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Feb. 8, 2013
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Jewish World Review
April 23, 2012/ 1 Iyar, 5772
A congressional deal on immigration? Dream on
By
Dana Milbank
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
A new level of provocation came to the immigration fight this week when Democratic members of Congress paraded a quartet of undocumented immigrants on the Capitol grounds and used them as a backdrop to taunt the Republicans.
Rep. Nydia Velazquez of New York, speaking Spanish to the cameras, counseled Latinos not to vote Republican. “As long as Republican candidates cling to radical anti-immigrant ideology, they will lose another generation of Hispanic voters,” she said in English. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa of Texas accused Republicans of “a slap in the face.” Rep. Silvestre Reyes, another Texan, accused likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney of being a “basher” of immigrants’ hopes and of making “the most reprehensible and most irresponsible statement that any presidential candidate could ever make.” Though they stood just steps from the Capitol, they made no pretense that their appearance was anything but campaigning. Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, the first speaker, took just 12 seconds to confess that he expects no legislative action this year on the Dream Act, which would allow the foreign-born children of illegal immigrants (like those standing with the lawmakers) to earn citizenship by going to college or serving in the military. “The opposition toward immigration and opposition toward immigration reform runs too deep with the Republicans,” Gutierrez announced. The politics for Democrats are irresistible. After a primary season in which Romney tried to outdo his Republican rivals in toughness on illegal immigration, he is shaking his Etch a Sketch with fury. Though he plainly announced his support for Arizona’s law cracking down on illegal immigrants, he is now claiming he supported only one benign piece of it. He has also disowned Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and an immigration hard-liner, after embracing his advice during the primary. Even within the GOP, pressure is building on Romney to soften his immigration position. As the Democrats were parading outside the Capitol’s East Front on Thursday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a possible Romney vice presidential pick, announced that he wanted to find a way to allow the foreign-born children of illegal immigrants to remain legally in the United States. But rather than embrace Rubio’s olive branch (he is, after all, taking a position at odds with many in his party), the lawmakers, all from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, derided him as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” This refusal to contemplate any sort of compromise will continue to stall the Dream Act Democrats’ cause of immigration reform. It’s just one of many issues where consensus would be relatively easy but conflict proves more satisfying. I was thinking about this because of what Vice President Biden said in a speech Wednesday. “I know from experience,” he said, “if you tried to do it all, you don’t generate a consensus. And the single most important thing is for us to have a cultural consensus that this is a god-awful problem.” Biden was talking about the Violence Against Women Act, which he authored in the Senate. But if the administration had followed his advice, President Obama might not have a health reform law in jeopardy before the Supreme Court and unified Republican opposition. Even on the renewal of Biden’s Violence Against Women Act, Democrats broke the consensus by adding provisions regarding same-sex couples and illegal immigrants. It’s the same story on taxes and the debt, but immigration may be the issue most resistant to the obvious consensus: a need for enforcement and legalization. At their event this week, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus members were so hurried to score points that they tripped over their words. Gutierrez spoke of an “electrical” map through Latino neighborhoods. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), also reaching for electoral, spoke of “this electrical season.” All the talk of electricity took Rep. Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.) back to a time before it was universal: “They have to make sure that this cycle, in 1912, we elect a . . . Congress that will restore their dream.” The undocumented young people, as it turned out, gave compelling accounts. Lucy Allain spoke about how she confronted Romney on immigration at an event a few months ago. A recent law-school grad, Jose Manuel Godinez, declared: “I’m undocumented, unapologetic and unafraid.” But instead of listening, the lawmakers departed after their own statements, drawing the reporters and cameras with them. “I think we lost half of our crowd,” observed the organizer, Erika Andiola. “They had to vote,” explained Gutierrez, who promptly disappeared as well. Andiola, noticing that some lawmakers were instead granting TV interviews, asked a staffer if “they really have to vote.” Yes, they did. But, as usual, not for anything important.
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Previously:
• 04/19/12 Dems battle back against Republican 'war on women'
• 04/18/12 Debauchery: An American govermental specialty
• 04/17/12 Silent witness
• 04/12/12 Rebuffing Obama's gimmicky 'Buffett Rule'
• 04/11/12 Santorum's Gettysburg surrender
• 04/09/12 The facts vs. Mitt Romney
• 04/06/12 Mitt Romney, talking to the press, keeps the press at a distance
• 04/05/12 From tracking al-Qaeda to tracking the wayward spouse
• 04/04/12 Budget cuts as back-door deregulation
• 03/26/12 My pet Mitt
• 03/22/12 Mitt Romney's latest gaffe may be etched in history
• 03/20/12 Supreme Court conceives of life after death
• 03/15/12 Conservative for Obama: The British PM as campaign prop
• 03/14/12 In Section 60, a silent search for meaning
• 03/13/12 Super Friends, unite
• 03/12/12 It's time to believe: Romney's a winner
• 03/07/12 Settling in to Washington's ways
• 03/06/12 AIPAC beats the drums of war
• 03/05/12 Did Republicans forget the women's vote?
