There is a clear and present danger that the Republican Party will exploit illegal immigration in the 2008 Presidential election in the same way that they were able to ride the gay marriage issue to victory in 2004. Democrats are generally avoiding the issue, but when pressed, each of them professes support for "comprehensive immigration reform" that would combine stepped-up border security and workplace enforcement with an earned legalization program. For evidence that this response is unsatisfactory, one need look no further than the unprecedented public outcry that twice killed the exact same proposal in Congress. Even worse, that opposition was directed most specifically at the part of the proposal most closely associated with the Democrats - legalization.
The reality that Democrats seem unable to face is that any effort to normalize the status of illegal immigrants will alienate a huge portion of the electorate. Witness the fates of Gray Davis and Elliot Spitzer, both Democratic governors of deeply blue states, in the wake of their respective attempts to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Hillary Clinton's campaign was headed toward the safe shores of inevitability until her equivocating response to the driver's license issue opened a floodgate of criticism. Still smarting at the next debate two weeks later, she delivered a very UN-equivocal one-word response to the same question - "No" - and watched Barack Obama fall into the exact same trap. Given that these stumbles occurred in Democratic debates where none of the candidates is seeking to distinguish themselves on this issue, we can only imagine the pounding the Democratic nominee will take when faced with a Republican nominee like Rudolph Giuliani, who promises "tough" action on illegal immigration.
So the Democrats appear caught once again between a deeply held majority opinion and one of their core constituencies - this time Latinos. But all is not lost. I think that buried in the noise around this issue is a simple, elegant solution that a Democrat can wholeheartedly embrace. My suggestion proceeds from the very legitimate, universally accepted rationale behind comprehensive immigration reform: our legal immigration system is broken. Democrats are correct in advocating for a "fix" to this dysfunction. As mentioned above, however, normalizing the status of illegal immigrants currently in the country is not a viable solution. At the same time, an "enforcement-only" approach would wreak havoc on the Democratic coalition.
A better comprehensive immigration reform approach would be to replace the legalization plank with one in favor of substantially increasing the quotas for regular permanent resident visas. These are the famous "green cards" that do not require a sponsoring employer and allow their holders to work freely in the U.S. and, after five years, apply for full citizenship. Family reunification, potential to contribute to our economy and national diversity are already the priorities for these programs. Applicants are required to apply from their country of origin and known previous immigration violators are barred temporarily or permanently, depending on the nature of their offense.
Illegal immigrants, having voluntarily returned home, can apply for these visas, but with no special advantage or disadvantage. By significantly increasing the number of these visas available and improving processing times, however, many, if not most, current illegal immigrants would likely qualify and be able to quickly return to their communities with minimal disruption to their lives. Already, more of these visas go to Mexican immigrants than to those of any other nation. To the extent that their applications were unsuccessful, it would be in favor of similar applicants with even closer ties to America.
This proposal is neither amnesty nor mass deportation. By creating a powerful incentive for illegal immigrants to voluntarily repatriate and apply to enter legally, we would greatly reduce the pressure at the border and at workplaces. We would also, however, provide a true "path to citizenship" and a better life for many illegal immigrants without rewarding the fact that they broke the law. It would increase our ability to enhance our economy and society through our immigration policy. It prioritizes keeping families together. The proportion of citizens and permanent residents in immigrant communities would greatly increase, creating a host of benefits for them and for America. And it would actually fix to our broken system.
I sincerely believe that Barack Obama is uniquely situated to advocate for such a proposal. It does not directly contradict anything in his current platform and would reinforce his reputation for creating solutions that transcend the divisive and polarizing politics of the past. As a person of color and son of an immigrant himself, he’d be relatively immune to charges from immigrant rights extremists of racism and xenophobia. His charisma, integrity and character would allow him to initiate conversations with potential opponents that others couldn’t.
As a campaign strategy, taking a strong stand on ending illegal immigration would also allow Obama to increase his appeal to the blue-collar voters who have been slow to catch on to his candidacy to this point and who are key to a Democratic victory in the general election. Through his advocacy of increasing the quotas for family reunification visas, he would also be creating new opportunities to deepen his base of support in Latino, Asian and other immigrant communities. In the general election, he would put any Republican opponent on the defensive by forcing them to oppose legal immigration.
