In the Jan. 30 debate John McCain famously made the political error of answering a hypothetical question. When asked whether he would support the Kennedy-McCain immigration bill, McCain responded:
"No, I would not, because we know what the situation is today. The people want the borders secured first."
This prerogative to "secure the border first" finds its origin in Newt Gingrich's "Citizen United" ad of June 2007, in which Gingrich gives us the much-touted "amnesty" meme, stating:
Amnesty makes our laws meaningless and invites millions more to cross the border illegally – making the problem worse. Not better. The new McCain-Kennedy immigration plan does not secure our borders, and it does not protect our values.
http://www.factcheck.org/...
There is much that is not true in this statement. Border security can be provided through steel, concrete, and razor wire, or it can be provided through legal remedy and common sense. The latter approach is much cheaper and in closer keeping with true American values.
In 1922, my father's maternal grandfather decided that his daughter would be born in the United States Years later this decision enabled my grandmother to legally enter the United States as a citizen. She married here, and had four sons who gave her nearly 30 grandchildren. I was the first among them to graduate college.
During this time, the United States was experimenting with guest worker programs, including the Bracero treaty of 1942, which brought four million Mexican laborers into the United States. Within 20 years the Bracero program was abandoned, criticized as a system of legalized slave labor and overshadowed by the growing tradition of illegal, transient labor. In the process these forces, legal and illegal, helped shape the American seasonal farming industry.
In the 1970's I saw this first-hand, in the agricultural communities of Eastern Washington, where I learned that every year our crops are harvested largely with the help of immigrant labor; much of it, presumably, illegal. Everyone who lives in these communities knows who these workers are. It is simply an understanding, a part of life that one can find today where ever seasonal farm labor is needed, and it has been that way for as long as anybody can remember.
In recent years there has been a growing consensus that the immigration question has reached a crisis, and this is the situation that the Kennedy-McCain Immigration Bill sought to address. Obama talks about this bill in his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope". Unlike the Gingrich ads we find here, in pandering-free language, something a little closer to the crux of the problem:
Under the leadership of Ted Kennedy and John McCain, the Senate crafted a compromise bill with three major components. The bill provided much tougher border security and, through an amendment I wrote with chuck Grassley, made it significantly more difficult for employers to hire workers here illegally. The bill also recognized the difficulty of deporting twelve million undocumented immigrants and instead created a long, eleven-year process under which many of them could earn their citizenship. Finally, the bill included a guest worker program that would allow two hundred thousand foreign workers to enter the country for temporary employment.
On balance, I thought the legislation was worth supporting. Still, the guest worker provision of the bill troubled me; it was essentially a sop to big business, a means for them to employ immigrants without granting them citizenship rights - indeed, a means for business to gain the benefits of outsourcing without having to locate their operations overseas. To address this problem, I succeeded in including language requiring that any job first be offered to U.S. workers, and that employers not undercut American wages by paying guest workers less than they would pay U.S. workers. The idea was to ensure that businesses turned to temporary foreign workers only when there was a labor shortage.
It was plainly an amendment designed to help American workers, which is why all the unions vigorously supported it. But no sooner had the provision been included in the bill than some conservatives, both inside and outside of the senate, began attacking me for supposedly "requiring that foreign workers get paid more than U.S. workers."
On the floor of the Senate one day, I caught up with one of my Republican colleagues who had leveled this charge at me. I explained that the bill would actually protect U.S. workers, since employers would have no incentive to hire guest workers if they had to pay the same wages they paid to U.S. workers. The Republican colleague, who had been quite vocal in his opposition to any bill that would legalize the status of undocumented immigrants, shook his head.
"My small business guys are still going to hire immigrants," he said. "All your amendment does is make them pay more for their help."
"But why would they hire immigrants over U.S. workers if they cost the same?" I asked him.
He smiled. "'Cause let's face it, Barack. These Mexicans are just willing to work harder than Americans do."
That the opponents of the immigration bill could make such statements privately, while publicly pretending to stand up for American workers, indicates the degree of cynicism and hypocrisy that permeates the immigration debate. But with the public in a sour mood, their fears and anxieties fed daily by Lou Dobbs and talk radio hosts around the country, I can't say I'm surprised that the compromise bill has been in the House ever since it passed out of the Senate."
Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, Three Rivers Press, NY, 2006
Here we find here the bone of contention that thoughtful people today have with Republicans: they are steadfastly untruthful, even when the truth would benefit everyone. Rather than simply tell the truth they prefer the Rovian tactic of attacking their opponent on their strengths - lying, as Al Franken calls it. The Republicans assail Obama for doing exactly the opposite of what he's really doing, attacking him for supposedly doing exactly what they, the Republicans, are doing themselves: looking the other way and protecting the status quo. Meanwhile they simultaneously fulminate and berate their opponents for enabling what they themselves protect.
The irony here is that the immigration situation with Mexico and Latin America is what built the America we know, and it is not a bad thing! Our nation is founded in no small part upon the labor of Mexican immigrants, who for generations have come to our country and done the labor nobody else can or will do. It has been this way for generations, through huge swaths of our geography and economy. From the "Braceros" of the 1940s to the farm laborers of the present day, these workers are no more and no less a part of the unique tapestry that is the American experience. And the irony is that everyone out there who is actually involved gets it. But on the whole, we're just not honest enough a people to speak of it openly in our public debate.
Some have argued that there is a moral equivalency between Mexican immigration and all other immigration: East Asian and African, for instance. We certainly have long and storied histories with those parts of the world. But there can be no doubt that our relationship with our bordering neighbors is unique. Americans and Mexicans have a shared history and a shared destiny. To paraphrase the oft-quoted Mexican saying, "I didn't cross the border. The border came to me."
So the party platforms have much here to address: a shared history, a legal and humanitarian crisis.
I believe the DNC platform is marginally better than the RNC's in that, while it is not a courageous document, it is more honest, but it lacks the unwavering dedication to absolute truthfulness that we find in Obama's reflections in "The Audacity of Hope". Somewhere between the refreshing honesty of this book and the compromises expressed in the DNC platform is the candidate's platform, which is the last best hope we have:
http://www.barackobama.com/...
Here in Obama's issues statement we find the following principles:
Bring people out of the shadows
Improve our immigration system
Create secure borders
Remove incentives to enter illegally
Honor our immigrant troops
These are honorable and notable goals, not wholly unlike McCain's (who puts "secure borders" first) but they will only be achieved through the kind of honesty Obama has personally championed. That is to say: for true immigration reform to succeed, in a meaningful way, we must continue to pursue the path of honesty and eliminate the pandering, lying, and foolishness that has dominated the conversation so far.