Democrats float immigration reform plan

What happened

Senate Democrats released a framework for immigration reform last week, calling for national biometric identity cards to verify citizenship and a series of steps to tighten border controls. The plan subordinates a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal immigrants to stricter enforcement, requiring that the flow of new immigrants be cut off at the border by increasing the number of border patrol officers and customs agents. Republicans condemned the proposal as “an attempt to score political points,” and the sole Republican engaged in negotiations over immigration reform, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, withdrew from discussions. President Obama sent sharply mixed signals, commenting that “there may not be an appetite” for reform in an election year, while praising the Senate Democrats’ proposal. “We can no longer wait to fix our broken immigration system, which Democrats and Republicans alike agree doesn’t work,” Obama said.

With no help from Washington on the horizon, the immigration issue grew more contentious in the states. On May 1, 50,000 demonstrators in Los Angeles marched to protest Arizona’s new law aimed at cracking down on illegal immigrants, and thousands more protested elsewhere. Arizona legislators, responding to criticism and an emerging boycott of the state, revised the law, narrowing the grounds on which police can request identification from suspected illegal aliens; rather than “any lawful contact” triggering a request, a request for ID must now be preceded by a “lawful stop, detention, or arrest.”

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What the editorials said

Senate Democrats have produced a “reasonable compromise,” said the Los Angeles Times. But where is the GOP? Three years ago, President Bush and Arizona Republican John McCain offered a proposal that “balanced border security, labor flow, and legalization.” Now even McCain, facing heat from the Right, has “turned tail.” With midterm elections on the horizon, reform seems “politically inconvenient,” said The Denver Post. But the porous border with Mexico is a pressing concern. And it can’t be solved without federal leadership.

Why is everyone so terrified of immigrants? said the Richmond, Va., Times Dispatch. America is “in a better position to absorb immigrants now than it was a century ago,” when Italians, Irish, Poles, and Jews also encountered hostility and suspicion. If millions of Americans—“landlords, employers, merchants”—did not benefit from immigration, immigrants would gain nothing by coming here.

What the columnists said

“Will the real Obama please stand up?” said Albor Ruiz in the New York Daily News. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says “presidential leadership” is required to get comprehensive immigration legislation through Congress. But while saying he wants reform, Obama won’t spend political capital on this divisive issue. Reform won’t get anywhere with this “appalling lack of leadership.”

He can run, but he can’t hide, said Ezra Klein in WashingtonPost.com. Like it or not, immigration is already a hot issue in 2010. And despite very real political dangers, both parties have incentives to address it. “Hispanics are an important part of the Democratic coalition” and they deserve more than “denunciations” of the Arizona law. They’re waiting for “an actual solution to the problem.” If Republicans want to become the majority party again, they’re going to have to bow to “demographic reality” and embrace Hispanics, too, said Michael Gerson, also in WashingtonPost.com. If the GOP allows its nativist wing to dominate, it will cause resentment among the growing population of Latino voters that “will last for generations.”

Nonetheless, prospects for true reform look dim, said Ronald Brownstein in NationalJournal.com. Sen. Graham and Sen. Charles Schumer negotiated for months on a proposal that “appears more conservative” than the immigration plan backed by 23 Republican senators in 2006. Yet Graham couldn’t get a single Republican to sign on. Democrats are now divided, too. Meanwhile, Mexico’s drug war and U.S. unemployment are deepening the backlash against Hispanic immigrants, and with no political solution in sight, “the nation will likely suffer through years of sharpening social division.”