Immigration: Now it’s the Democrats’ turn

last updated 8 January 2015

For Democrats, immigration was the “gift that kept on giving,” said Gloria Borger in U.S. News & World Report. They spent the past year on the sidelines, gleefully watching as Republicans bitterly fought among themselves over President Bush’s proposed “path to citizenship” for the nation’s 12 million illegal immigrants. But suddenly, illegal immigration has landed like a hot potato in the laps of Democratic presidential candidates, and as Hillary Clinton just demonstrated, they don’t know what to do. When Clinton hedged over the issue of driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants at a recent Democratic debate, the criticism was withering, and her poll numbers started dropping. But it’s not just Hillary who has a problem. A new survey by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg found that America’s “unprotected” border is now the top concern among independent voters, beating out even Iraq and health care. “We need to have a strategy beyond saying Republicans are awful,” one worried Democratic strategist said. “And we don’t.” The best strategy, said Cynthia Tucker in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is to be honest with voters, rather than succumb to the temptation to pander to them. Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards should feel free to tell voters they’ll secure the borders and crack down on employers who lure illegals here as cheap labor. But they cannot join Republicans in suggesting they’ll persecute the millions of illegals already struggling to build a future in America. Despite all the heated rhetoric about “amnesty,” there is no practical way to expel all these people, most of whom want nothing more than the chance to work and feed their families. “Let Republicans take the low road. It doesn’t end in a place the rest of the country wants to go.” What the country wants, said Michael Barone in National Review Online, is an end to the lawlessness. Democrats tend to dismiss as “racist” anyone who doesn’t want to reward lawbreakers with citizenship, free medical care, and other benefits. Most Americans don’t see it that way—which leaves Democrats “out on a pretty flimsy limb.” That’s why some Democratic strategists are now calling for their party’s candidates to do on immigration what Bill Clinton did on welfare—break from party orthodoxy and support the common- sense reforms demanded by conservatives. It won’t happen, said Dean Barnett in The Weekly Standard. Democrats have convinced themselves that the anger over illegal immigration is “a talkradio- created fiction”—just another bogus “wedge issue,” like gay marriage. They’ll find out otherwise, come Election Day.