Daniel Shanfield, Esq. Immigration Law & Defense Blog

“To Save the Town, It Became Necessary to Destroy It”: Obama’s Politically Inept "Deportation First" Immigration Policy and Epic Failure on DREAM Act

 

With the defeat of the DREAM Act, the Obama Administration’s "Deportation First" immigration policy – to expel record numbers of undocumented immigrants to obtain buy-in from the GOP on comprehensive immigration reform – has proven not just an epic political failure, but one with grotesque human costs.

Doubts over a strategy to deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants as a quid pro quo for Republican support on CIR were present from the start.  As detailed yesterday by the Washington Post,

Whenever Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and other immigrant-rights advocates asked President Obama how a Democratic administration could preside over the greatest number of deportations in any two-year period in the nation's history, Obama's answer was always the same.

 Deporting almost 800,000 illegal immigrants might antagonize some Democrats and Latino voters, Obama's skeptical supporters said the president told them, but stepped-up enforcement was the only way to buy credibility with Republicans and generate bipartisan support for an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws.

 On Saturday, that strategy was in ruins after Senate Democrats could muster only 55 votes in support of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, a measure that would have created a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.

 The New York Times is charitable in its analysis:

Part of the administration’s strategy has been to ramp up border and workplace enforcement to attract Republican votes for the overhaul. The vote on Saturday made it clear that strategy has not succeeded so far.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, Democrats again will take consolation in the belief that the GOP’s opposition has further alienated an expanding Latino voting bloc -- a bloc that has coalesced around the Democrats largely because of the party's stated promises to get CIR done.  But with the Democrats string of failures to deliver even on plainly meritorious legislation with bipartisan support like the DREAM Act, their consolation is misplaced.  Latino voters, although holding the GOP in negative regard, will likely view the Democrats as incurably inept at best and insincere at worst and therefore unworthy of enthusiastic support -- support the Dems desperately need to counter Tea Party exuberance in 2012. Latino voters turned out in strength for the Democrats in the midterm elections, arguably saving their majority in the Senate. What will rally Latino voters now that the Democrats have serially failed to enact CIR or DREAM?  This likely enthusiasm gap will haunt any Democratic presidential hopeful offering warmed-over promises on immigration reform.

Beyond the policy debates and legislative post-mortems of the DREAM Act defeat, one key issue has been lost regarding Obama and the Democrats' high-profile failure here. With nothing to show for his high-pain, no reward strategy, President Obama has much to account for, having ordered a catastrophic mass deportation policy large enough to clear out the City of San Jose, California.  The incalculable human toll on America’s families, employers, and communities by deporting 800,000 immigrants is breathtaking.  Families are broken, employers are scrambling to find critical workers, and entire neighborhoods and towns are desolate. 

The Administration’s iron-fisted strategy to find support for humanitarian immigration reform brings to mind the old Vietnam war dictum, “To save the town, it became necessary to destroy it.”  To obtain a just solution for America's undocumented immigrant community, the Obama Administration has found it necessary to assail, deplete, and strike fear into its heart.   And the failure does not stop there, as ICE Chief John Morton has officially signaled that deportations will continue apace.  The President's moral arrogance, that he could build a just solution for the 12 million undocumented and their mixed-status families, by deporting hundreds of thousands of non-citizens in the foolish hope of placating a malevolent and uncompromising opposition, has been a classic Obama "teachable moment".  Because there can be no doubt now as to the total disregard of America's immigrants in the Obama White House.

The Senate Immigration Framework and SB 1070: Obama’s Unflattering Moment of Truth

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In a move reminiscent of China’s Hundred Flowers Campaign, Pres. Obama invited Senate leaders to put forward a proposed framework for comprehensive immigration reform (CIR), and then promptly discounted any hope of passing it, stating he doubted Congress’s appetite to pass such legislation.  Coupled with his lukewarm response to the Arizona’s legislative reign of terror against immigrants and people of color, it’s difficult to know where Obama stands on immigration.

