It looks like the big O is already sighting in on another monster, with the air still so full of cordite smoke from financial reform that no one yet knows quite what to make of it.
Thursday here comes a big immigration speech. That, we may presume will herald an effort to take this boondoggle on, presumably before the end of the year robs him of the slim margin of votes he has and ties his hands for a good two years.
It will be interesting to see if his speech and the goals he will state are in harmony with those he famously and eloquently gave in 2006.
In that speech, he really looked a lot like the guy inhabiting the white house today, I reflected with some relief as I looked it over.
Centrist, he called for strong border control:
But those who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. And because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of the immigration laws.
The bill the Judiciary Committee has passed would clearly strengthen enforcement. I will repeat that, because those arguing against the Judiciary Committee bill contrast that bill with a strong enforcement bill. The bill the Judiciary Committee passed clearly strengthens enforcement.
To begin with, the agencies charged with border security would receive new technology, new facilities, and more people to stop, process, and deport illegal immigrants. But while security might start at our borders, it doesn't end there. Millions of undocumented immigrants live and work here without our knowing their identity or their background.
But he also laid out a plan for a route to citizenship:
They have to acknowledge that breaking our immigration laws was wrong. They must pay a penalty, and abide by all of our laws going forward. They must earn the right to stay over a 6-year period, and then they must wait another 5 years as legal permanent residents before they become citizens.
But in exchange for accepting those penalties, we must allow undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows and step on a path toward full participation in our society. In fact, I will not support any bill that does not provide this earned path to citizenship for the undocumented population--not just for humanitarian reasons; not just because these people, having broken the law, did so for the best of motives, to try and provide a better life for their children and their grandchildren; but also because this is the only practical way we can get a handle on the population that is within our borders right now.
And he called for a guest worker program, acknowledging the important function non-docs fill in our economy:
Replacing the flood of illegals with a regulated stream of legal immigrants who enter the United States after background checks and who are provided labor rights would enhance our security, raise wages, and improve working conditions for all Americans.
And then he thrilled me to the marrow by saying what a lot of people never had the balls to say, and that is, if we are serious about immigration reform, we have to hold employers of illegal immigrants accountable just as we do the non-docs:
American employers need to take responsibility. Too often illegal immigrants are lured here with a promise of a job, only to receive unconscionably low wages. In the interest of cheap labor, unscrupulous employers look the other way when employees provide fraudulent U.S. citizenship documents. Some actually call and place orders for undocumented workers because they don't want to pay minimum wages to American workers in surrounding communities. These acts hurt both American workers and immigrants whose sole aim is to work hard and get ahead. That is why we need a simple, foolproof, and mandatory mechanism for all employers to check the legal status of new hires.
So he additionally called for a mechanism by which employers have to prove that there aren't Americans that want those jobs. He also pointed out that deporting 11 million people isn't a serious proposal, as it's not even remotely feasible.
And then, being Barack Obama, he said a bunch of stuff that made me all squooshy about the role of immigration in our nation's history and how immigrants came for a noble purpose of finding work, and so on.
It will be interesting to see how the speech on Thursday compared with the positions he staked out in 2006.
I'll bet you a great big slice of orange pie that the speech adheres closely to that vision, and that in the ensuing brawl several components of the vision are bartered off for the sake of making a beginning on reform, and that some here will never forgive him for it, and others will cheer the gains made.
Whadya think?