GOP on Immigration: Talking Tough While Stonewalling Attempts to Fix the Problem

America's Voice Blog

Posted 07/26/10 at 04:11pm

As anti-immigrant ringleaders whip themselves into a frenzy over illegal immigration, and continue a strategy that is both bad for the Republican Party and bad for the country, some Republicans are suggesting another way.

As reported in Think Progress, the latest anti-immigrant meme states that President Obama should be impeached due to his "failure" to enforce immigration laws. Never mind the actual facts on immigration enforcement – that Obama’s numbers are even higher than Bush’s. According to a Washington Post piece today:

" [the Obama Administration] expects to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year, nearly 10 percent above the Bush administration's 2008 total and 25 percent more than were deported in 2007," and the "pace of company audits has roughly quadrupled since President George W. Bush's final year in office."

It’s “metrics” like these that have gotten the Obama Administration in trouble with immigrant community leaders, who are concerned about the record pace of deportations and glacial pace of action on comprehensive immigration reform.

Still, anti-immigrant leaders like former Republican representative—and gubernatorial candidate—Tom Tancredo (R-CO), and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX), were never ones to let facts and reason get in their way. In an op-ed in the Washington Times last week, Tancredo made the outrageous assertion that President Obama constitutes "a more serious threat to America than al Qaeda" and called for Obama's impeachment. Tancrdo claimed that Obama’s immigration enforcement record amounts to a failure of his oath of office, "which includes the duty to defend the United States against foreign invasion." Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) agreed, telling listeners on Lou Dobbs's radio show:

"Whatever law they're not enforcing, I think it comes awfully close to a violation of their oath of office."

Despite the Party's drift toward extremism on immigration, some Republicans such as Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) are bravely promoting an unpopular idea within today’s GOP: bipartisan problem-solving, on the issue of immigration no less. On ABC's This Week, Gov. Christie called for comprehensive immigration reform and a federal solution to the broken system, saying:

"The president and the Congress have to step up to the plate, they have to secure our borders, and they have to put forward a commonsense path to citizenship for people... States are going to struggle all over the country with this problem [until President Obama and Congress craft an immigration reform measure], and so is federal law enforcement, who doesn't have the resources to do it effectively."

Similarly, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) summarized the politics of immigration nicely when he said,

"Republicans see a short-term benefit because of the popularity of the Arizona law. But then, a lot of Republicans realize, long term, this is not a winner for the party to take a position that is so distant from the largest-growing demographic. Some are willing to sacrifice the short term for the long term."

On immigration issues, the Tancredo wing of the Republican Party is driving the GOP agenda on immigration these days. Not only does this imperil the Party’s long-term viability in many states due to simple demographics, but it also represents the triumph of nativism - unpersuaded by facts and reality - over pragmatism, reason, and problem-solving.

The Republican Party has a choice - would it rather rail against illegal immigration while stonewalling action on actual solutions, or roll up its sleeves to--gasp--work with Democrats to address the problem with comprehensive reform?

I suggest the answer lies with Party leaders who have figured out how to win in contested races, like Christie, not “leaders” like Tancredo and Smith who are bent on driving the party further into oblivion with the fastest-growing group of new voters, Latinos.