Exhibit A. Pres. Obama urged Congress in mid-March to move forward with an immigration reform plan, pledging “to do everything in my power to forge a bipartisan consensus on this important issue so we can continue to move forward on comprehensive immigration reform."  Senators Schumer and Graham took up the invite, printing an op-ed piece in the Washington Post and laying out a four-part plan balancing enforcement with a humane solution for America’s undocumented:

1. biometric Social Security cards to ensure that undocumented workers cannot get jobs
2. strengthening border security and interior enforcement
3. creating a process for admitting temporary workers
4. implementing a “tough but fair path” to legalization for those already here

The devil of course is in the details.  Civil libertarians and immigrant's rights advocates oppose national ID cards like the biometric social security card, particularly when possessing such a card is a condition for political participation and employment.  In other countries, government’s have used their power to issue, withhold and regulate identification cards to politically and economically disenfranchise opponents and intimidate ethnic minorities.  When the right to work and vote is predicated on presenting a national identification card, the national government wields enormous power.  When taken together with increased interior enforcement, fear of heavy-handed treatment of immigrants and people of color by law enforcement is a real threat.  Nor is opposition strictly reposed on the pro-immigrant side. America’s latter-day Tea Party Know-Nothings have no interest in opening up the borders for foreign guest workers, or giving what they would consider “amnesty” to the undocumented.  Still, the framework provides something everyone wants and wants badly, and what could be a real opportunity for compromise among the various factions on immigration.

Along these lines, Democratic Party Senate leaders, Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, and Bob Menendez last week issued a Senate legislative reform framework, which Greg Siskind has neatly summarized here.  Of note in the proposal, beyond the Schumer-Graham four-point plan, are incorporation into CIR of the Dream Act and AgJobs, paths to permanent residency for graduates of U.S. universities with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), and the recapture of unused visa numbers, along with a clearing of the backlog of family-based preference visas.

Particularly notable was the absence of Sen. Lindsey Graham for the framework proposal.  As reported in the press, Graham’s pull-out was attributed to Harry Reid’s decision to push legislation in the Senate on immigration reform and energy simultaneously, which Graham claims dooms both efforts.  With increasingly rabid right-wing voters back home in South Carolina losing their grip in the face of any effort to provide any quarter to Obama or Congressional Democrats on any legislative issue, the convention wisdom is that Graham had to pull back. 

Could be.  Or maybe Lindsey Graham was not taken in by Obama’s milquetoast urgings on immigration reform.  Perhaps Graham has taken the measure of the President on the issue, and concluding that the only hope of passage for immigration reform, like healthcare reform, would entail Obama’s committed leadership, backed away.  Having observed the President over the past year, Graham might have observed that Obama might grandstand on the issue but not actually risk political capital to get an immigration bill out of the Senate.  Without committed Presidential leadership to round up Senate Democrats, or political cover from Obama, it’s just as likely that Graham, a politician with national aspirations and some tendencies towards bipartisanship, saw no gain in crossing over on a bill that not even his partisan adversaries fully supported.

If so, Graham’s withdrawal was prescient.  In a tour de force of political dithering, Pres. Obama last week aboard Air Force declared that “there may not be an appetite” for immigration reform this year, and that “I need some help on the Republican side”.  Recognizing his blunder, Obama’s press office went into damage control and back-tracked, calling the Senate Framework “an important first step”.

On the issue of who's hungry for immigration reform... it's the President who appears to lack the appetite, the appetite he displayed on health care reform, an appetite for victory that got the bill passed.  The pro-reform Senate caucus needs help as well.  They need a President who shows an unwavering commitment on the issue, not one who will cut off his fellow Democrats at the knees the moment they introduce a legislative framework to move forward and get a bill passed.  

