Chastised GOP Softens Stance on Immigration

A year after the Republican-controlled Congress passed the harshest immigration controls in a generation, the same legislative leaders have beaten a hasty retreat, in both policy and political gestures.

The lawmakers recently restored welfare benefits to legal immigrants, eased the threat of deportation for various refugees and paved the way for large numbers of illegal immigrants to gain permanent residency.

It used to be that when the words “Republican” and “immigration” appeared in the same sentence, “anti” was usually sandwiched in between. But on Friday, House Speaker Newt Gingrich found himself feted at a rally in Miami’s Little Havana, as about 300 Nicaraguans and Cubans celebrated a blanket amnesty from deportation for thousands of their countrymen. The Georgia Republican helped engineer the amnesty in the waning days of the congressional session.

“Gracias, Newt,” they chanted. Gingrich beamed behind a podium draped with a red “Hispanics Love Newt” banner.

At a Capitol Hill breakfast of Latino Republicans a few weeks earlier, Gingrich had connected his party’s softening stance on immigration issues to a broader big-tent message. “If we extend un gran abrazo (a big hug) to everyone,” he said, “they will extend it back to us and we will be a big American family.”

Stung by their worst-ever performance at the polls among Latinos in 1996, the GOP spent much of this year in an internal tug of war over immigration, struggling to find a balance between strict control of the nation’s borders and compassionate support of families who, like millions before them, were drawn here by the promise of America.

Increasingly, the moderate, pro-immigration voices of Jack Kemp, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and a pair of Cuban American House members from Florida--the only two Republicans who voted against the 1996 immigration reform--are drowning out the restrictionist drumbeat of Southern California Republican Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (Huntington Beach), Elton Gallegly (Simi Valley) and Brian P. Bilbray (San Diego), as well as Gov. Pete Wilson.

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Now, as the 1998 congressional election year dawns and the 2000 presidential campaign looms, analysts and advocates on both sides of the immigration debate wonder whether the GOP leadership has undergone a sea change on the issue or is riding out a course correction.

A possible bellwether came last month with the stinging defeat of a Rohrabacher motion intended to block the extension of a measure allowing illegal immigrants to obtain “green cards” without leaving the country. Not only did 71 Republicans abandon Rohrabacher to help kill the motion, but Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the first Cuban-born member of Congress, led part of the debate against it, offering the party starkly different leaders on the issue.

Eventually, Republicans helped craft a two-month grace period that allows eligible illegal immigrants--experts say there are 1 million, most in Southern California--who apply by Jan. 14 to pay $1,000 and get their visas here rather than having to return to their native lands.

“It’s a good signal that the voices of moderation and reason are prevailing on immigration issues,” said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. “I think the Republican leadership realizes . . . maybe things went a little too far last year.”

But others are not so sure.

Both the green card provision and the deportation relief measure contained unique elements that appeal to core Republican values. Businesses want their employees to be able to continue obtaining green cards here. And helping Nicaraguans and Cubans who fled leftist regimes tapped into the GOP’s staunch anti-communism.

“The best we can say is that we’re now getting mixed messages from the Republicans instead of a consistently ugly message,” said Cecilia Munoz of the National Council of La Raza.

A better test, many believe, will come next year, when Ros-Lehtinen and other moderates have vowed to provide relief to Haitian immigrants by lifting the threat of deportation, the same help passed for other refugees. Gingrich on Friday said he wants to help Haitians, but fears that such a move would trigger an exodus from Haiti and topple the new democracy that the United States hopes will take root there.

“It’s too easy to say there’s been a turnabout,” said Rudolpho de la Garza, a professor at the University of Texas who specializes in ethnic politics. “I don’t think the battle is over.”

Republicans have long struggled internally on immigration issues, as well as the broader question of how--and whether--to appeal to minority voters, particularly Latinos.

The fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population, Latinos are boosting their political influence with huge gains in voter registration in such key states as California, Texas, Florida, Arizona and New York. Republicans who believe that the party cannot survive without Latino support argue that it is a natural constituency because of the pro-business and conservative social attitudes that are predominant within the ethnic group. But others warn that the party soft-pedals on immigration at its peril, because such an approach will lose more die-hard Republicans than it collects in minority support.

