IMMIGRATION
Hard-liners don't speak for GOP
BY TAMAR JACOBY and GROVER NORQUIST
www.manhattan-institute.org
Watching the action
in the House of Representatives last week, it was easy to
imagine that immigration was a strictly partisan issue.
The bill under discussion, mostly the brainchild of Judiciary
Chairman James Sensenbrenner, was about as tough as it gets: not
just 700 miles of border fence and stiffer penalties for
employers who hire illegal immigrants but also a provision that
turns illegal presence in this country from a civil violation
into a federal crime -- subject to an entirely different kind of
policing and punishable by much stiffer penalties.
Over two days of emotional debate on the floor, Democrats
railed against the legislation, standing up, member after
member, to defend our tradition as a nation of immigrants. Most
of the Republicans who spoke used an entirely different
vocabulary -- all about policing and punishment. A few brave GOP
dissenters stood up to say that we can have both -- can remain a
nation of immigrants and a nation of laws. But when these
moderates clashed with hard-liners -- when restrictionist Tom
Tancredo demanded that the leadership renege on a promise to
balance the bill's tough enforcement with recognition that we
also need more realistic, more enforceable laws, in line with
our need for foreign workers -- the party chieftains came down
squarely with Tancredo.
Then, when it came time to vote, the members split lopsidedly
along party lines: most Republicans for tougher enforcement,
most Democrats for a broader approach -- enforcement plus a
temporary worker program and a provision to deal with the 11
million illegal immigrants already in the country.
Add in President Bush's tough-sounding speech on border
security in Tucson last month, and the conclusion seems obvious:
The Republican Party is pivoting on immigration, resolving the
differences that have plagued it since Bush proposed a
guest-worker program nearly two years ago and coming together
around a new hard line calculated to please the base in the
run-up to next year's election.
The only problem: This isn't true. And though the hard-liners
had the upper hand in the House, they do not speak for the party
and will not, we are convinced, triumph in the long run.
What happened last week was less about immigration than about
a GOP congressional leadership looking for an issue to rally the
party after a bad autumn dominated by Katrina, Iraq, Harriet
Miers and accumulating indictments. Many pro-immigration reform
Republicans understood that and went along, not because they
support the Sensenbrenner approach, but because they didn't want
to buck the leadership or disregard the powerful committee
chairman. No doubt, this was agonizing for them -- and the
heavily partisan votes made the party look unappealingly
anti-immigrant. But don't mistake it for a new, harsh GOP
unanimity.
In fact, the reform-minded wing of the party is alive and
well -- and standing ready for the next phase of the battle, in
the Senate and beyond.
Who makes up the reform wing?
• There are political operatives
such as Ken Mehlman concerned about how immigration plays with
Latino voters.
• There are business friendly
Republicans at The Wall Street Journal, the Cato Institute and
elsewhere who know that immigration is good for the economy; not
just good for individual employers -- in agriculture,
food-processing, hospitality, healthcare, construction and other
sectors -- who depend on these workers to keep their businesses
open and growing, but also for native-born workers employed by
these companies and others that trade with them.
• There are security-minded
Republicans like Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
and his predecessor Tom Ridge who know that creating a system
for immigrant laborers to enter the country legally is the best
way to free up border agents whose real job is protecting us
from terrorists.
And then there are Republicans like Ronald Reagan and now
President Bush who understand in a more general way that
immigrants are good for the country: that they bring
entrepreneurial energy and family values and fresh patriotism --
and that, as Reagan emphasized, the nation must remain a beacon
to the world.
None of these Republicans think enforcement or legality are
unimportant. But they are convinced that the best way to restore
the rule of law is to start with more-honest, more-enforceable
immigration quotas -- a temporary-worker program more in line
with the reality of our labor needs -- and then make those
realistic limits stick with all the means at our disposal. This
is the approach that the Senate will almost certainly pursue
when it turns to immigration in January or February, and it is
the approach the president hopes to sign into law, perhaps as
soon as next spring.
Let's not kid ourselves: What happened in the House last week
will make those next steps harder. This polarizes the debate, in
and outside the beltway, and it may unnerve hesitant senators
who side with the president but fear spitting into what they see
as the prevailing political wind.
The challenge for the Republican Party is particularly
difficult -- precisely because of the way the issue divides us
from one other. But we remain convinced that reason -- and the
party's traditional values -- will prevail in the end. Instead
of trying punitively to enforce unrealistic law, the majority of
the GOP will eventually come together around an immigration
policy worthy of the label Republican -- one that encourages the
American Dream and rewards work, even as it restores the rule of
law and enhances national security.
Tamar Jacoby is a senior fellow at the Manhattan
Institute. Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax
Reform.
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Republican
National Hispanic Assembly
