Immigratitude

With too many Republicans throwing amendments at the proposed Senatorial Gang of Eight (including powerful GOP leaders) – ranging from impossible requirements for border protection to instituting voter ID requirements that have already been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court – the reality of immigration reform is going to hinge on strong Democratic support plus “enough” Republicans who are truly committed to expanding the reach of their party. But not if the House Speaker has anything to say about it: “I don’t see any way of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that doesn’t have a majority support of Republicans.”

“House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said [June 18^th] that he will not advance any bill that did not have the support of a majority of the House GOP, which will mean engaging some of the proposal’s biggest detractors and harshest critics… ‘I have no intention of putting a bill on the floor that will violate the principles of our majority and divide our conference,’ Boehner told his party colleagues in a closed meeting [June 18^th], according to GOP aides present. ‘One of our principles is border security. I have no intention of putting a bill on the floor that the people in this room do not believe secures our borders. It’s not gonna happen.’” Washington Post, June 18^th.

It seems as if the post-2012 Presidential election pledge from the GOP leadership to expand its constituency didn’t resonate particularly well with the socially conservative Base that defines both the Tea Party and the new GOP. With recent statistics showing that there are more deaths than births among American Caucasians, our economic growth may in fact depend on immigration.

But for those who claim opening our doors in a pragmatic solution for immigration reform will cost this country billions, a new report challenges that assumption: “A long-awaited analysis by the Congressional Budget Office found that the benefits of an increase in legal residents from immigration legislation currently being debated in the Senate — which includes a pathway to citizenship — would outweigh the costs. While the report was a clear victory for immigration proponents, it came just hours after Speaker John A. Boehner raised potential new obstacles for the bill, saying he would not bring any immigration measure to the floor unless it had the support of a majority of House Republicans.

“The report estimates that in the first decade after the immigration bill is carried out, the net effect of adding millions of additional taxpayers would decrease the federal budget deficit by $197 billion. Over the next decade, the report found, the deficit reduction would be even greater — an estimated $700 billion, from 2024 to 2033. The deficit reduction figures for the first decade do not take into account $22 billion in the discretionary spending required to implement the bill, however, making the savings slightly lower…

“The budget office also found that in the next decade the legislation would lead to a net increase of about 10.4 million permanent legal residents and 1.6 million temporary workers and their dependents, as well as a decrease of about 1.6 million unauthorized residents.” New York Times, June 18^th.

Another huge issue revolves around the reluctance of undocumented aliens to report even horrifically violent crimes against them for fear of deportation. George Gascón, district attorney for San Francisco and the former chief of police in San Francisco as well as Mesa, Arizona, told CNN (June 19^th):  “In the absence of federal action, states have taken immigration law into their own hands, implementing laws that drive a wedge between law enforcement and the people we are sworn to serve. A new study commissioned by Policy Link found that 45% of Latinos in Chicago's Cook County, Houston's Harris County, Los Angeles and Phoenix's Maricopa County were less likely to report crime because they fear police will inquire about their immigration status. More disturbing is that 70% of undocumented immigrants surveyed reported they are less likely to contact police if they are victims of crime.

“When immigrants -- unauthorized or authorized - feel isolated from the protection of law enforcement, the entire community suffers. I saw this evidenced during my tenure as police chief in Mesa, Arizona, where local Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s reign of terror over the Latino community led to increased crime rates in his county. Arpaio blamed most crimes in Maricopa Country on undocumented immigrants and made racial profiling a common practice. He frequently detained people who ‘looked Latino’ until they could prove their status in the country.

“In direct contrast to this approach, I worked side by side with community groups and civil rights organizations to foster a sense of trust between the Latino community and the Mesa Police Department. The effects of a broken immigration system were a constant thread in the stories of Latino mothers, fathers and workers who refused to report crime for fear of being detained or deported. In Mesa, we lowered crime by some 30%, according to FBI data -- a result of the trust our police department created with all communities, and not because of immigration enforcement.” Allowing criminals to ply their trade without fear of retribution in some communities most definitely spills over to our society in general.

So noting that most new American jobs in the last decade have been created under the leadership of immigrant entrepreneurs, from Google to corner restaurants, combined with the fact that we cannot fill our technical jobs from our domestic graduate base, immigration has a definite benefit to the nation as a whole. By voting for mythology and slogans as opposed to the practical reality that actually benefits this great nation, with positive statistics to support the notion, our Congressional leaders need to embrace a whole lot more common sense.

I’m Peter Dekom, and watching the House vote for policies that don’t even get to the Senate floor, a grandstanding show for the Base, we are wasting time, energy and making a mockery of our Congressional process.