Immigration Reform is Next

By John Ballard

Sometimes Obama looks like a glutton for punishment. Sez here in the LA Times an immigration overhaul will be next on the White House menu.

With the healthcare battle still unfinished, the Obama administration has been laying plans to take up an issue that could prove even more divisive -- a major overhaul of the nation's immigration system.

Senior White House aides privately have assured Latino activists that the president will back legislation next year to provide a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.

In a recent conference call with proponents, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, political director Patrick Gaspard and others delivered the message that the White House was committed to seeing a substantial immigration bill pass and wanted to make sure allies were prepared for the fight.

I look for the results to be similar to what is happening with health care and insurance reform, a high-profile political fight resulting in something, anything, even if it has no teeth. 

Health care reform is now officially out of the grinder. The sooner another big story gets into the news the quicker reconciliation discussions can be finished. By the time both houses get around to endorsing the result spotlights will be shining elsewhere. Manipulating public attention and the media is tough but not impossible. Feeding the media is not unlike feedng children at a party or animals at the zoo. One requires junk food to sell the vitamins, and the other calls for quick action so the attendant doesn't get his hand bitten off. 

You might think that a knife-juggling act would be followed by loud applause, but in the case of Washington politics you're lucky to get off the stage with a minimum of booing and thrown objects before the next act. Watch what is about to happen with immigration overhaul. (I like using the word overhaul instead of reform. It means the same thing and will end with the same across-the-board dissatisfaction, but maybe a different noun will dilute the similarity of the two efforts.)

As a candidate, Obama vowed to take up immigration during his first year in office. That deadline will come and go. Further delay could anger Latino voters, who came out in force for the president and congressional Democrats in 2008.

[...]
No one anticipates that a core element of the Democratic base will defect to the Republican Party in November. But even a significant drop in turnout -- which often happens in nonpresidential elections -- could frustrate Democratic efforts to preserve their congressional majority.

McCain backed President George W. Bush's failed attempt to overhaul immigration in his second term. But he has not committed to supporting the Obama bill, saying he worried the president would not endorse a temporary guest-worker program. 

Organized labor, an important part of the Democratic base, has voiced opposition to a guest-worker program under which more immigrants could enter the country on a temporary basis. Critics argue that there is no effective system for ensuring that such workers will leave the country when their permits expire.
[...]
Should an immigration bill gain traction, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel would probably be a central player in the negotiations.

As an aide to President Clinton, Emanuel co-wrote a memo on the political dynamics of immigration. He and Ron Klain, now the top aide to Vice President Joe Biden, wrote in 1994: "We must be seen as taking proper, forceful steps to seriously address the immigration problem without alienating the Hispanic and civil rights constituencies.

"Our goal is not to outdo the Republicans, rather to use our achievements and proposals to prevent them from using this as a wedge issue against us." 

The former head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Doris Meissner, recalled that Emanuel once phoned and berated her over a news story about lax border enforcement in Arizona.

"This kind of press is killing us," Meissner quoted Emanuel as saying. During the call, he instructed her to send border agents to the area immediately. "He had no authority whatsoever to give me orders," Meissner said.

But Emanuel was constantly pressing his colleagues in the Clinton White House to push what he termed a "balanced" immigration policy -- including enforcement and stepped-up grants of citizenship.

One subtext of the Obama challenge is the ball and chain connection between the Democrat Party and organized labor. It is impossible to overlook a historic reality that unions and Democrats are joined at the hip. It is no accident that the president had to find a way, any kind of way, to preserve as many auto jobs as possible. Hence the salvation of Detroit, and a happy accident that at least one of the Big Three (Ford) was able to survive without CPR.

Even before the global meltdown organized labor saw that legacy costs of swollen retiree benefits packages would kill the host. In fact, non-union operations with lower operational rates were putting them at a competitive disadvantage, so newly-hired workers now begin work with fewer benefits than their grandfathered peers waiting for more secure retirements. 

The organized labor challenge to "guest workers" is a national issue. The anti-immigration crowd is animated by more than bigotry. When people from other countries take jobs they consider "American" they have a bread-and-butter argument as well. Not only do they not want "American jobs shipped to other countries" they are equally jealous of jobs that remain being "stolen" by foreigners.

In the same way that the US economy is being held afloat by foreign monetary investment, what investors refer to as the real economy is kept strong by foreign workers at all levels, from migrants who harvest crops and keep construction alive to technical and professional jobs that protect engineering, research and medical sectors from imploding. A ponzi scheme that works in The Economist looks at the importance of immigrants in a good way.

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As in the case of health care,  whatever sausage comes out of the grinder this time must satisfy a lot of political rivals. The result will likely piss off as many as it satisfies. Part of what is happening to US politics  Left, Right and Center, is that traditional alliances are being shaken. Shaken to the point of damage. A lot of damage. And I don't think this is a bad development. It's about time for some old-fashioned give and take. Those who get most of what they want call it a fair compromise. Those who don't get all they want call it caving in to the opposition.

I call it Something is better than Nothing. Those who say we are better off with nothing are wrong. A poor job is better than unemployment. Inadequate medical attention is better than none which can mean remaining sick or dying. Bad food is better than starvation. In the case of health care, a steaming pile of crap is better than constipation. And in the case of immigration overhaul, facing the problem and doing something will be better than remaining in denial. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.

Barack Obama will be remembered as the Breakfast Chef in the White House.