Obama's High-Minded Words on Immigration Won't Be Enough to Kick-Start Reform
President Obama came out for comprehensive immigration reform yesterday in his first speech on the subject, it will take more than talk. Despite the presidential pontificating and a push by such luminaries as Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch, forget about change here. It ain't happenin'.
Obama's soaring rhetoric was boilerplate stuff:
In sum, the system is broken and everybody knows it. Unfortunately, reform has been held hostage to political posturing, special-interest wrangling and to the pervasive sentiment in Washington that tackling such a thorny and emotional issue is inherently bad politics ... I'm ready to move forward, the majority of Democrats are ready to move forward and I believe the majority of Americans are waiting to move forward. But the fact is, without the bipartisan support that we had just a few years ago, we cannot solve this problem.But, as Edward Alden, a leading immigration expert who is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told me in an email, Obama is going to have to do some retail politicking if he wants to get immigration reform anytime soon. "If he's serious, and I still think he is, he's got to start giving a bit of direction. In that sense it's very much like the early days of health care -- a lot of platitudes and very few specifics," Alden said. In other words, give us specifics on how you change the immigration system, as Alden has. By way of background: immigration looks like a problem with a political solution. Instead of the mess of haphazard enforcement and widespread use of undocumented laborers, a political coalition of the center appears possible. The law-and-order types get stronger, well-funded enforcement. The business-minded get some sort of visa program plus amnesty for people already in the country.
But not all Democrats favor this (worries about cheap labor) and plenty of Republicans see a political advantage in playing on fears of "illegal aliens." In the long run, this is a turkey of a strategy, given the development of Latino demographics (George W. Bush knew this, but could not bring his party along). But in the short term, enough Republicans see some political advantage that they want to press it. Perhaps if the November elections are not the blowout for Republicans that some are predicting, then the pendulum will swing back toward sanity on immigration.
A dirty secret is that business is not really pushing much immigration reform these days either. Normally, this is a big issue for high tech and low tech alike, which need immigrant labor. Sure, Bloomberg and Murdoch (an immigrant himself!) are talking about immigration but they don't personify the technology, hospitality and restaurant industries that, along with agriculture, really drive the demand for immigrant visas. And a nasty recession has reduced the demand for labor anyway.
Immigration, in this land of immigrants, is a thorny, hard-to-manage political issue. A limited presidential commitment to change and a lukewarm business community means that "Change You Can Believe In" will not extend to immigration this year.
Image courtsey BrianAuer via Flickr