Wall Street Journal July 7, 2010 Suing Arizona How not to forge an immigration reform consensus.
'I'm ready to move forward," said President Obama toward the end of his speech last week calling for immigration reform. But "without bipartisan support," he added, "we cannot solve this problem." Mr. Obama blames GOP restrictionists for the lack of progress, but from our longtime pro-reform vantage point his own divisive approach to immigration is equally at fault. A case study is yesterday's Justice Department lawsuit against the state of Arizona over its new immigration law requiring local police to enforce federal immigration statutes. The suit suggests that, notwithstanding his repeated "Si se puede" pledges on reform to Latino voters, Mr. Obama is more focused on branding the GOP anti-immigrant than he is on signing a reform bill. The Arizona law is above all else a cry for federal help, and Mr. Obama could have used the law to re-launch a constructive debate on the urgency of reform and the consequences of further delay. Instead, since the law passed in April, the Administration has gone out of its way to pander to liberal activists and other critics of the measure and inflame the already emotional issue. Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano publicly trashed the legislation by their own admission before they had even read it. Then the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said his agency won't necessarily deport illegals referred by Arizona police under the new law. One of the biggest obstacles to passing reform that combines enforcement with more legal immigration has been convincing a skeptical public that any immigration policy will be enforced. Now comes the federal lawsuit, which is designed to block the law before it takes effect this month. The suit charges the state with pre-empting federal law in violation of the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, and unlike the case of health care the Constitution does expressly give Congress the power to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization." Justice also claims Arizona goes further than federal immigration law by making it a crime for anyone here illegally to solicit work. The feds may well win their case on the Constitutional merits, and we also oppose the Arizona law on grounds that it is a misuse of scarce police resources. One of its provisions criminalizes anyone who stops to pick up an illegal migrant worker even to do yard work. Arizona police have enough to worry about without making criminals of suburbanites who want help in landscaping their cactus gardens. On the other hand, the alarmists are wrong to portray the law as creating a new race-based police state. Nearly all of the law mirrors federal immigration statutes and orders local police to enforce those statutes for the first time. Notably, the feds aren't suing Arizona on equal protection grounds, despite Mr. Obama's repeated public and polarizing claims that the law could lead to racial profiling. This, too, betrays the political cynicism behind his public denunciations. The larger reality is that neither Arizona's law nor the 1,200 National Guard troops recently deployed to the border will stop Mexican migrants from crossing the border to make a better life. In the past two decades, the U.S. Border Patrol's budget has seen a nine-fold increase, and the number of border patrol agents has grown by a factor of five. Yet over that same period the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. has tripled. Illegal migrants will continue to arrive as long as the demand for entry visas outstrips the supply. To reduce pressure on border communities, politicians would do better to focus on devising guest worker programs and other visa proposals that would allow economic migrants to work here legally. This would reduce human smuggling, document fraud, trespassing and other criminality common in border regions. It would also free limited homeland security resources to focus on gang members, drug dealers and other serious threats. The Arizona law has polled well nationally, and the unfortunate truth is that elements in both political parties have sought to exploit it. On the right, GOP restrictionists have used it to promote a populist backlash against any immigration reform. They claim we can't have reform until we "secure the borders," but the reality is we can't secure the borders without reform that allows more legal ways to work in America. Some conservatives also hope to use the issue to further drive voter turnout this fall, as if Republican voters aren't fired up already. And as if there won't be a longer-term electoral cost to a GOP that reinforces liberal stereotypes that it is an Anglo-only party. As for Democrats, Mr. Obama clearly wants to use the Arizona law to mobilize Latinos against the GOP this year and looking ahead to 2012. Having promised as a candidate to address immigration in his first year as President, Mr. Obama waited until four months before the midterm elections to give his first major immigration speech. His speech last week praised President Bush for his 2007 attempt at reform, but only as a way of criticizing the GOP for killing it. The truth is that the 2007 failure was bipartisan, as we well know from having been caught in the crossfire. Majority Harry Reid blocked any serious consideration in the Senate. Mr. Obama's partisan immigration tactics might assuage his own party activists, but in the process he is further alienating Republicans and poisoning the chances for genuine reform through the rest of his Presidency. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
