SOURCE: AP/Alan Diaz

Immigration reform activists hold a sign in front of Freedom Tower in downtown Miami, Monday, January 28, 2013.

A new report by our colleagues at the Center for American Progress shows that creating a path for undocumented immigrants to earn legal status and citizenship will lead to substantial wage gains for these workers. In turn, these wage gains will help spur the American economy and lead to significant increases in gross domestic product, tax revenue, and jobs in the coming years.

Some observers may worry that the gains for newly documented immigrants will come at the expense of native-born American workers. But our review of economic research finds these fears to be unfounded.

Studies of the last large-scale legalization effort in 1986 found that legalization did not reduce wages for native-born American workers and, in some cases, actually raised wages. More recent research on the effect of increases in immigration over the past few decades find little to no wage or employment effects, providing additional confirmation for the earlier legalization studies, as well as alleviating concerns about possible harm from future immigration.

Further, this body of research finds that those with low levels of education, as well as Americans of color, are also likely to be unharmed by immigration, though the research does suggest that the wages of other immigrants may be reduced.

Contrary to common fears, immigrants are not frequently in direct competition with native-born American workers, in part because they tend to have different skill sets. Native-born American workers, for example, are likely to have much greater English language skills than new immigrants, allowing native-born workers to access more skill-intensive jobs.

American workers are not harmed and may even benefit from immigration, because immigrants tend to be complementary workers who help make Americans more productive. Bussers at a restaurant, for example, help to make waiters more efficient by increasing the number of tables a waiter can cover.

Other immigrants—those who are better established in the workforce—however, may find themselves in more direct competition with newly legalized workers, and the research suggests that the wages of the former group may suffer. Still, the small negative wage effect the research finds for existing immigrants is at least partially ameliorated for many mixed-status families—families that contain both documented and undocumented immigrants—by the increased wages that are a result of legalization for formerly undocumented workers.

Let’s take a closer look at the research on how workers are affected by immigration and legalization.

After the United States granted legal status to a large number of undocumented workers in 1986 through the Immigration Reform and Control Act, economists have been able to directly study the wage effects of granting legal status. The research of this period that focused on how the legalization of undocumented workers impacted native-born American workers finds that wages were unharmed.

Perhaps the most directly relevant study of the effect of legalization is by economists Elaine Sorensen of the Urban Institute and Frank D. Bean of the University of Texas at Austin. The study looked at the trends in wages of several groups and compared trends before the passage of the 1986 immigration reform to trends afterward. Researchers studied native-born workers and immigrants who had been in the United States for varying lengths of time. Each of these groups—native born and immigrant—was then divided into those of Mexican origin and white, non-Hispanic workers. These gradations allowed the authors to determine which groups, if any, newly legalized immigrants were competing against. The authors found that the wages of native workers, whether white or of Mexican origin, were not affected by the legalization of undocumented workers. The wages of more tenured immigrants of Mexican origin were decreased, however, because they tend to compete for the same jobs as newly legalized immigrants.

The other study most directly on topic is by economists Deborah A. Cobb-Clark, Clinton R. Shiells, and B. Lindsay Lowell, of Illinois State University, the International Monetary Fund, and the U.S. Department of Labor, respectively. Their research examined the effect of legalization on average wages for production workers in the manufacturing sector, a sector known at the time to frequently hire undocumented workers. Their study estimated the effect of legalization by looking at how average manufacturing wages differed across metropolitan areas with differing amounts of newly legalized workers. Cobb-Clark, Shiells, and Lowell found that legalization had a statistically significant positive effect on wages, though the magnitude of the increase was very small.

These results on the effects of legalization are consistent with a large and growing body of research on immigration and wages. An emerging consensus in the academic literature concludes that the wages of native-born workers, even low-skilled workers, are not significantly decreased by increases in immigration. In fact, immigration may very well increase their wages because the research suggests that the complementary effect may outweigh any impact from an increase in competition.

