Click here to read more.
Posted 10/29/09 at 09:02am By Maribel Hastings

Senate Republicans: Just Say NO to Honoring Spanish Press

Note: Posted yesterday at MaribelHastings.com (translated from Spanish).

The Huffington Post reported yesterday that a Senate resolution honoring the Hispanic media passed without a single Republican co-sponsor. The resolution, declaring October 25th-31st “National Hispanic Media Week,” was on hold for several days while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) struggled in vain to find Republican co-sponsors for the resolution, Senate sources told America’s Voice.  Senator Reid ultimately introduced it along with a group of his fellow Democrats, and it was adopted swiftly.  But if Senate Republicans don’t show interest in the issues that matter to Latino and immigrant communities, why should they have to applaud the media outlets that keep these communities informed on the rants against Latinos and immigrants that certain Republicans engage in?

Read more at MaribelHastings.com.

 

Posted 10/20/09 at 10:10am By Maribel Hastings

Michael Steele’s Recipe for Assimilation: Apple Pie and a Few Bars of the National Anthem

Originally posted at www.MaribelHastings.com:

Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), was interviewed Sunday on Univision’s news show “Al Punto,” hosted by Jorge Ramos. During the interview, Steele declared he was “sick and tired of people playing the hot politics of immigration.”

Steele said:

I am hoping the (Obama) administration, as we get ready to go into next year and future years, bring a level head to (the issue). I am certainly arguing for Republicans to have a level head in dealing with this issue, because it affects people's lives, whether they are here illegally or legally, it affects lives.

This sounds reasonable enough, but what Steele is forgetting is that those same Republicans in Congress have rarely treated the issue of immigration with common sense, and have ignored the fact that the lack of comprehensive immigration reform “affects lives”—including those of U.S. citizen children. While they refuse to discuss comprehensive reform, they continue to use undocumented immigration as a red herring to be raised along every other issue that comes up in Congressional debate.

Also worth noting are some of the unique answers Steele gave Ramos, such as this one, discussing the concept of assimilation in the context of immigration reform:

I can sum it up for you this way, the [Republican] party, as I said…is the party of assimilation and that is something that we believe in very firmly, and basically, what we should be saying is that there are rules that you need to get into the country, go the right door, fill out the right form, have some apple pie, hum a few bars of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and get to work, God bless you, and I think that that begins to set us on the right road to dealing with this issue.

Steele didn’t mention that his Republican colleagues are part of the problem, preventing millions of immigrants from incorporating themselves into American society. On the one hand, they admit that it is impossible to deport 12 million people, but on the other, they oppose mechanisms that would legalize these people, guarantee that they pay taxes, and put them on the aforementioned road to assimilation.

Click here to read more.
Posted 10/02/09 at 01:24pm By Frank Sharry

BREAKING: Senate Democrats Do Have Spines, After All

Cross-posted at Huffington Post and Daily Kos.

A couple weeks ago, right after the “Joe Wilson” episode, it sure looked like Senators on both sides of the aisle were competing to see who could impose the harshest restrictions on immigrants in the health insurance reform bill – all at the taxpayer’s expense.

Anti-immigrant groups like FAIR, aided and abetted by pundits like CNN’s on-air immigrant-basher Lou Dobbs, and validated by rabble-rousing Congressmen like Joe Wilson, were trying to kill health care reform with their typical line that new benefits were going to be provided to undocumented immigrants. It wasn’t true—but, as it turns out, facts don’t often matter with this crowd.

But, a funny thing happened to the nativists’ agenda this week.

Although GOP Senators meticulously crafted a series of “get-tough” amendments designed to inflict maximum pain on immigrants and to make Democrats so afraid of looking soft on immigrants they would cave, their strategy failed. Why?  Because Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee stopped them cold.

That’s right.  Led by Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Democrats repeatedly killed mean-spirited immigration amendments to health reform offered by Sen. Grassley (IA) and Sen. Kyl (AZ). The votes were largely along party lines.

One of the most egregious amendments was defeated last night when Democrats voted down Senator Kyl’s amendment aimed at legal immigrants. Yes, the GOP obsession with “getting tough” on immigrants runs so deep that Sen. Kyl and his colleagues targeted people lawfully present in the country paying full taxes to the government.   Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent reports:

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said the Kyl proposal, aside from treating legal residents like second-class citizens, would also put those folks in the tough position of being forced to buy insurance without lending the means to do so. “That clearly is a Catch 22,” he said.

We saw evidence of that same attitude toward lawful immigrants and Latino Americans from leading Republicans during the Sotomayor confirmation debate. It’s not pretty — and it’s just bad politics. According to conservative columnist Ruben Navarrette:

Judge Sonia Sotomayor cruised through her confirmation hearings without a scratch. Too bad we can't say the same about the seven Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee who tried to dent her credibility and wound up demolishing their own. The problem wasn't that Republican senators challenged Sotomayor. That's their job. The problem was that they did their job in such an obsessive and boorish way so as to make clear to the entire country that they had no idea how to deal with someone like Sotomayor.

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