War Of Words In Immigration Debate

Hundreds of thousands of protesters have joined the call for legal status for immigrants, marching in cities around the country on Monday in demonstrations that are drawing comparisons to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

A new CBS News poll shows 74 percent of Americans favor legal status for immigrants who have been here for more than five years. But among politicians and pundits, the debate rages on.

The Early Show brought the opposing points of view into sharp focus with visits from Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico and CNN's Lou Dobbs, who has written a book called "Exporting America."

Asked by co-anchor Harry Smith what he thought of the protests, in which marchers waved American flags, Dobbs observed, "I thought it was a very welcome change from last week when we had seen so many Mexican flags, flags of other nations, and I thought it was the right image for them to offer Americans watching them demonstrate and protest."

But when it comes to immigrants' right to a legal status in America, he was very clear about who stands to lose the most. "Without question, Americans at the low end of the wage scale," he said. "The Pugh Hispanic Center has done a number of studies, various research. American citizens at the lowest end of the wage scale who should be moving up our economic ladder are, in point of fact, being frozen in place by the massive illegal immigration that is simply for the benefit of corporate America, exploiting this illegal labor and, frankly, just freezing wages at the lowest end of the wage scale. This is of help to no one."

But Richardson said these protests are creating pressure that Congress simply cannot ignore. "It's really unprecedented, this ground swell that has come up," he said. "We've watched this now for a couple of weeks. I mean, people literally all over the country walking away from their jobs to stand in the street and say, 'I count for something,'" he told Smith.

"What's happened is every major city in close to 40 states has had spontaneous demonstrations," Richardson added. "This is bigger than the civil rights movement in the '60s. This is huge. And what this is building is enormous pressure on the congress to pass a comprehensive immigration bill. Tighten border security, more Border Patrol agents, secure the border from drugs and illegal traffic, but also a sensible legalization plan that brings the 11 million undocumented workers out of the shadows. Those that pay taxes, back taxes, speak English, pass background checks, and participate in civic affairs. What needs to happen now is the president, who's been saying the right words, needs to use his muscle on Republican legislators that right now are the basic problem."

Dobbs sees the demonstrations in a different light. "These were not spontaneous demonstrations but carefully organized and orchestrated over some time for the precise purpose, as Congressman Pete King of New York said, to intimidate the U.S. Senate," he said. "We don't see 280 million Americans in the streets with these folks. These folks obviously have their right to demonstrate, even though it's a right of citizenship. They have a right to put this issue before the American people. But we also have a responsibility to point out that half of the Hispanics in this country are dropping out of high school. Half of our African-American students are dropping out of high school. We have schools that are overcrowded. Taxpayers that are overburdened. And we have to deal with the simple fact that immigration reform cannot take place until we can control immigration."

It's an assertion that Richardson says is hard to argue with, but that doesn't resolve the underlying problems. "Lou says the right words, and I generally agree with him, but what are you going to do? Deport them? Knock on the doors of 11 million undocumented workers, many that have children that are citizens, that are in the armed forces fighting for us in Iraq and around the world. That is not practical. So what you do is create a legalization plan that might eventually lead over 11 years to permanent residency, possibly eventual citizenship, based on behavior. You have to be practical. It's a messy situation, but we've got to act because this is America. And we've got to do the right thing."