For years economists disagreed about the effect of immigration on wages. One group of economists, exemplified by Harvard University economist George Borjas, argued that immigration was a simple story of supply and demand. Immigrants increased the supply of labor and therefore reduced the wages of similarly skilled native-born Americans. Research in this vein tended to look at national labor markets when evaluating the effect of immigration and found significant decreases in wages for all workers, particularly for low-skilled workers.

A second group of economists argued that the national-level studies did not recognize that immigrants were not directly competing with many native-born workers because immigrants provided a different kind of labor than native-born Americans. This group of economists focused on studying regional labor markets to prove their point.

One study by University of California, Berkeley, economist David Card looked at the sudden influx of Cuban immigrants in Miami due to the Mariel Boatlift of 1980. He found that the large increase in low-skilled immigrants did not have any significant effect on the wages or employment opportunities of low-skilled native workers. Card separated out native workers into whites, blacks, Cubans, and Hispanics and found that none of these groups were adversely affected by the increased Cuban immigration.

More recent research has rectified these two strands of the literature—the national and the local approaches—to provide strong evidence that increases in immigration do not reduce wages for native-born American workers. This emerging consensus has been reflected in recent articles appearing in The New York Times and The New Yorker magazines, among other places.

The studies that are creating a new consensus take a national approach, such as those that found negative wage effects, but tweak the research method to account for several facts about the labor market that the area studies recognize. These adjustments, as detailed by Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, account for the difference in how readily employers switch between different types of workers.

First, the new national approach accounts for the inability of employers to perfectly substitute immigrants for native-born workers, who have skills that many immigrants cannot easily acquire, such as fluency in English. Since employers are less able to hire immigrants for jobs that require the kinds of skills most native-born workers have, fewer immigrants are competing against native workers than the method favored by Borjas assumed. Secondly, the new national approach takes into account the fact that employers can easily switch between high school dropouts and workers with a high school degree because these groups of workers have similar levels of job-relevant skills. Because of this hiring flexibility, the effect of an increase in immigrant workers who often have less than a high school degree is borne by a much larger group than previous research recognized.

The new national approach, like the older papers, also considers the role of immigrants as complements, making native-born workers more productive.

This new consensus is best reflected in several papers by economists Gianmarco Ottaviano of the Universita’ di Bologna, Italy, and Giovanni Peri of the University of California, Davis. In a 2012 paper Ottaviano and Peri studied the effects of immigration from 1990 to 2006 first by estimating the different elasticities of labor—how readily employers can substitute one kind of worker for another type of worker. The authors then plugged these estimated elasticities into a national labor model similar to one used by Borjas. They found native workers, on average, had their wages go up 0.6 percent due to increased immigration. And perhaps more interestingly, native-born workers with less than a high-school education also saw their wages increase. Ottavino and Peri did find, however, that increased levels of immigration reduced the wages of the average foreign-born worker.

More recent research has also found that immigration does not affect the employment of native-born workers. A 2009 paper by Peri and economist Chad Sparber of Colgate University found that immigration did not reduce the employment opportunities of native-born American workers. They found that native workers move into more highly skilled occupations in response to immigration. Specifically, black workers were more than three times as likely as nonblack workers to shift into higher-skill jobs. In a separate 2011 paper, Peri adapted the approach from his paper with Ottaviano to look at the employment effects of immigrants in California. Peri found that immigration to California between 1960 and 2005 did not affect the employment of native workers. This research implies that the legalization of undocumented immigrants would also not affect employment as these workers are already employed and therefore pose no threat to native workers.

In short, research on the 1986 legalization of undocumented workers, as well as more recent research on increased immigration, strongly suggests that a new effort to provide legal status for currently undocumented workers would not harm American workers, and in fact is likely to benefit them. Given that research also finds that legalization would increase the wages of the formerly undocumented workers, lawmakers should feel confident that legalization would be good for workers and the American economy.

David Madland is the Director of the American Worker Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Nick Bunker is a Research Assistant at CAPAF.

* Note that the inflation adjusted average hourly wage of production and nonsupervisory workers declined by 3.7 percent from 1987 to 1992, but the research indicates that the Immigration Reform and Control Act’s legalization program did not cause the wages of native workers to decline.

