Give Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) and his restrictionist allies credit: they know the right buttons to push to get their way on Capitol Hill. Whether it's claiming a federal coup on health care, or the creation of "death panels" to pull the plug on grandma, or that doctors will be forced to perform late-term abortions, the winning ticket to beat health care reform might just be our old nemesis, the illegal immigration wedge.
The Congressman might have behaved boorishly in accusing President Obama of lying when the President stated that benefits under his health care reform plan "would not apply to those who are here illegally." Thanks to his ill-tepered outburst however, Wilson has provided both anti-health care reformers and immigration restrictionsists with a remarkable double achievement, running the health care debate into the anti-imigrant ditch.
To his (dis)credit, Joe Wilson has raised from the dead the shibboleth of the federal government as nanny for undocumented immigrants, an issue seemingly buried in the mid-1990s, when Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton teamed up to "end welfare as we know it." The usefulness in this approach for opponents of Pres. Obama is that instead of talking about health care reform, the debate has diverted the discussion back to illegal immigration and electrified the right-wing base.
Truth seems to be a casualty of this partisan war, as the populist paranoia of other partisan debates has found a home here. As reported in the New York Times,
Democratic lawmakers, growing exasperated, have taken to reading directly from the House and the Senate bills at town-hall-style meetings.
“I don’t know how it could be more clear,” said Representative Bruce Braley, Democrat of Iowa, who has read aloud from a section of the House bill with the title “No Federal Payment for Undocumented Aliens.”
Republicans argue that some of the voters’ concerns are justified because, they say, the proposals before Congress do not spell out procedures to verify the citizenship of those who would receive health coverage.
After testing their ideas with voters during the recess, Republicans said they would press for verification measures when the health care debate picks up again in Washington.
“The language is there, but without the verification you can’t frankly believe it is serious,” said Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, who added that concerns about illegal immigrants were clearly on the minds of citizens he met in his district. Mr. Smith said Democrats “intentionally left gaping loopholes” in the proposals that illegal immigrants could step through.
Pres. Obama's gambit to temporize on immigration reform will likely haunt him on every piece of social legistation put forward by his administration. Columnist Ruben Navarrette ably describes the President's strategic failure in a recent column,
Given the Obama administration's desire to pursue both immigration reform and health care reform - immigration should go first. Otherwise, [immigrant advocates] said, health care would fail because of public fears that illegal immigrants would get free medical services. Make those immigrants legal, they said, and it would defuse the issue.
The point is moot since the administration decided to roll the dice on health care first. But the strategists were right that the immigration debate would find a way to infiltrate the health care debate and damage it.
In fact, as divisive and shrill the health care discussion has been at times, the soon-to-be resurrected immigration debate could be much worse.
The issue isn't just causing trouble from the Anti-Immigrant Right. Immigrant advocates in the Senate are also taking aim at Pres. Obama's promise that no undocumented immigrant would be allowed to seek benefits under any proposed reform plan. Sen. Bob Menedez (D-N.J.) is rallying allies to withhold support from the Baucus health care reform bill. The Hill reports,
Menendez is troubled by [restrictive] language [in the bill] and has joined Hispanic advocacy groups in criticizing the bill for placing too heavy a burden on legal and illegal immigrants.
Immigrants are not required to show proof of citizenship or legal residency to buy health insurance. If they were prohibited from participating in an insurance exchange, they would be forced to buy coverage at a significantly higher cost than legal residents.
Hispanic advocates argue that companies employing illegal immigrants would be tempted to opt out of the national health insurance exchange to avoid having to verify the immigration status of all their workers. Nearly half of illegal immigrants receive health insurance from their employers, according to one estimate.
“We’re not very pleased with the provisions in the bill,” said Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “We think it goes far beyond what is necessary to prevent undocumented immigrants getting tax-subsidized benefits.”
Menendez and the Hispanic advocacy groups are also concerned with how Baucus would treat families made up of both legal and undocumented residents.
“I have a series of concerns about the bill,” Menendez said.
Satisfying Menendez’s objections to the immigration provisions will not be an easy task. Any concessions making it easier for immigrants to buy insurance could be seized on by opponents who have accused Democrats of planning to subsidize health plans for illegal immigrants.
These developments bode poorly for any immigration reform bill. The health care reform debate has rendered the legislative environment so toxic, that even the pro-immigrant caucus and their allies are in disarray. In that light, it's no wonder immigration reform continues to be pushed back on the legislative calendar.
We'll continue to keep readers posted on immigration reform efforts at http://www.immigration-defense.com.
