Immigration issue mainly driven by pols and press

By JOSE DE LA ISLA
Friday, October 27, 2006
Researcher Tamar Jacoby has blown the lid off immigration as being a vital election issue. What she has to say has implications for candidates trying to use it as a last-minute wedge issue to divide Americans in November's midterm elections.

Jacoby, who works for the Manhattan Institute, is a leading conservative scholar on immigration and citizenship. In the current authoritative journal "Foreign Affairs," she argues that the issue is driven mainly by politicians and the media.

News junkies know there was no major concern 18 months ago. Most were surprised last December to see the House pass a bill offered by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., that further criminalized illegal status.

The public has become much less divided on the issue than most of us are led to believe. Poll results are remarkably consistent. Two thirds to three quarters of the public want Congress to address the problem with tougher enforcement and a path to earned citizenship. Economic projections show that job growth through 2012 will easily absorb this work force.

The vast majority of the public does not have as much of a problem as does a recalcitrant minority, points out Jacoby. Since Congress failed to come up with a compromise law, a premium is now placed on the "20 to 25 percent of voters who depart from the emerging national consensus," she says.

They are mostly male, white and lack a college degree. And they are about evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. They are the naysayers who, statistical evidence aside, still believe immigrants are bad for the economy. They want to wall up the southern border and they feel real fervor at the thought that "illegal immigrants" can become citizens.

Many House Republicans, says Jacoby, are convinced "this group is more intense _ more concerned, more motivated, more likely to vote on the basis of the single issue" than others going to the polls, and feel they can make the difference in a very tight race.

That explains why in some places the divisive immigration issue is coming up as a last-minute wedge issue ripe for exploitation by candidates in either party.

In August, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sponsored a 35-second ad on its Web site with two people scaling a border fence. In it, images of Osama Bin Laden and North Korea President Kim Jong Il were mixed in. That helped create this climate.

Pedro Celis, chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, called the ad "appalling." DSCC should remove it, he said.

Still, some in his party, like Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who is in a tough re-election race, stepped up their get-tough-on-illegal immigrants ad campaigns.

Those responsible for the House legislation, the 104 members of the all-Republican House Immigration Reform Caucus, could alone greatly contribute to losing their party's majority, if 15 Democrats replace Republicans. Last month, the authoritative Cook Political Report was showing 18 HIRC members in "toss up" races. That helps explain why the hue and cry is so shrill.

Others have gone overboard. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, claims international Middle East terrorist groups, "narcoterrorism" and illegal immigration on the U.S.-Mexican border are interconnected. Locked in a tight re-election race, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is running TV ads questioning our border defenses.

They all fail to mention that the federal government already has a cross-border Security and Prosperity Alliance with Mexico and Canada.

For those candidates who bring confusion, divisiveness and rancor to this debate, it's time to hurl a whipped-cream pie in their direction and yank the bad acts off the stage.

(Jose de la Isla writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail him at: joseisla3(at)yahoo.com.)