The Scariest Word In The English Language
Immigrant. Might as
well get it out there as quickly as possible.
We have moved into Phase II of the immigration discussion,
as the Gang of Eight compromise bill has now been properly strung up in the
classic piñata position. The sticks are
out, and the swatting has begun. I am
not seeing any candy yet.
But, before we get to what’s inside the piñata, it is
helpful to understand how a Bill becomes a Law.
The Senate passes a bill. The
House passes a bill. If it happens to be
the same bill, it then goes to the President for signature. If it happens to be different, it goes to
Conference; a compromise version is agreed to, then back to the respective chambers
for ratification, and then, to the President for signature. All very simple, and in normal times, the
way things have been done for more than 200 years. Some bills don’t make it out of committee,
some bills fail in conference, some even get vetoed by the President, but, we
have managed to accomplish this about 20,000 times. There are good laws and some absolute
stinkers, but the process has always gone on and the nation’s business (mostly)
done.
However, let us not forget that past performance is no
guarantee of future results. Think of
legislating now as a sort of game of Mad Libs, where the quotes and the parentheticals
really tell the story. So, “House” means
“Tea/Limbaugh Block of not less than 115 to approve.” That’s just to get a
vote. And “Senate” means “Sixty Votes
Because We Said So” for the same. And
just voting to vote doesn’t actually win.
There are a few old-fashioned types who will vote to vote out of respect
for the institution, then vote against the bill itself.
Still with me? The
Founders likely wouldn’t be. In
Federalist 10, Madison wrote “If
a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the
republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views
by regular vote.”
Silly
Madison. How quaint. He never had the privilege of meeting the
people who really run things these days, the ideological nihilists like
Ted Cruz, and the cold-blooded operators, like John Cornyn.
Cruz has been getting a lot of press, but it is actually
Cornyn who is more interesting. He was a judge on the Texas Supreme Court for
seven years, which would imply at least the ability to be impartial. But he’s also one of the most conservative
Senators, one of only three to vote against John Kerry’s nomination for
Secretary of State, and an expert in the game of naked power politics. Cornyn doesn’t care what a majority of the
Senate would vote for.
And Cornyn has just delivered on the GOP’s most troubling
issue, how to deal with that word, immigrants. The GOP is in a bind. It has what are three essentially hormonal
imperatives. The first, very clearly, is
to deal with the wing of its party that simply cannot abide non-white, and
particularly Latino immigrants. The second is to satisfy the business and farm
interests, who are major campaign contributors and who very much like cheap,
undocumented labor to do dirty jobs and depress wages in general for American
workers. And the third is purely
electoral; since Latinos (and other immigrants) voted for Obama, anything that
keeps down their vote is considered a positive.
So, while Marco Rubio’s dalliance with the Gang of Eight
made many Republicans queasy, Cornyn has just provided the deus es machina. The Gang’s bill is by no means a waltz into full
citizenship—it couldn’t be. Instead, it
is a compromise two-step. Undocumented
aliens can gain provisional status, permitting them to remain in the country
legally and work. Following that, there could also be a green card and even
citizenship, but only if certain border security measures were met to trigger
the second part of the plan and allow it to move forward.
Cornyn's
amendment makes the trigger threshold essentially unattainable. The Gang’s
threshold would require 90 percent apprehension of border-crossers and full
operational security at designated high-traffic areas of the border, which was
pretty formidable, and tougher than liberals wanted. But Cornyn's amendment
goes further, by extending that to every place along the border, meaning, in
effect, that you could theoretically be interdicting 99% of all
border-crossers, but have one or two small trouble areas, and that would be
enough to kill the entire second stage.
Cornyn also goes further than the Gang’s pilot biometric entry and exit
system for airports. He requires full implementation
in all airports and seaports. And, he adds 5,000 additional Border Patrol agents.
It
is a huge tactical victory for the GOP.
It keeps the cheap labor in the country for their business and
agricultural supporters, massively graces Red States with huge dollops of pork,
and prevents Latino immigrants from ever voting Democratic, because they will
never be able to vote. It’s a trap for
Democrats. If they oppose it they are
soft on enforcement, and will get the blame for not passing something. Support it and they have doomed the
possibilities for any normalization. We
will end up with a permanent underclass of guest workers and even more
restrictions on legal immigration.
And,
it makes Cornyn the key player on immigration.
Marco Rubio now works for Cornyn.
Despite his promises to the Gang of Eight that they move together, he’s
now embraced what another Gang member, John McCain, calls a “poison pill.” Whatever the Gang of Eight may be saying in
public, they all know Rubio sold them out.
That may help Rubio with his Presidential ambitions, but it’s not likely
to help him be an effective legislator. Integrity, even among thieves, matters. Rubio, by stepping away from his own
compromise and his personal commitments, is showing he may have a deficiency.
But
Cornyn’s coup may only be a tactical, albeit an important one. Because there is one demographic fact that
will not go away; for the first time, the death rate among whites in this
country was higher than the birthrate.
The total number of whites increased because of white immigration from
Europe, but the white “rootstock” is withering.
Population growth is coming entirely from the non-white populations,
because of higher birthrates and immigration.
And
that is a monumental problem for any Republican who isn’t driven simply by cultural
fears. Because the face of the party right now is unwelcoming to immigrants in
general and distinctly hostile to Latinos.
This doesn’t just come from obscure Congressmen from safe Districts
spouting nonsense. Romney himself, to my
great surprise, went out of his way to be critical in a very personal way, even
going so far as to criticize Sonia Sotomayor on a trip to Puerto Rico, where
she is universally considered a hero.
Maybe he thought that the base’s baser instincts needed to be fed, but
it was a very peculiar decision. Romney
is a very smart man, and if he didn’t get how people would take that, it is only
because he didn’t care what immigrants think. He didn't think he would need them, and so he didn't want them.
The
one person I am sure does understand it is Jeb Bush. He tried to communicate it this week at the
Faith and Family Forum (the new branding for Ralph Reed’s Christian
Coalition.) Bush went there to tell
conservatives that immigration reform was really a conservative idea. "Immigrants create far more businesses
than native-born Americans…. Immigrants are more fertile, and they love
families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger
population. Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity."
It
is unfortunate that one inelegant word (fertility) muddied the rest of his
message because Jeb was clearly trying to show a path forward. His own brother got 44% of the Latino vote in
2004, and Latinos are much closer to the GOP on social issues than they are to
the Democrats. Latinos are gettable, and
so are Asians and South Asians, if only the GOP would try. But the Faith and Family folk weren’t buying
it, and neither, it seems, is the rest of the party. That they don’t seem to want to, despite the
urging of Jeb Bush and people like Haley Barbour, tells you about the stranglehold
the extremists have. They aren’t worried
about demographics. They obviously think
that voter suppression, gerrymandering, and even changing the Electoral College
will keep them in control. After all,
they still have the House, despite the fact that a majority voted Democratic in
House races in 2012.
I am
betting they are right. For the
moment.
“Immigrant.” Not unlike saying “Frau Blucher” in Young Frankenstein.
Boo!
MM