SOURCE: AP/Ross D. Franklin

Grecia Lima, left, cheers as Maria Durand, second from left, brings her early voting ballot and joins members of Promise Arizona in Action in announcing their voter registration drive with Latino youth. Latinos overwhelmingly voted for President Obama's re-election last week.

In the wake of last Tuesday’s presidential election, the entire political establishment is analyzing and dissecting the sleeping giant that awoke: the more than 12 million Latinos who voted and helped propel President Barack Obama to victory in key battleground states. Republicans are fretting—and rightly so—over their dismal support among this demographic but continue to show a lack of understanding, arguing that the reason Latinos rejected their agenda was a communication problem rather than a substance problem.

They are wrong. If Republicans want the support of the Latino community, they need to fundamentally change their party’s policy and evolve on a range of issues.

The leaders of the party and many of its rank-and-file members are right to be worried. President Obama garnered 71 percent of the Latino vote nationwide, compared to Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s 27 percent. In fact, Gov. Romney’s showing among Latinos in 2012 was the worst for a Republican candidate since former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole won just 21 percent of the Latino vote in 1996. When President George W. Bush won in 2000, he received 44 percent of the Latino vote; in 2008 Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) received only 31 percent of the Latino vote. This is not a reassuring record to have with the nation’s fastest-growing demography, which is projected to double in size by 2050.

To be sure, the immigration platform that Gov. Romney embraced does explain in large measure the profound dislike Latinos have for the Republican brand. Various polls show that the majority of Latinos—more than 77 percent—support a path to legalization for our nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants. Even more Latinos—91 percent—support the DREAM Act, legislation that would provide a pathway to permanent legal status for approximately 2.1 million undocumented youth currently living in the United States.

Gov. Romney’s stance of “self-deportation,” however, is the complete opposite. And no wonder—self deportation means making one’s life so miserable here that one would choose to leave the country rather than stay.

Some Republicans argue that they simply need to change their tone and explain their policies better. But the concept of making someone’s life so unbearable that he or she will be forced to leave cannot be massaged and sugarcoated. After all, 90 percent of Latinos in the United States have an immigrant parent or grandparent, 60 percent of Latino voters know an undocumented immigrant, and one-quarter know someone who is either facing deportation or has been deported. Immigration is a very personal issue to the Latino community, and the “self-deportation” alternative Gov. Romney put forth this year offended many Latinos. It simply is a nonstarter.

But the problem goes far beyond immigration. Republicans would do well to read the various polls to understand the dissonance between their ideas and Latinos’ values and aspirations. Polls on various issues show that by and large, Latinos agree with the values President Obama embraces and his policy agenda on the issues that matter most to them: the economy, jobs, education, health care, and immigration.

Take the election-eve poll conducted by Impremedia/LatinoDecisions, for example, which found that:

• 66 percent of Latino voters believe the federal government should ensure that all people have access to health insurance.
• 61 percent of Latino voters believe that the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, should stand as law.
• 42 percent of Latino voters support a “combination of higher taxes and spending cuts” to reduce the deficit, while 35 percent said that we needed to raise taxes on the wealthy.

A national Fox News Latino poll earlier this year also showed that 62 percent of Latinos approve of the overall job President Obama did with health care, including the Affordable Care Act. On jobs and the economy, a Univision poll found that 55 percent of Latinos said the government should invest resources in federal projects to stimulate the economy. Again, these viewpoints are more in line with President Obama’s approach on the economy and tax fairness than those of Gov. Romney.

As an overall brand, Republicans don’t fare much better. According to the ImpreMedia/LatinoDecisions poll, 61 percent of Latinos say they trust the Democrats and President Obama to make the right decisions and improve the country’s economic conditions, while the same percentage said that the Democratic Party has shown more concern toward them as a community. Latino registered voters also express a strong affinity for the Democratic Party in their political party identification. According to a poll by the Pew Forum, 70 percent of Latino registered voters identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, while only 22 percent identify with or lean toward the Republican Party.

There is also yet another significant problem for Republicans within the Latino community: women. Latinas represent 6 percent of the electorate—slightly higher than Latino men—and supported President Obama by a margin of more than 10 points compared to their male counterparts: 76 percent versus 65 percent. According to LatinoDecisions polling, 78 percent of Latinas trust Democrats to make better decisions for women than Republicans. And only 20 percent of Latinas have a favorable view of Republicans in Congress.

