President Obama’s much-ballyhooed speech on immigration in El Paso, Texas earlier this week fell flat — and it’s not hard to see why. With the country still embroiled in a recession and with Congress still fiercely debating a budget bill, which the president is still resisting, Obama’s immigration speech was seen largely for what it was — a publicity distraction, and a decidedly partisan one.
Obama’s latest PR offensive isn’t really aimed at creating a new bipartisan consensus on one of the nation’s thorniest policy issues. With Republicans firmly in control of the House, and still staunchly opposed to an “amnesty,” the Democrats’ chief objective — passage of a sweeping legalization program or the so-called DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to some 800,000 illegal immigrants who migrated to the U.S. with their parents while still minors — isn’t a realistic option in the current Congress.
Furthermore, polls show that most Americans still want the nation to focus on securing the U.S.-Mexico border — where drug and gang violence is surging even as illegal immigration has tapered off — despite President’s Obama’s insistence in his El Paso speech that the border is already “secure.”
But the president has a huge problem on his hands: Latinos. With his support among white voters near an all-time low, Obama’s re-election hinges more than ever on winning a commanding Latino majority in key Southwestern swing states as well as major battleground states like Florida and even Virginia — states that Obama carried in 2008 thanks, in part, to his decisive 2-1 advantage with Latinos.
But Obama’s current polling numbers with Latinos are abysmal. His overall approval rating with Latinos stands at 54%, which ties a record low, set last summer. (It’s even worse with Spanish-speaking Latinos, who are more concerned with immigration). And with their unemployment level at 13%, just 42% of Latinos say they plan to vote for Obama in 2012. That’s a huge opening for the GOP to make historic gains with Latinos — but only if they re-position themselves to exploit this new opportunity.
Sadly, some conservatives have interpreted last November’s historic midterm election victory as a mandate to “stay the course” on immigration. And at one level, it’s hard not to see why. The GOP’s pro-Arizona message did resonate strongly with white voters, especially in competitive swing districts in the South and Midwest, which helped Republicans regain control of the House by a wide margin. But the GOP hard-line also inflamed Latino voters out West and may well have cost the GOP a chance at recapturing the Senate.
Most thinking Republicans know that their party is in danger of losing a huge new opportunity with Latinos if they don’t find a way to adopt a more positive, “party-of-yes” message on immigration. The question is just how to do that.
The most moderate GOP wing, comprised of some George W. Bush-era Republicans, and led by figures such as Karl Rove and Bush’s younger brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, would support some version of the “comprehensive immigration reform” model advocated by Obama and one or two moderate Republicans like Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC). That means embracing some kind of legalization program in exchange for historic Democratic Party concessions on border and workplace enforcement — with progress on each front inextricably linked.
That’s still anathema to GOP conservatives, including former comprehensive immigration reform supporters like Arizona Sen. John McCain, who say that enforcement should remain the nation’s exclusive priority.
A second current of opinion, closely identified with the high-technology business sector, including firms like Microsoft and Intel, as well as conservative and moderate Democrats unwilling to support an “amnesty,” is to focus on expanding temporary visas for high-skill workers, mainly IT specialists from China and India. Currently, just 65,000 such workers are allowed to enter the country annually, way below the effective market demand for their services.
Business-oriented moderates would also like to make it easier for foreign-born engineers and scientists studying in U.S. universities to become permanent residents and transition to the full-time work force. These students are in especially high demand globally, and once they graduate, many opt to work for firms in other countries. From the standpoint of fostering American “competitiveness,” that simply makes no sense.
Pushing for high-tech visa reform doesn’t necessarily mean lightening up on tougher border or workplace enforcement policies, or endorsing “amnesty,” as it’s currently being promoted.
But it almost certainly means a decisive break with the across-the-board immigration “restrictionism” advocated by groups like Numbers USA and FAIR and a return to the more vocal and principled defense of legal immigration as fundamental to our national interest that most Republicans advocated in the Reagan and Bush eras.
A third possibility for GOP re-positioning concerns the plight of lower-skill workers, especially those from Mexico. Those who advocate for reducing immigration may be willing to make concessions on high-tech workers — most of whom are highly educated and mobile — but when it comes to less-educated workers, who are more likely to end up needing public assistance, “restrictionists” typically balk.
