Winning The Immigration Debate, Losing The Immigration Reality

I know that Markos is convinced that immigration as a wedge issue was a big loser for Republicans, and I agree. Clearly they have gotten little or no traction from it electorally, and their dash headlong into the arms of xenophobes increasingly cements their status as a permanent minority party, particularly as the Hispanic population grows and becomes a political force.

However, that's a reality of politics that's going to play out over the next decade or so. Right now, the anti-immigrant forces have shown sufficient perceived power to send Republicans (and more than a few Democrats) cowering. And the policies that have been implemented since the last attempt at comprehensive immigration reform are incredibly damaging and catastrophic. The consequences of waiting for the politics to become more favorable are grave.

Everybody chided Hillary Clinton for her not-entirely-coherent views on the policy of the then-governor from New York, Eliot Spitzer, to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. There was a lot of demagoguery in the press and the plan fizzled in New York and on the national stage. There were consequences to that failure.

Luz Gonzalez used to take spur-of-the-moment trips to the beach. Now, she's afraid to drive to the doctor for checkups on her new pregnancy. She and her husband, Ismael, can no longer have a savings account or a car registered in their names. Every time they drive to church, they watch for the flash of blue lights in the mirror.

The Gonzalezes, who identified themselves by only one of their two surnames, are among many illegal immigrants in North Carolina who are beginning a new life — one without driver's licenses. A 2006 state law made it impossible for illegal immigrants to renew their licenses. The change was talked about mostly as a tool to combat terrorism — several of the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks had licenses.

But it's also created a crisis in the Hispanic community and a potential hazard on the roads. As licenses issued under the old rules expire, advocates and law enforcement authorities say many illegal immigrants, who number an estimated 300,000 in North Carolina, are now driving without licenses or insurance.

This is a public safety nightmare waiting to happen. Tens of thousands of unlicensed drivers on the roads, who may not know the traffic laws, who are sure to leave the scene of any accident lest they risk deportation - that has a deleterious effect on the nation's roadways.

Then we have the dramatic increase in immigration prosecutions with the effective end of the "catch-and-release" program. Border enforcement officials are using the broadest possible definitions of "crime" to arrest virtually everyone found crossing the border, which is unsustainable and a distraction from actual border crimes like drug smuggling and human trafficking. This is especially true because border resources are finite - the money being put into failed initiatives like the virtual fence isn't going into a law enforcement apparatus that is straining against having to arrest, house and prosecute all of these individuals. There's border security and there's "border security" which threatens actual security by tying up the tools of law enforcement. There's also the fact that it's a completely misplaced policy:

Others note that, historically, immigration violations have been processed by U.S. administrative courts. Criminalizing illegal immigration while turning a blind eye to employers who provide the jobs that lure migrants makes for good election-year politics but poor policy, said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council.

"This strategy pretty much has it backwards," he said. "It's going after desperate people who are crossing the border in search of a better way of life, instead of going after employers who are hiring people who have no right to work in this country."

And this hardline crackdown, thoroughly supported by a Democratic establishment that thinks a tough stance on enforcement is their way out of the immigration issue, means that things like this happen for no reason whatsoever:

In May 2007, Victoria Arellano, a 23-year-old transgender immigrant from Mexico, was sent to a detention center in San Pedro after being arrested on a traffic charge.

Arellano, who was born a male and had come to the United States illegally as a child, had AIDS at the time of her arrest but exhibited no symptoms of the disease because of the medication she took daily. But once detained, her health began to deteriorate.She lost weight and became sick. She repeatedly pleaded with staff members at the detention center to see a doctor to get the antibiotics she needed to stay alive, according to immigrant detainees with whom Arellano shared a dormitory-style cell. But her requests were routinely ignored.

The task of caring for Arellano fell to her fellow detainees. They dampened their own towels and used them to cool her fever; they turned cardboard boxes into makeshift trash cans to collect her vomit. As her condition worsened, the detainees, outraged that Arellano was not being treated, staged a strike: They refused to get in line for the nightly head count until she was taken to the detention center's infirmary.

Officials relented, and Arellano was sent to the infirmary, then to a hospital nearby. But after two days there -- and after having spent two months at the federally operated facility -- she died of an AIDS-related infection. Her family has taken steps to file a wrongful-death claim against the federal government.

These immigration detention centers are growing as the "prosecute everyone" philosophy pervades all levels of government. They have no minimum standards to provide healthcare and are mainly managed by private contractors. The immigrants inside these detention centers are not even under criminal charges, but civil violations as they await deportation. The next detainee may be this valedictorian who has lived in America since he was 2 years old:

Arthur Mkoyan's 4.0 grade-point average has made him a valedictorian at Bullard High School in Fresno and qualified him to enter one of the state's top universities.