Now let’s take a look at social issues, which Republicans argue is their saving grace when it comes to this group. While it is true that Latinos historically poll as more socially conservative, recent polling suggests that the longer they live in the United States, the more tolerant they become on social issues such as abortion and gay and transgender rights, including marriage equality.

A recent survey by Lake Research Partners shows that 74 percent of Latino registered voters agree that a woman has a right to make her own personal private decisions about abortion without politicians interfering. The same poll showed that 73 percent of Latino registered voters agree that we should not judge someone who feels they are not ready to be a parent.

On marriage equality the trend is the same: The Pew Hispanic Center last month released a poll confirming that a majority of Latinos support marriage equality for same-sex couples. Fifty-two percent of Latinos favor affording same-sex couples the rights and responsibilities of marriage, with 34 percent opposed. Six years ago Latino attitudes on the issue were virtually flipped.

Moreover, most religious Latinos support the president. A Pew Forum poll in October found that three-quarters of Latino Catholics supported President Obama’s re-election. Evangelical Latinos, who account for 15 percent of all Latino registered voters, tend to be more conservative, yet half of them still preferred President Obama to Gov. Romney in the presidential race.

Young Latinos also helped fuel the youth vote for President Obama. The president won every age group under 40, including young Latino voters (ages 18 to 29), who backed him by a margin of 74 percent to 23 percent. Among Hispanic college graduates, 62 percent voted for President Obama, while 35 percent supported Gov. Romney.

There are two ways that Republicans can show that they want to do right by this community and begin improving their record in the short term. One is by supporting a path to legalization for our nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants. Some party leaders and press pundits on the right are already seeing the light, as is the case with talk-show host Sean Hannity, who shocked the political establishment last week by announcing that he had “evolved” on immigration, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal categorizing his party’s position on immigration and other issues as “stupid.” The Republican Party needs more of this self-evaluation and evolution if they want to be competitive with this demographic.

But a more immediate and tangible way to show Latinos that Republicans care about them is to vote the right way on the upcoming fiscal cliff. The package of expiring tax cuts and automatic spending cuts includes deep cuts to social programs on education and training such as special education programs, work study, and Title I programs that provide federal funding to low-income school districts, as well as entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which are often a lifeline for Latinos.

Polls are a snapshot of time, and while there is no guarantee that the Democratic Party inclinations of Latinos are a long-term trend, Republicans undoubtedly have their work cut out for them.  Without fundamentally changing their policies and actually being for something rather than against everything, it is hard to tell how they will appeal to the growing Latino community.  The sleeping giant is wide awake—when the Latino community looks at the Republican agenda today, they don’t like what they see.

Vanessa Cárdenas is the Director of Progress 2050 Action at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

SOURCE: AP/Ross D. Franklin

Immigration rights protesters gather near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in Phoenix, Arizona, after the Supreme Court decision regarding Arizona's anti-immigrant law, S.B. 1070, Monday, June 25, 2012.

Just more than a month ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of Arizona’s anti-immigrant law—S.B. 1070—striking down three of its main provisions but allowing the insidious “papers please” provision to remain intact. That provision, section 2(B), mandates that police check the status of anyone they have a reasonable suspicion to believe is in the country without legal status. This provision opens the door to serious racial profiling concerns in Arizona and in states that have passed copycat laws.

As recently uncovered emails by former Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce—the “father” of S.B. 1070—illustrate, proponents of state anti-immigrant laws leverage fears of changing demographics and an influx of Latinos into states, including Arizona, to enact harsh and restrictive enforcement legislation designed to drive out undocumented immigrants. But because it is impossible to tell just by looking at someone whether they are here with or without status, or whether they are a citizen or an immigrant, attempting to force the undocumented out of the country will inevitably affect everyone in the state, particularly Latinos.

