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Immigration Reform: The Winners and Losers Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com Shaking out the winners and losers in the failure of immigration reform can be as complicated as now-dead 390-page Senate bill itself. As the Houston Chronicle points out, even those groups who should have been solidly behind the failed legislation suffered from critical ambivalence on the subject. While business, organized labor, immigrant-rights groups, religious institutions and others urged the need for a fix of the immigration system, very few offered up unqualified support for the bill. Furthermore, these ostensible "losers" were scrambling right up until the end to convince Senators to modify many of bill's main features. Case-in-point: the controversial aspect of the legislation shifting from a system focusing on reuniting families to one where entry would have been granted based on a point system heavily weighted toward those with skills and education. Lorenzo Cano, associate director of the University of Houston's Center for Mexican-American Studies told the Chronicle, "It didn't answer the question about how individuals who have lower skills, but who we nonetheless need, would be able to come here to work legally." In another take, Rich Stolz, immigration co-team leader at the Center for Community Change (CCC), sees his organization as a loser with the defeat of the bill. He says he expects the country will now see more anti-immigrant ordinances passed by local governments. Story Continues Below
"America will become a police state for anyone who looks or sounds like an immigrant," warned Stolz in a statement, reported by New American Media. By the same token, some labor unions were happy to see the bill take a nose dive because they were convinced that its temporary worker program would have created a de facto underclass of cheap laborers. Less difficult to fit squarely in the loser column is the Republican National Committee (RNC). They are out of work now, but some of the 65 former telephone solicitors for the Committee told the Washington Times recently about declining contributions and a donor backlash against President Bush's immigration proposal. By way of corroboration, Massie Ritsch from the Center for Responsive Politics noted a major dip in fund raising by the RNC. According to the Times report, one fired phone bank employee said, "Every donor in 50 states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue." "Last year, my solicitations totaled $164,000, and this year the way they were running for the first four months, they would total $100,000 by the end of 2007," said another fired employee. But RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt steadfastly told the Times, "Any assertion that overall donation have gone down is patently false." Bringing things down to a more personal level, there is the case of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Having already linked himself to the Iraq war, he seems to have shot himself in the other foot with his rabid support of President Bush‘s immigration reform bill. Widely considered the GOP front-runner as 2006 ended, his numbers in the polls have dropped - a trend unlikely to be reversed because of his stalwart defense of the bill. Worse, on the heels of the vote that killed his prize immigration reform, McCain found himself fighting off rumors that he would actually drop out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, according to the Associated Press. "It would be nuts," McCain said. McCain's colleague from across the aisle, Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., certainly suffered no personal Waterloo, but the immigration reform battle resulted in the hard-charging freshman Senator getting his first major political Purple Heart. The Senate thoroughly killed (79-18) Webb's proposal that would have reduced the number of illegal immigrants who could gain legal status. Under the bill, legal status would have been available to immigrants who have been in the U.S. since Jan. 1. Webb wanted, among other things, to push the date back to 2003 - requiring four years of "continuous physical presence." Big loser Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who dragged the ill-fated bill back to the Senate floor, had his own version of winners and losers, as reported by Hispanic Business.com: "The big winner today was obstruction," Reid lamented. "The big winner today was inaction. The big winner today was a status quo that amounts to silent amnesty." Actually, a better candidate for big winner status must be presidential candidate Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., whose singular theme in his run for the GOP nomination is border security. Long, long before entering the fray, Tancredo announced that he would run if no strong border security candidate emerged. The one-issue candidate is seeing that issue storm to the head of the pack. After the final historic vote that doomed the bill, Tancredo said in a press release: "This is a testament to the will of the American people and a great victory for our country. "It's time to move forward with what we should have been doing when this bill was originally passed in 1986, and consistently enforce the laws. I call it ‘Plan A.'" Another big winner must be presidential candidate Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who is considered to be the father of the border fence. In 1994, he pushed the construction of 14 miles of security fencing on the international land border separating San Diego County and Tijuana, Mexico. Hunter later introduced legislation calling for the construction of a reinforced fence along the entire U.S.-Mexico border. He got at least part of his wish when the Secure Fence Act was introduced and passed. "We have reduced smuggling of people and narcotics by more than 90 percent in that smuggler's corridor between San Diego and Tijuana," Hunter often notes. After the reform bill vote, Hunter announced to reporters that there should be "a very strong sense of urgency in this country to simply carry out the law, the mandate, for 854 miles of fence that we passed" in the 109th Congress, according to a Washington Post report. "They've only built 13 miles of the fence so far. Let's get it built before the next hot season." The defeat of immigration reform is a vindication of sorts for both Tancredo and Hunter, but whether it translates into money and momentum to these presently second-tier candidates is another issue. On the subject of money and momentum, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who generally supports a path to citizenship for undocumented workers, favors more family-friendly provisions and has expressed concern with the shift to a merit-based visa system, may come out the big winner. Clinton's campaign team has already boasted that Hispanics are one of Clinton's "most supportive and most important support groups," according to a Fox News report. Reportedly, a Hillary camp memo reads in part: "While George Bush captured about 40 percent of the Latino vote, Hillary is poised to reclaim the Latino vote that Democrats lost in 2004." The memo cites a March Latino Policy Coalition-Lake Research Partners poll that showed a 68 percent favorability rating, well above her primary competitors." Just after the fatal vote, Hillary endeavored to hit just the right note with Hispanics on her Senate Web site. "I am deeply disappointed that we still have not solved our nation's immigration crisis. We need comprehensive immigration reform, and I hope that we can find a solution that secures our borders, respects the rule of law, and honors both our history as a nation of immigrants and our basic values of respect and compassion. "In particular, as part of this solution, we must protect the sanctity of families and repair the broken, unfair bureaucratic system that forces lawful immigrants to live apart from their spouses and children. I am hopeful that one day soon we will be able to create a fairer process for people and families who are playing by the rules and seeking to come to this country in search of the American Dream. "I will continue to work with my colleagues on a solution that honors all of these principles." Finally, a big winner must be Talk radio. That medium's relentless attack on the bill was so effective, it had some big pols on the offensive. While Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said talk radio in particular has presented a one-sided view of immigration reform legislation, Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., was so miffed that she disclosed that she is "looking at" the possibility of reviving the fairness doctrine for U.S. broadcasters, according to a UPI report. Speaking on a recent "Fox News Sunday," Feinstein lamented: "This is a very complicated bill. Most people don't know what's in this bill. Therefore, to just have one or two things dramatized and taken out of context, such as the word amnesty - we have a silent amnesty right now, but nobody goes into that. Nobody goes into the flaws of our broken system." "I remember when there was a fairness doctrine," she said, "and I think there was much more serious correct reporting to people." © NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved. Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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