It is this final point that is most critical. Democrats should stand strongly for immigration when it’s done the right way – legally. Immigration is the story of America -- the vast majority of us proudly trace our ancestry beyond our borders. But so is the rule of law. Republicans who oppose even legal immigration would be exposed as the true xenophobes and racists that they are in utter contrast to everything that Barack Obama represents and everything that most Americans aspire to be. That can only be a win for my candidate.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
A Response to Tom Hayden's 'Appeal to Barack Obama'
A Response to Tom Hayden’s Appeal
Tom Hayden recently posted “An Appeal to Barack Obama,” wherein he criticized Barack’s statements in a New York Times Magazine interview rejecting the Vietnam-era framework of Scoop Jackson Democrats vs. Tom Hayden Democrats. Hayden accuses Obama of Clintonian triangulation and centrism in general and in particular with respect to the War in Iraq and the issue of race. He argues that Obama would be better served politically by appealing to the antiwar “Tom Hayden Democrats” who will predominate in the Democratic primaries and intellectually by engaging in “substantive thinking” instead of just looking for a point exactly equidistant from each extreme. He also believes that Obama is consciously downplaying to his detriment “the deepest rationale” for his candidacy -- his race.
In my opinion, for Hayden, Clinton and others of the Sixties generation, the urgency to end the ideological battles that have stymied political progress in America is just not the same as it for younger people. After thirty years of ideological warfare in Washington and elsewhere, the Baby Boom generation will be the first in American history to bequeath to its children a worse quality of life than they themselves enjoyed. On issue after issue, we have seen the failure of our governmental institutions to make even the most basic progress on the fundamental issues facing our nation.
As the lives of the rich and poor diverge ever more widely from each other, our very status as a First World nation seems in question. Even as the affluent few enjoy unprecedented wealth and luxury, far more of us are sinking deeper and deeper into a quasi-Third World kind of existence where the basic necessities of housing, education, health care and a clean environment are increasingly out of reach. Meanwhile, our foreign policy spreads hatred and violence around the world, creating new enemies for American by the millions.
I, for one, am willing to trade a little bit of ideological purity in favor of a President who will roll up his or her sleeves, bring people together from across the political spectrum and produce some tangible progressive change in the status quo. Yes, the war in Iraq was a huge and immoral crime against humanity and Barack is the only major presidential candidate who spoke out against it when it wasn’t popular to do so. Iraq, however, is not Vietnam. We all want to end the war, but you don’t have to be a Scoop Jackson Democrat in order to be in favor of pulling our troops out in such as way as to avoid creating a humanitarian disaster and/or breeding ground for anti-American hatred and terrorism in our wake.
Hayden also seems to think that Obama’s alleged centrism is somehow connected to a desire to deemphasize his race – supposedly the “the deepest rationale” for his candidacy. Again, Hayden portrays his inability to lift his consciousness out of the false dichotomies of the Sixties generation – this time in the realm of identity politics. Obama transcends the old dichotomy of black militant/Uncle Tom Negro in the same way that he transcends the antiwar/hawk paradigm. He hasn’t built his popularity amongst whites by opposing affirmative action, like a Ward Connerly or Clarence Thomas. But at the same time, he’s not an Al Sharpton either, running from one racial flashpoint to the next in order to express his “outrage” at the latest example of white racism. Although he has an excellent record of achievement on black causes such as racial profiling and death penalty reform, he doesn’t analyze every issue facing our nation through the prism of race. Most of all, he provides inspired and effective leadership to our nation that is informed but not proscribed by his experiences as a black man in America. That, for me, is the “deepest rationale” for Obama’s candidacy.
Obama’s blackness is, by itself, no rationale at all for his becoming President. This is not to say that race has nothing to do with it. I’m sure that Obama’s racial consciousness probably contributed to his decision to forsake a cushy life on Wall Street in order to become a community organizer on the Southside of Chicago and, later, a civil rights lawyer. The fact that he successfully represented the Southside for two terms in the Illinois State Legislature indicates to me that he understands and can be an effective advocate for the needs and concerns of black constituents. I believe I can honestly state, however, that if a white, Asian or Latino candidate emerged with the exact same record, platform and abilities as Obama, I would be equally excited about his or her campaign.
I would invite Mr. Hayden and others of the Sixties generation to try to put aside the old litmus tests and take a good look at what Obama has stood and fought for throughout his career. His platform and record with respect to every progressive cause is there for all to see. Yes, he has the ability to reach across the aisle, but it’s because he triangulates himself to the center; it’s because he listens and finds common ground in order to move forward a progressive agenda. His campaign eschews money from federal lobbyists and has directed considerable resources into grassroots political organizing in disenfranchised communities.
It is only through some magical combination of luck, charisma and timing that someone like Barack even has a remote chance at winning – a set of circumstances that I don’t expect to see again in my lifetime. Progressives would be making huge mistake, in my opinion, to ignore the Obama campaign because he’s not perfectly ideologically aligned with them on every single issue and does not want to replay the battles of past decades. This is the best chance we’ve had in a generation to bring about real progressive change at the federal level in America. Let’s take advantage of it!