Likewise, with more than 16 million people living in mixed-status families—containing at least one undocumented immigrant and one U.S. citizen—it is impossible to separate the undocumented from the documented. So it should come as no surprise that in states such as Arizona that have passed anti-immigrant bills, the Latino community as a whole feels targeted.

One of many cases in point is Carmen Cornejo. A naturalized citizen and mother of two teenage boys, she said in 2010 that she wanted her sons to attend college outside of Arizona. Cornejo, similar to many other Hispanics who have joined protests against S.B. 1070, fear that the law will give local law enforcement more incentives to stop members of their community to request citizenship documentation, irrespective of their legal status. While Arizona’s draconian law precipitated the exodus of untold numbers of Latinos—both legal and undocumented—many remained in the state to fight the law and recall its architect, former State Sen. Pearce.

Against this backdrop, we wanted to know exactly how Latino voters felt about the Supreme Court’s mixed ruling. In collaboration with America’s Voice, the Center for American Progress Action Fund commissioned Latino Decisions to conduct a poll, which surveyed 500 Latino registered voters nationwide, with a margin of error of 4.4 percent. The response was unequivocal—a large majority of voters rejected the Court’s decision to allow section 2(B) to go in to effect. It is also not a surprise that these voters strongly believe that racial profiling resulting from 2(B)’s implementation will target them and will harm, rather than strengthen, community safety. Lets look at the polling results in more detail.

Latino voters are strongly opposed to S.B. 1070’s “papers please” law

When asked if they support or oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the racial profiling provision of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 to go into effect, two-thirds of all Latino voters stated that they opposed it, while less than 30 percent said that they supported it. (see Figure 1)

Opposition to this provision is strongest among first-generation immigrants (who came to this country from abroad) but even third-generation immigrants—their children’s children, who are most likely to be U.S. citizens from birth—oppose the measure 51 percent to 42 percent. (see Figure 2)

Latino voters feel that S.B. 1070 will target them

Beyond simply opposing S.B. 1070, Latino voters believe that they will bear the brunt of the enforcement of the law. When asked if it would be more or less likely that legal immigrants or citizen Latinos will be stopped and questioned by police under S.B. 1070, a whopping 79 percent believed that it would be likely, and only 19 percent said it would be unlikely. (see Figure 3)

Breaking this question down by generation, a whopping 89 percent of second-generation Latinos feel that police will target them because of S.B. 1070. In other words, nearly 9 in 10 U.S.-born (citizen) Latinos believe they are in the crosshairs because of Arizona’s actions—a sign of the fears this community has going forward. (see Figure 4)

Even more disturbingly, by wide margins, Latino voters believe that S.B. 1070 will hurt community safety. The reason: They worry that future immigrants would be less likely to report a crime or talk to police because of S.B. 1070. (see Figures 5 and 6)

Latinos understandably and overwhelmingly oppose S.B. 1070 because feel that they will be targeted by its racial-profiling provisions. Yet aside from the racial profiling provision (section 2(B)), the Supreme Court’s strong language and legal analysis makes clear that comprehensive enforcement schemes such as the one in S.B. 1070 tread unconstitutionally in the federal government’s domain. While it allowed section 2(B) to be implemented, the Court left the door wide open to challenges to section 2(B) if the racial profiling that Latino voters fear can be documented. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy stated that the opinion “does not foreclose other preemption and constitutional challenges to the law as interpreted and applied after it goes into effect.”

Challenges based on these other constitutional claims are already underway, even before that part of the law has been implemented in Arizona. The plaintiffs in Valle del Sol v. Whiting, for example, filed a new motion on July 17, stating that “requiring police to act as immigration agents is an invitation to racial profiling on a massive scale,” in the words of Omar Jadwat of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.

Latino groups are organizing to combat racial profiling

Indeed, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the racial profiling provision of S.B. 1070 to stand, civil rights groups have begun to organize in Arizona to guard against racial profiling and to protect their residents. In Phoenix the groups Tonatierra and Puente have organized so-called Barrio Defense Committees of 20 to 30 families in different neighborhoods. These groups, modeled on groups used by African Americans during the civil rights movement, meet to discuss racial discrimination under the law and to help organize rallies and community meetings, including “know your rights trainings” and legal consultations.