But while his classmates look forward to dorm food and college courses this fall, Arthur Mkoyan may not make it.

He is being deported.

Arthur, 17, and his mother have been ordered out of the country. By late June, they may be headed to Armenia [...]

Mark Silverman, director of immigration policy at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, said Arthur Mkoyan's case illustrates why Congress should have passed the Dream Act. The act would have allowed students who excelled in school and stayed out of trouble to become permanent residents and attend college or enlist in the military

"There's something very wrong with the immigration laws when our government is deporting our best students," Silverman said.

Absolutely right, but Democrats were confident that they would win this debate in the long run if they didn't rock the boat and offer a sensible alternative to a xenophobic hardline set of policies. As a result, bright students are being sent away, hundreds of thousands are driving without licenses, law enforcement can't focus on actual security measures, and immigrants are dying - needlessly.

It's not enough to just "win" politically on this issue. There has to be some actual conviction to stand up to pernicious policies that warehouse humans, deny them basic medical care, and hold children responsible for the actions of their parents. Republicans didn't care that their position has been discredited at the ballot box - they kept forging ahead. The Rahm Emanuel position is to encourage Democrats to take a right-wing stance to defuse the issue until such a time as it's politically convenient. Arthur Mkoyan and Victoria Arellano won't have the luxury of waiting around.

Toward A Demonization-Free Politics

It's sad that we can't have a conversation about public safety in this country without it degenerating into an expression of xenophobia.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer formally announced today that he would abandon his plan to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, conceding that his best efforts to sell New Yorkers on the merits of his proposal had clearly failed.

The decision ends a bitter seven-week battle over the proposed policy that battered Mr. Spitzer and his fellow Democrats and drew national attention from critics of illegal immigration.

“It does not take a stethoscope to hear the pulse of New Yorkers on this topic,” Mr. Spitzer said, standing with a half-dozen members of New York’s Congressional delegation who had supported his original move to give licenses to illegal immigrants.

In acknowledging one of his first major reversals as governor, Mr. Spitzer hit a few familiarly pugilistic notes, lashing into critics who, Mr. Spitzer said, “equated minimum-wage, undocumented dishwashers with Osama bin Laden.” He also said he still believed his proposal would have benefited New Yorkers, citizens and immigrants alike, and lit into federal officials for failing to fix the nation’s immigration system at the national level.

Spitzer's doing the right thing by listening to the concerns of New Yorkers. Unfortunately, immigrant-bashers and "anti-amnesty" activists drowned out the needs to reasonably keep the roads safe. Unlicensed drivers are not a good thing. There's no way to track them and measure their ability to follow traffic laws. I've heard many law enforcement officials, responding to criticism that this would give terrorists legal ID, say that "if a terrorist wants to give us fingerprints and a photo and a current address, go ahead." It's shocking that we allow xenophobes to get away with equating immigrants to terrorists in such a cavalier fashion.

The governor was trying to make a solution in the midst of chaos, and he was absolutely justified in doing so. The federal government's immigration policy has failed. Just focusing on the border, when fully half of all the undocumented in this country overstay tourist visas, will fail. A comprehensive solution is all that will succeed.

Revising And Extending My Remarks On Hillary Clinton

I was a bit surprised to see so many people focusing on the substantive question that tripped up Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's debate, and not what the episode revealed about her political character. To reiterate, I think Eliot Spitzer is a great leader, and what he is doing on the driver's license issue, particularly by beating back the hate speech of the likes of Lou Dobbs, is admirable. There are illegal drivers on the roads because we don't have a functioning public transit system in America. The driver's license should not be the main form of ID in America, it should simply allow you to operate a motor vehicle. If you have unlicensed drivers all over the roads, there are going to be serious public safety issues. That's all this issue is about, and it's not a federal one, furthermore.

I initially thought Clinton nailed the issue and was far better than Chris Dodd, who frankly sounded clueless about it. But her eventual response, marked by a backtrack to "I understand but I do not endorse," trying to be on all sides of it, was revelatory. It was status quo, all-things-to-all-people, value-challenged Democratic politics. I reject that. Apparently Clinton tried to clean up her response yesterday, but even that wasn't crystal clear.

So here's the statement that Camp Hillary gave to The Times today in response to questions about where she stands on the issue:

"Senator Clinton supports governors like Governor Spitzer who believe they need such a measure to deal with the crisis caused by this administration’s failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform," her campaign said.

It's almost too obvious to point out, but this just isn't an expression of support for Spitzer's proposed policies in any way. It even falls short of overt support for Spitzer in general -- it says she supports governors "like" Spitzer who are faced with policy conundrums of this sort. This is basically a clearer way of saying what she said yesterday -- Spitzer is trying to solve a problem that needs to be solved, and she supports the idea of trying to do something about it with policies similar to these.