Tom Hayden recently posted “An Appeal to Barack Obama,” wherein he criticized Barack’s statements in a New York Times Magazine interview rejecting the Vietnam-era framework of Scoop Jackson Democrats vs. Tom Hayden Democrats. Hayden accuses Obama of Clintonian triangulation and centrism in general and in particular with respect to the War in Iraq and the issue of race. He argues that Obama would be better served politically by appealing to the antiwar “Tom Hayden Democrats” who will predominate in the Democratic primaries and intellectually by engaging in “substantive thinking” instead of just looking for a point exactly equidistant from each extreme. He also believes that Obama is consciously downplaying to his detriment “the deepest rationale” for his candidacy -- his race.
In my opinion, for Hayden, Clinton and others of the Sixties generation, the urgency to end the ideological battles that have stymied political progress in America is just not the same as it for younger people. After thirty years of ideological warfare in Washington and elsewhere, the Baby Boom generation will be the first in American history to bequeath to its children a worse quality of life than they themselves enjoyed. On issue after issue, we have seen the failure of our governmental institutions to make even the most basic progress on the fundamental issues facing our nation.
As the lives of the rich and poor diverge ever more widely from each other, our very status as a First World nation seems in question. Even as the affluent few enjoy unprecedented wealth and luxury, far more of us are sinking deeper and deeper into a quasi-Third World kind of existence where the basic necessities of housing, education, health care and a clean environment are increasingly out of reach. Meanwhile, our foreign policy spreads hatred and violence around the world, creating new enemies for American by the millions.
I, for one, am willing to trade a little bit of ideological purity in favor of a President who will roll up his or her sleeves, bring people together from across the political spectrum and produce some tangible progressive change in the status quo. Yes, the war in Iraq was a huge and immoral crime against humanity and Barack is the only major presidential candidate who spoke out against it when it wasn’t popular to do so. Iraq, however, is not Vietnam. We all want to end the war, but you don’t have to be a Scoop Jackson Democrat in order to be in favor of pulling our troops out in such as way as to avoid creating a humanitarian disaster and/or breeding ground for anti-American hatred and terrorism in our wake.
Hayden also seems to think that Obama’s alleged centrism is somehow connected to a desire to deemphasize his race – supposedly the “the deepest rationale” for his candidacy. Again, Hayden portrays his inability to lift his consciousness out of the false dichotomies of the Sixties generation – this time in the realm of identity politics. Obama transcends the old dichotomy of black militant/Uncle Tom Negro in the same way that he transcends the antiwar/hawk paradigm. He hasn’t built his popularity amongst whites by opposing affirmative action, like a Ward Connerly or Clarence Thomas. But at the same time, he’s not an Al Sharpton either, running from one racial flashpoint to the next in order to express his “outrage” at the latest example of white racism. Although he has an excellent record of achievement on black causes such as racial profiling and death penalty reform, he doesn’t analyze every issue facing our nation through the prism of race. Most of all, he provides inspired and effective leadership to our nation that is informed but not proscribed by his experiences as a black man in America. That, for me, is the “deepest rationale” for Obama’s candidacy.
Obama’s blackness is, by itself, no rationale at all for his becoming President. This is not to say that race has nothing to do with it. I’m sure that Obama’s racial consciousness probably contributed to his decision to forsake a cushy life on Wall Street in order to become a community organizer on the Southside of Chicago and, later, a civil rights lawyer. The fact that he successfully represented the Southside for two terms in the Illinois State Legislature indicates to me that he understands and can be an effective advocate for the needs and concerns of black constituents. I believe I can honestly state, however, that if a white, Asian or Latino candidate emerged with the exact same record, platform and abilities as Obama, I would be equally excited about his or her campaign.
I would invite Mr. Hayden and others of the Sixties generation to try to put aside the old litmus tests and take a good look at what Obama has stood and fought for throughout his career. His platform and record with respect to every progressive cause is there for all to see. Yes, he has the ability to reach across the aisle, but it’s because he triangulates himself to the center; it’s because he listens and finds common ground in order to move forward a progressive agenda. His campaign eschews money from federal lobbyists and has directed considerable resources into grassroots political organizing in disenfranchised communities.
It is only through some magical combination of luck, charisma and timing that someone like Barack even has a remote chance at winning – a set of circumstances that I don’t expect to see again in my lifetime. Progressives would be making huge mistake, in my opinion, to ignore the Obama campaign because he’s not perfectly ideologically aligned with them on every single issue and does not want to replay the battles of past decades. This is the best chance we’ve had in a generation to bring about real progressive change at the federal level in America. Let’s take advantage of it!
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