The groups have already claimed victories in getting law enforcement officials accused of discrimination removed or reassigned from Latino communities. These Barrio Defense Committees represent one grassroots way that Latino residents in Arizona are fighting back against S.B. 1070 and working to protect themselves and their communities from discrimination.

But on a larger scale, the drive to pass Arizona-style laws in Arizona and in other states is at odds with the reality of a multiethnic and multiracial society in the United States. From the Supreme Court to individual Latino voters, there is broad consensus that laws such as S.B. 1070 open the door to significant racial profiling concerns and disproportionately affect Latino citizens. Our nation’s demographics are changing to a place where by 2050 the country will be majority minority—with no clear racial or ethnic majority.

Latino leaders are speaking out against S.B. 1070

Instead of a conversation about driving out a segment of our nation’s population, we need an honest conversation about how to fully integrate all members of our society. That’s why so many prominent Latino leaders across our nation are speaking out forcefully on the issue.

“Most of us see absolutely no way to apply this law, to enforce this law, without racial profiling, without stopping you as an example because you may look different or foreign to someone,” says Antonio Villaraigosa, mayor of Los Angeles. “The answer to fixing our broken immigration system cannot be a patchwork of racial profiling laws,” adds Janet Murguía, president and CEO of National Council of La Raza. “These laws have caused great harm to Latino families and other residents of these states. Unconstitutional bills like SB 1070 are false solutions that distract from the only real solution—comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level.”

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) is equally adamant:

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to the anti-immigrant movement, but also dealt a blow to Latinos and immigrants living in the United States. This threatens the safety of all Americans and undermines the fundamental relationship between police and the communities they serve. This gives a green light to Arizona sheriffs and others to use someone’s clothing, accent, or appearance to take them to jail and hold them until their immigration status, if any, is sorted out.

Summing up what has to happen next was Rep. Xavier Becerra(D-CA). “Even though the Court did not strike down the ‘show me your papers’ provision of the law, it issued a strong warning to not abuse the authority to check the immigration status of individuals suspected of being undocumented,” he explains. “This provision of the law is an invitation for the worst kind of discrimination and racial profiling to befall hardworking immigrant families and communities.”

He’s right, of course. Which is why Latinos are so opposed to S.B. 1070’s “papers please” provision and expect the courts to decide differently in coming court cases.

Angela Maria Kelley is Vice President for Immigration Policy and Advocacy, Marshall Fitz is Director of Immigration Policy, Philip E. Wolgin is Immigration Policy Analyst, and Ann Garcia is Research and Policy Associate with the Immigration team at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

SOURCE: AP/Matt York

Martha Espinosa stands outside a Scottsdale, Arizona, resort to protest against Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who was speaking inside, and Arizona's controversial immigration law, S.B. 1070.

For more facts on Gov. Romney’s plans for America, a Center for American Progress Action Fund series entitled “Romney University,” click here.

Download this issue brief (pdf)

Endnotes and citations available in pdf version of this issue brief.

Mitt Romney’s profound disconnect with Latino voters has generated growing concern within his campaign and across the Republican establishment. During the Republican presidential primary, Gov. Romney staked out one of the most extreme anti-immigrant positions for a leading presidential candidate in modern memory. The byproduct of that posturing was the alienation of Latino voters who view immigration as a personal issue. A Fox News Latino poll in early March, for example, found that only 18 percent of Latino voters believed Gov. Romney actually cares about Latinos and Latino issues, while even fewer people—14 percent—would vote for him over President Barack Obama.

The conventional wisdom is that Gov. Romney adopted the hardline immigration posture to bolster his credentials among primary voters who were skeptical of his conservative bona fides. The question, however, quickly became whether he could pivot back to a more moderate position once he locked up the nomination in order to appeal to the broader electorate. Most pundits estimate that Gov. Romney needs to win around 40 percent of the Latino vote in order to win the general election.

The anticipated pivot, however, has not materialized. And the anti-immigrant demagoguery he used to wage his GOP primary battle may have cost him the general election war. A recent poll by Latino Decisions shows that Latino voter support for President Obama has actually increased to 70 percent while Gov. Romney’s numbers remain mired in the low twenties—22 percent—in this poll.

