Wedge Out Immigrant-Bashing

Immigrant bashers have had a field day since Sept. 11. Public opinion is aroused, law enforcement is on alert, legislation is being rewritten--all sensible reactions to the war against terrorism.

What doesn’t make sense is to use the terrorist attacks as an excuse to close our borders to future immigrants or to close our minds as to how to deal with the estimated 8 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

Immigrant-bashing has been a favored tactic for many in the Republican Party--remember California’s Proposition 187?--but President Bush and GOP leaders in Congress have wisely begun to reverse that nativist trend.

The president in particular has been aggressive with a constructive agenda on immigration topics before and since Sept. 11: backing the extension of 245(i) visas (allowing illegal immigrants to remain with their families in the U.S. while applying for a green card; the bill cleared the House on March 12), holding talks with President Vicente Fox of Mexico on guest worker programs and resisting calls for sealed borders and mass deportation.

On Friday, Bush will meet with Fox and is expected again to discuss a United States-Mexico accord to reform an immigration system that everyone agrees is broken. Such a plan would strengthen our borders by creating a regulated migration path and allow some law-abiding, hard-working illegal immigrants to earn their way to legal status.

If there are potential evildoers among them, this handful must be dealt with. But if we further isolate immigrants, as GOP firebrand Pat Buchanan and others suggest, we make this task harder.

A related issue is the children of illegal immigrants who are here through the actions of their parents but are being punished by state and federal laws for their parents’ choices.

Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) has introduced legislation called the Student Adjustment Act that is a good example of the type of initiatives that Republicans need to take. This measure also is consistent with a recent decision by the regents of the University of California to allow children of illegal immigrants living in the state to pay the same tuition as other state residents.

Cannon’s legislation would restore a state’s right to determine who is a resident for purposes of higher education and would allow for the naturalization of currently enrolled high school students of good moral character.

In other words, it would recognize that it is a waste to invest resources in making sure that these children graduate high school, only to find themselves compelled to live in the shadows for the rest of their lives.

These are children whose parents brought them here without their papers and who have grown up in the United States. They want to go to college and are qualified to go to college, but out-of-state tuition makes it impossible for them.

Stephen Moore of the libertarian Cato Institute and head of the conservative Club for Growth testified before Congress last year that a typical immigrant family pays an estimated $80,000 more in taxes than it will receive in local, state and federal benefits over a lifetime of eligibility.

There is also a high political price that state and national Republicans have paid for pursuing the so-called wedge issues in the past. Look at the track record of GOP presidential and gubernatorial candidates in California: Bob Dole in 1996 got 38% of the vote; Dan Lungren in 1998, 38%; George W. Bush in 2000, 40%. During the same period, California Republicans lost three congressional seats, two state Senate seats and five Assembly seats.

In California during the same decade, Latinos increased by more than 3 million and Asians by nearly 1 million.

Clearly, the message of California Republicans has not grown over the same period to appeal to these groups.

The party and the country stand at a crossroads. Either we adopt a restrictionist path, which calls for mass deportation of millions of hard-working people, or we follow the president’s lead and adopt constructive reforms designed to end illegality, recognize the contributions of immigrants and make our borders more secure.

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Richard N. Bond, a Washington-based government relations consultant, is a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.