The AFSCME endorsement kind of blunted the impact of this waffling, although John Edwards nabbing the New Hampshire SEIU may prove more important. The point is less about the contentious issue of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants - one that State Senator Gil Cedillo has been nobly pushing out here in California for years - it's about Hillary Clinton's judgment. She is far too constrained by political expediency, and would rather dance around a tough issue than lead on it and bring people to her position. That's not the kind of leadership I really want to see in the White House.

If I Have To Spend Eight Years Listening To Mark Penn...

Just kill me.



Welcome to your time machine. A Hillary Clinton presidency will be eight more years of parsing and waffling and incomplete thoughts. Look, just come out and say it. She didn't want a press release that said "Hillary Wants To Give Illegals Candy." But that press release will happen anyway, so what's the point? Why not try to get OUT IN FRONT of an issue for a change.

In the absence of any leadership on immigration from the left, the issue has been demagogued to death. I heard a guy last night on right-wing radio talking about how his tax refund was lower than ever this year, and blaming illegals for it. Uh, the federal government sets tax policy, not Jose Jimenez, and they've been redistributing wealth upwards for decades. There's serious concern among the middle class about their economic future, and this has been seized upon by nativists. It's the precarious underbelly of right-wing populism, and this radio caller's comment was the distilled essence of it. They think they're not getting ahead because the illegals are taking their jobs and sucking up government services because they have no "survival skills" (a direct quote). Survival skills are ALL that a Mexican national travelling through deserts and rivers to feed his family has. They're contributing more to the economy than they're taking away, and they're being exploited by cruel and greedy employers. Fix that part of the issue, which has been degraded severely in the Bush era, and you fix it all.

Someone needs to be giving voice to the voiceless and fighting for an immigration reform that is sensible and reflects American principles. Hillary Clinton and her spinners offer nothing but mush. She won the AFSCME endorsement today, so that'll probably overshadow last night's pathetic performance. And her team will probably be successful in framing it as "6 guys ganging up to attack 1 woman" (uh, it's called being the frontrunner, if you don't like it, drop out). But we need more than status quo, follow the polls, mushy-middle technocracy. There are too many challenges we face for that to characterize the next 8 years.

Debate Post-Mortem: Clinton On The Hot Seat

It's distressing that this Presidential election could turn on the nativist, fearmongering issue of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, around which there is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. I'm one of the many in California who has been in an accident with someone who didn't have insurance (I didn't check papers so I don't know if he was "illegal"). The impact on premiums and basic public safety is severe. The guy smashed me into the sidewalk and about 10 inches away from a light pole. If granting licenses means we can track those who can drive and keep those who can't off the road, then there are social benefits to that.

Senator Clinton initially gave a good answer to this, but when challenged by Chris Dodd, who gave one of those positions that sounds noble but actually is more driven by fear and nativism, she suddenly got an image of a Rudy Giuliani press release shouting "HILLARY HEARTS ILLEGALS" in her head or something, and decided she couldn't endorse the plan fully. So after a couple minutes of saying it was a good idea and defending it, she couldn't endorse it.

Forgive me if I see that as a microcosm of what would happen in a Clinton presidency. She takes a strong position on the issue, then reads the focus groups, or just imagines them, and instead of doing the hard work of educating the public, she stops short and hedges because of perceived political costs. That describes her husband's presidency in many ways, and while it was a hell of a lot better than 8 years of George W. Bush, it's inappropriate for the unique moment we face today. I'd rather go with someone who thinks like this.



Edwards was absolutely right to point out Clinton's answer on the driver's license issue. She spoke on both sides of it in two minutes flat. It's one thing to make an accusation that Clinton uses doubletalk, it's quite another to have it come up in the middle of the debate. Clinton displayed for the viewers exactly what the rest of the field, particularly Edwards and Obama, was saying about her the whole night. That was powerful. And it ought to be the takeaway from this debate.

I thought Clinton was under duress the whole night, but she largely fought it off. She defended her position on Iran - I don't agree with it, but she defended it - and gave some good answers in the middle of the debate. But by ending up on every side of the driver's license issue, she proved Edwards and Obama's point. She came off like a slick politician. And she recalled the worst of the Clinton years instead of the best, as she has been doing throughout the campaign.

It has the chance to be a pivotal moment if the press can get over giggling about how Dennis Kucinich saw a UFO, ignoring the three times he called for impeachment, of course.

UPDATE: This was Edwards' other best moment:

Edwards ... challenged her assertion that she was putting pressure on the administration when she voted for Kyl-Lieberman. "So the way do that was to vote Yes on a resolution that looks like it was written literally by the neocons?" Edwards said in disbelief.

Her answer on Kyl-Lieberman is incoherent, but at least it was an answer. The driver's license thing was a total implosion.