I’m really starting to wonder if Obama gets it when it comes to immigrants, their families and immigration issues as a whole.  He continues to treat immigration and immigrants as a “them”, not an “us” issue.  He treats the our immigration crisis as we weren’t dealing with America’s fastest growing demographic, as if we weren’t con fronted with the crisis of our Nation’s mixed status families, as if his Administration’s policy on immigration raids and meek acceptance of police harassment of immigrants under the pretext of 287(g) were problems happening in some other country, not our own. 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Exhibit B. This country could have used a presidential moment of moral clarity in connection with Arizona’s recently passed anti-immigrant hate law SB 1070.  Instead, we received a flaccid statement from Obama that the law is “misguided”.  What the country needed was an immediate declaration that the Justice Department would do everything in its power to ensure that that such an abominable law, a law harkening back to the days of Jim Crow and South Africa’s apartheid pass laws, would never be enforced.  No such reassurance was forthcoming however, only that Attorney General Eric Holder was considering options. 

The absence of presidential leadership on this issue is chilling.  It has precipitated despair not just for immigrants and their families, but also for his ideological supporters.  Many of us supported Pres. Obama because we believed that through his leadership and biography, our country would move more closely, though imperfectly, to a post-racial condition in the United States.  I fear that Obama’s failure to set a moral marker here betrays the limitations of Obama’s vision of immigrants in America.  For Obama, SB 1070 is about an immigrant “them”, not about an American “us”.  And with this lack of vision, the President has displayed a concomitant absence of leadership, again reminding us how far this country has yet to travel to achieve true justice for all.

CIR ASAP Immigration Reform Bill Takes Important First Step in the House

 

In a sudden and surprising move, Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, D-Ill., has intrdouced sweeping legislation in the House of Representatives to reform America's broken immigration system and find a solution to legalize an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants.  The Immigration Policy Center has already put up a terrific summary of the Bill, entitled the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act (CIR ASAP) of 2009. 

At its core, CIR ASAP would provide legal status to undocumented immigrants by requiring registration with the federal government, payment of a $500 fine for each adult, learning English, background checks, as well as other criteria related to crimes and immigration violations. These immigrants would then qualify for a six-year visa leading to permanent residency.  CIR ASAP also incorporates the DREAM Act, providing a path to citizenship for children and young adults brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents and who have completed college and have a clean criminal record.

Introduction of CIR ASAP is surprising in two key respects. First, it places another huge piece of legislation on the Democrats' congressional agenda, with health care reform and stimulus issues still unsettled.  Secondly, House members and staffers I have spoken to have indicated that the pro-reform House caucus was taking a "Senate first" approach, and would not introduce a bill and make a stand on immigration reform without first receiving assurances that immigration reform would pass in the Senate.  Recall that the last CIR proposal, the McCain-Kennedy Bill, failed ingnominiously in the Senate in 1997, and House members don't want to catch heat for a bill that won't pass in the other chamber.

Introduction of CIR ASAP in the House gives off some really interesting tells. First, it appears Rep. Guttierez and the House leadership believe a) comprehensive immigration reform will pass the Senate, b) the health care debate is essentially over and a health care bill will pass, and c) it is now-or-never time for pro-immigration reform Democrats, who, if history is any guide, will as the incumbent party in power lose seats in the House and Senate in November 2010.  Facing these potential losses, CIR might never pass if it doesn't pass now.

To provide some local San Jose flavor, give a read to Ken McLaughlin's article today in the San Jose Mercury News.  As reported in the paper, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, has not entirely deviated from the Senate first strategy, and will fully take up CIR once it is introduced in the Senate after the holidays by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY.  A fascinating piece on Speaker Pelosi's "Senate First" legislative strategy, and her desire to protect vulnerable Democratic House members, is featured at thehill.com.

The New York Times does a good round-up on opposition to the Guttierez bill.  Opponents, mostly from the Republican aisle, refer to the bill as "Dead on Arrival", amounting to an amnesty for law breakers.  For other Republican opponents, the bill is not "comprehensive" enough, in that it fails to provide enough avenues for employers to hire low cost and expoitable, oops, I mean temporary guest workers, an issue I dealt with in depth in a prior entry on this blog. 

Introduction of a CIR bill in the House is a terrific sign for the pro-reform camp.  If you care about the success of this Bill, now is the time to learn about Comprehensive Immigration Reform, contact your member of Congress.