In the past, businesses and immigration advocates have struggled with a formula that would allow more lower-skill laborers to enter the country as “guest workers” — laboring on temporary contracts for 3-6 years, perhaps, but not allowing them to transition to legal residency — at least not right away.
“Restrictionists” argue that many low-skill guest workers simply won’t leave the country when their contracts are up, so a new guest-worker program will end up fueling more illegal immigration, while increasing pressure for an “amnesty.” And some labor unions fear that a massive influx of contract Mexican workers will depress domestic wage rates, harming all U.S. workers.
But there are signs that support for a national guest-worker program is growing, but from an unlikely place — the states. Two months ago, the Utah legislature passed an extraordinary new law, the “Utah Compact,” that allows state officials to negotiate with their counterparts in Mexico to establish a visa program to allow Mexican workers entry into the Utah labor market as contract workers.
Utah currently has an estimated 100,000 illegal immigrants working in the economy already, so in effect, the program will allow some of these workers to gain a legal foothold, but without any guarantee that it will allow them to gain permanent residency. Other beneficiaries could be workers still in Mexico who might otherwise be tempted to migrate illegally.
Utah’s business community, backed by the state’s powerful Mormon Church, was instrumental in promoting and securing passage of the new guest-worker legislation. So was Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican who touted the measure as an alternative to “amnesty” on the one hand and an Arizona-style police crackdown on the other.
At Herbert’s urging, in fact, the state legislature voted down two competing bills — one that would have granted Utah’s illegal immigrants a de facto legal status by simply registering them with public authorities, and another that would have required Utah police to inquire about the legal status of persons they’d encountered at a lawful stop — in effect, an Arizona “copycat” law.
Some Latino conservatives are urging Republicans to use the Utah law as the foundation for a new national GOP immigration policy — one that avoids harsh crackdown language, and the appearance of anti-Latino race-baiting, but that woos the business lobby and even some legalization advocates who might see a guest-worker program as a stepping stone to an eventual compromise on “amnesty.”
But at least one top Republican, Utah’s Sen. Orrin Hatch, who’s in a tough re-election bid, remains cool to the idea, in part because conservatives in his state oppose the Compact. Hatch is one of the Senate’s most respected voices on immigration policy, and he holds enormous sway over the views of immigration moderates in both parties.
But two key factors could soon change the way Republicans look at their immigration options. One is the all-but-certain entry of former U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman into the GOP presidential race. Huntsman is a former Utah governor and a former leader of the Western Governors Association, which promoted a Utah Compact-style compromise on immigration as part of the national immigration debate during 2005 and 2006.
Once he announces his candidacy, probably in June, Huntsman is likely to speak out on the need for a national guest-worker program in order to draw a sharper contrast between himself and Obama, and to woo GOP business support. That will place enormous pressure on other GOP candidates, especially presumptive front-runner Mitt Romney, to define his views on immigration. Romney, who’s flip-flopped on immigration in the past, is considered a GOP hardliner, opposed to “amnesty” and supportive of tougher enforcement.
But unlike Huntsman, Romney has never taken a clear position on a national guest-worker program. But with Huntsman vying for GOP business support to finance his presidential campaign, Romney may well come under pressure to clarify his views, setting off a heated debate on immigration policy, especially if other candidates begin weighing in.
For example, Newt Gingrich, who’s just declared his presidential candidacy officially, has set up a new website to attract Latino support for his candidacy, and is likely to join Huntsman in calling on Republicans to develop what Gingrich calls a more “inclusive” message on immigration. Even Sarah Palin has begun urging Republicans to moderate their views.
All in all, it’s shaping up to be an interesting summer — and thanks to Obama’s renewed bid for the Latino vote, Republicans will need to decide how much longer they plan to remain the “party of no” on immigration when an historic opportunity to reposition themselves with Latino voters may be right at their doorstep — without having to cave in to the Democrats on “amnesty” or abandon their bedrock conservative principles.
Stewart J. Lawrence is a Washington, D.C.-based public policy analyst who writes frequently on immigration and Latino affairs. He is also founder and managing director of Puentes & Associates, Inc., a bilingual survey research and communications firm.