De la Garza recalled a 1992 campaign rally for President George Bush at which the crowd was split between Mexican Americans and “Republican blue-haired ladies.” When First Lady Barbara Bush chastised Democratic challenger Bill Clinton for approving English as Arkansas’ official language while he was governor, De la Garza said, the Latinos clapped; the whites didn’t.

“It was a marvelous cognitive dissonance,” he said. “My reading of the Republican Party is it’s continually at war with itself.”

Republicans pushing the party to assume a more pro-immigrant approach point to compelling political evidence from the 1996 election.

In the presidential race, they note, Bob Dole’s loss in Florida represented only the second time the GOP failed to carry the state since 1968. Also in last year’s campaign, conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan’s stridently anti-immigrant campaign in the border state of Arizona landed him in third place in the GOP primary, an outcome that stemmed his momentum. Magazine magnate Steve Forbes--a moderate on immigration--came in first.

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In California, an apparent backlash against 1994’s Proposition 187--designed to strip benefits from immigrants--sparked strong support from Latinos for Democratic candidates, helping the party win back the California Assembly and elect a Latina to Congress, Rep. Loretta Sanchez.

In Congress, meanwhile, the signs of change are both direct and subtle. Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.), a moderate on immigration policy, won the chairmanship of the immigration subcommittee over Arizona’s Jon Kyl, a restrictionist. Gingrich’s office has started to translate news releases into Spanish. And there’s talk of a pro-immigration GOP caucus forming.

Los Angeles political consultant Allan Hoffenblum said the problem the GOP leadership found itself in was that it was unable to keep legal and illegal immigrants separate in its rhetoric.

“They’ve been so shrill about illegal immigration that . . . it appears they’re anti-immigrant,” Hoffenblum said. “A lot of it’s an image problem, but the image is what counts.”

Defining the stakes involved in California, he said, “If the Republican Party loses the immigrant vote, it’ll become like the Republican Party of Hawaii. It’ll all but cease to exist.”

Writer Peter Brimelow takes the opposite view in arguing that the GOP needs to toughen--not weaken--its immigration policies. “If [Republicans] don’t respond to their base, their base will go off someplace else,” said the British-American author of the 1995 book “Alien Nation.”

Motivating the recent shift among the leadership, he believes, is guilt over the party’s past civil rights record. “They’re terrified to death of being called racist,” he said. “Anything that appears to be racist they just cannot handle. They just run a mile from it.”

Restrictionists Bilbray, Gallegly and Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Texas), who chairs the House immigration subcommittee, all struggle to define the issue as one of law enforcement, not race, and rush to express their support for legal immigrants.

Bilbray notes that his mother emigrated from Australia. “Just because she came with an Anglo background doesn’t mean she has any less credentials” as an immigrant, he said.

But he also vowed not to stand still as his party moderates its immigration positions.

“This town responds to whoever whines the most,” he said, attributing the recent rollbacks to intensive lobbying by special interests. “If the Republicans want to walk away from California on this issue, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

Gingrich, at Friday’s rally, literally was walking hand in hand with two leaders of his party’s pro-immigration wing--Reps. Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, the other Cuban American representing the Miami area.

The scene could have been unsettling for many U.S. politicians--the audience clapped mostly during the Spanish versions of speeches, missed jokes in English and proudly sang the Nicaraguan anthem but seemed not to know the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Gingrich, however, was clearly comfortable--and deeply moved. He called Miami, a city of immigrants, “the heart of freedom for all of the Western Hemisphere.” Noting his own German, English, Scottish and Irish background, he said: “All Americans come from somewhere.”

The Nicaraguans gave him a red, white and blue hammock with his name woven into the cloth. Gingrich, with his appearance, may have laid the groundwork for another gift--their votes.

Said Pablo Tonini Zamudio, Miami correspondent for a Mexican news service: “The Nicaraguans, they don’t have any preference, Republican or Democrat. They will help the people who help them.”