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Conservative Chronicle
IMMIGRATION REFORM: November 14, 2013
A need for compromise on immigration
O
ne reason Washington makes after California’s two arrived. For a so much bad history is that lucid exposition of all this, read FerM. Bordewich’s America’s so many people here know gus Debate: Henry Clay, so little history. This helps explain why G r e a t Stephen A. Doug“comprehensive” las, and the Comimmigration repromise That Preform is founderserved the Union. ing: Too few of Now, consider today’s legisla(c) 2013, Washington Post Writers Group the “comprehentors know what sive” immigration bill passed this year happened 163 years ago. by the Senate, and Sen. Marco Rubio’s confidence that it knows everything. SENATE MINORITY Leader judgment that “if we stick to the posi- What should be the hourly wage of an Mitch McConnell does know. The tion of all or nothing, we’re going to agricultural sorter in 2016? The Senate most important Kentuckian since Hen- end up with nothing.” bill (through an explanation given on The bill, in the writing of which Ru- page 318) says $9.84. And the hourly ry Clay, McConnell knows how his hero Clay, who was called “the great bio participated, is 1,197 pages long. wage of a worker in a nursery? Twenty compromiser,” failed to engineer Sencents less than the agricultural sorter’s IT IS 1,193 pages longer than the wage. Some senators know everyate passage of a comprehensive compromise in 1850. McConnell, who National Archive’s parchment copy of thing. wrote his senior thesis at the Univer- the Homestead Act of 1862, which is The bill also contains a remarksity of Louisville on the Compromise one of the most important legislative able geographical insight: Nevada is of 1850, knows that this was achieved acts in American history. Passed when a border state. Your eyes tell you its by the canniness of Stephen A. Doug- there were few national laws regulat- southern tip is about 200 miles from las. His is a name not much mentioned ing immigration, the Homestead Act the Mexican border, but the bill, which on Capitol Hill since he died in 1861 was designed to attract immigrants to includes $46.3 billion in border secusettle the continent’s interior. at age 48. rity spending, decrees that Nevada is Today’s Senate bill is gigantic be- eligible for border pork. In 1850, the “Little Giant” — he stood 5 feet 4 — was in his first term cause it deals with everything. Its size Immigration reforms should address as senator from Illinois. He would win is proportional to Washington’s serene three problems — border security (the his third term in 1859, defeating the tall man who was president when Douglas IMMIGRATION REFORM: November 14, 2013 died. Douglas’ great achievement — the compromises of 1850 — helped save the union by releasing steam from the sectional crisis. This delayed the Civil War — the “irrepressible conflict” — until a decade of immigraouse Speaker John Boehner That statement confirms the right’s tion and industrialization had made told reporters Wednesday long-standing suspicion that the left the North more prepared to win it, and that the GOP leadership has doesn’t really want immigration reuntil two other Illinois men, Abraham no intention of going to conference form, not when Democrats can use Lincoln and U.S. Grant, emerged. committee on the Senate’s comprehen- the issue to lather up anti-GOP anger By 1850, the country’s sectional sive immigration bill passed in June. among Latino voters. Obama did not hostilities, fueled by slavery, had been House Majority Whip Kevin McCa- deliver on his 2008 promise to push an exacerbated by the war with Mexico. rthy told Coalition for Humane Im- immigration bill during his As the North’s population grew and migrant Rights of Los Angeles Directhe House of Representatives became tor Angelica Salas last week that the increasingly hostile to the expansion House would not pass its immigration of slavery, the South focused on pre- package this year. Not enough time. serving the Senate balance of slave (c) 2013, Creators Syndicate and non-slave states while the nation BUT IN Washington, there’s aldigested the land acquired in the war. ways time for the blame game. This The tangle of disputes concerned week, The Hill ran a two-part autopsy first year in office, even though Demoseveral matters — fugitive slaves, the on immigration reform and concluded: crats controlled the White House, Senslave trade in the District of Columbia, “Both parties are responsible for the ate and House during the first two years statehood for California and creation effort’s demise.” of his presidency. Only after Demoof territorial governments for Utah and Boehner wouldn’t commit. His crats lost the House in 2010 did that New Mexico. A Texas-New Mexico rank-and-file didn’t trust President Ba- lame-duck body pass the DREAM Act border dispute and some other matters rack Obama to enforce a new law, giv- to offer citizenship to children brought were added to the witches’ brew. en the president’s 2012 executive order into the country illegally by their parClay, depressed and exhausted after to flout immigration law and halt the ents. Because supporters couldn’t defailing to assemble a Senate majority deportation of DREAM Act-eligible liver the 60 votes needed in the Senfor a comprehensive bill that addressed residents. ate — five Democrats voted no — it each subject, went to Rhode Island The White House pressed House tanked. to rest. Douglas, however, proposed Democrats not to reach a deal before breaking the comprehensive bill into the Senate, even though the House is SALAS TOLD me Tuesday that separate measures, which passed. He the linchpin. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., both parties hold “equal responsibilcobbled together several different ma- told The Hill: “It is clear to me that there ity” for the measure’s failing. She injority coalitions. was no strategy on the White House’s sisted her group doesn’t want to keep There were 60 senators when the part post-Senate victory. Because the the issue alive to help one party bury process began but 62 before it ended, Senate victory was the strategy.” the other.
George
Will
least important problem; about 40 percent of those here illegally came on visas they overstayed), the needs of America’s workforce, and the status of the 11 million here illegally. If McConnell were majority leader, the bill would be broken into manageable bits, and there might be found a different majority coalition for each. BUT THE MAJORITY leader is a Democrat (Harry Reid from the border state of Nevada) whose party has one overriding interest — turning as many of the 11 million into voters as fast as possible. They are holding all immigration reforms hostage to this objective. Which shall be the case unless and until McConnell is majority leader.
D.C. immigration game on timeout
H
Debra J.
Saunders
There is a way forward. The GOP caucus has been working on piecemeal bills to address immigration reform, including its own version of the DREAM Act, the Kids Act. The problem is, Salas noted, nothing is in writing yet. “At least show your cards,” she challenged. National Journal reported that Republicans are fighting over whether to allow DREAM “kids” to sponsor their undocumented parents for green cards. Understandably, Salas objects. “Every citizen has that right,” she said. If this Kids Act treats all citizens equally, her group would be wise to support it. Republicans would be wise to pass a Kids Act early next year. Otherwise, their main contribution to the immigration debate will be passage of a measure to resume deporting DREAMers spared by Obama’s pen. Is that the message they want to send to Latino voters? I’D RATHER Americans hear the words of Kids Act supporter Eric Cantor. The House majority leader said in February, “One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents.”