• 02/29/12 Mitt Romney's acceptance speech, in (mostly) his own words
• 02/28/12 Common ground becomes a great divide
• 02/27/12 An expert witness for the GOP gender gap
• 02/21/12 Where Romney shines
• 02/15/12 A Republican death wish?
• 02/14/12Obama's budget games
• 02/13/12 Are GOPers playing right into Obama's hands?
• 02/08/12 Obama pumps the compressor of Joe Hudy's Extreme Marshmallow Cannon
• 02/07/12 Abramoff's atonement
• 02/01/12 Why we in the media just love Newt
• 01/31/12 The end of the road for Newt Gingrich?
• 01/25/12 Gingrich is Obama's best surrogate
• 01/24/12 Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney's attack dog
• 01/16/12 Mitt Romney's Al Gore problem
• 01/12/12 Kamikaze Gingrich, on the loose in South Carolina
• 01/11/12 Journalists' campaign trail secrets revealed
• 01/10/12 Mitt Romney's money problem
• 01/09/12 Newtonian exceptionalism
• 01/05/12 Mitt Romney out of control
• 01/04/12 Indecision 2012: In Iowa and the GOP
• 01/03/12 Rick Santorum's curious closing argument
• 12/28/11 A few cracks in my crystal ball
• 12/23/11 A few cracks in my crystal ball
• 12/20/11 Strange brews and views?
• 12/19/11 Cellphone ban would be a distraction
• 12/15/11 Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell and the Malfunction Minuet
• 12/14/11 The presidential auction of 2012
• 12/12/11 Newt's tactics comes back to haunt him
• 12/06/11 Can an anthem save Occupy non-movement?
• 12/05/11 The winner of the GOP campaign: Washington
• 11/30/11 Barney the bully: Congressman Frank's other legacy
• 11/23/11 Jon Kyl's search-and-destroy mission
• 11/21/11 Pay to play, brought to you by Washington
• 11/17/11 Big enough to save the supercommittee?
• 11/16/11 Why Newt Gingrich won't last
• 11/08/11 The 2012 campaign gets seedier
• 11/06/11 A Machiavellian model for Obama
• 11/03/11 The Herman Cain crack-up
• 11/01/11 Cain can --- he will survive
• 10/27/11 Stuntmen of the supercommittee
• 10/26/11 Democrats on the sidelines
• 10/24/11 Rick Perry's birther Parade
• 10/24/11 The birthers eat their own
• 10/19/11 The GOP's middle man
• 10/17/11 The waiting for nothing Congress
• 10/12/11 Sparsely occupied D.C.: Why the movement hasn't caught on
• 10/10/11 Can Obama strike an alliance with Occupy Wall Street?
• 10/06/11 Chris Christie, such a presidential tease
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• 09/28/11 Cain could deliver
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• 09/22/11 Why Ron Paul is winning the GOP primary
• 09/21/11 I am a job creator who creates no jobs
• 09/20/11 Obama launches a revolution
• 09/19/11 Dems for Romney?
• 09/14/11 ‘Supercommittee’? More than stupor committee
• 09/07/11 Mitt Romney finds his (corporate) voice
• 09/01/11 The infallible Dick Cheney
• 08/31/11 This liberal says Perry is the ultimate conservative candidate
• 08/29/11 Wanted: More bite from Obama the Great Nibbler
• 08/10/11 How Rep. Austin Scott betrayed his Tea Party roots
• 08/09/11 The most powerful man on Earth?
• 08/08/11 The FAA shutdown and the new rules of Washington
• 08/04/11 Lt. Col. Allen West fires a round at the Tea Party
• 08/03/11 Government on autopilot
• 08/02/11 Dems mourn debt deal like death
• 07/27/11 Life imitates sport
• 07/26/11 Obama and Boehner take on Washington
• 07/21/11 Why Americans are angry at Congress
• 07/20/11 The new party of Reagan
• 07/18/11 Rob Portman, the boring Midwesterner who could bring sanity to the debt debate
• 07/13/11 John Boehner's bind
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• 05/18/11: Gingrich gives voice to moderation
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• 05/16/11: The medical mystery of Mitt Romney
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• 02/09/11: Arianna Huffington's ideological transformation
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