Rather than articulate support for bipartisan and workable solutions to fix our broken immigration system, the Romney camp has chosen to instead attack the Obama administration for not passing comprehensive immigration reform when they had the chance.These attacks conveniently elide the fact that comprehensive immigration reform and the DREAM Act failed to pass because of Republican filibusters. And they beg the question of whether Gov. Romney would support sensible immigration solutions. For example, he continues to dodge questions about whether or not he would repeal the president’s June 15 announcement to grant deferred action to DREAM Act-eligible youth.

Gov. Romney told a Wisconsin audience in early April, “Let the immigration community not forget that, while he uses this [immigration] as a political weapon, he [President Obama] has not taken responsibility for fixing the problems we have here.” At its core, Gov. Romney’s message is: “I know you don’t like me, but you shouldn’t like the other guy either.”

More recently, in obvious recognition of the dire straits he is in with this community, Gov. Romney has started running Spanish-language ads claiming that he will pursue “bipartisan,” “permanent” immigration solutions. This line of thinking echoes comments he made in front of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials in late June, where he told the audience he will “work with Republicans and Democrats to find a long-term solution” to immigration. But what kind of solutions and what sort of immigration agenda can we expect if Gov. Romney is elected?

The short answer is that while he supports the easy reforms that can be reduced to platitudes—for example, “welcoming the best and brightest” and “promoting family unity”—the governor would do nothing to cure our nation’s dysfunctional immigration system. A Romney administration would advance the following legislative priorities:

• Increase high-skilled immigration.
• Exempt spouses and minor children of legal permanent residents from the annual cap.
• Increase temporary worker visas while stripping labor protections for those workers and their American counterparts.
• Pursue a DREAM Act that would only grant legal status to unauthorized immigrants who were brought here at a young age who serve in the military.
• Make E-Verify, the nation’s flawed Internet-based work-authorization system, mandatory for all employers in the hope that undocumented immigrants will self-deport.

We also expect a Romney administration would adopt the following regressive administrative priorities:

• Support states seeking to pass anti-immigrant laws like Arizona’s S.B. 1070.
• Implement a comprehensive “self-deportation” strategy for undocumented immigrants in which the government would make life as miserable as possible to try to force undocumented immigrants to leave the country on their own.
• Eliminate prosecutorial discretion that helps enforcement agents prioritize serious criminals over nannies and busboys, and rescind the president’s June 15 announcement to grant deferred action to DREAM Act-eligible youth.
• Construct an additional 1,400 miles of border fencing despite the exorbitant cost.

These legislative and administrative strategies would create burdensome and costly new regulations that would grow the size of the federal government at taxpayer expense, affect all Americans—immigrant and native-born alike—undermine community safety, stifle economic growth, and rob the United States of a large pool of talent, all while tearing families apart. These policies are also outside the mainstream of American public opinion on immigration.

Based on Gov. Romney’s record and commentary, below is an analysis of who would play a role in shaping a Romney administration immigration agenda and what that agenda would look like in detail.

Gov. Romney’s legislative agenda

Legislative accomplishments are hard to come by or predict and Gov. Romney has provided only the faintest outline of an immigration plan. His agenda, insofar as it can be discerned, would advance a hodgepodge of good, bad, and ugly legislative priorities.

The good

Gov. Romney has indicated support for a couple of commonsense, noncontroversial ideas, that most Americans back. He has not provided anywhere near the detail to fully evaluate the proposals but as a general matter, these positions make sense from an economic and social perspective.

High-skilled immigration: Gov. Romney has repeatedly expressed his support for “legal immigration,” and his 59-point plan for the economy states that the United States “should encourage the world’s innovators, inventors, and pioneers to immigrate to the United States.” His plan includes two parts: first, raising the number of visas available for high-skilled workers with advanced degrees in the STEM fields; and second, granting an automatic green card to any foreign-born student who graduates with an advanced degree from an American university. Both proposals are ones supported by President Obama and enjoy bipartisan support in Congress.

Family unity: In his speech to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, Gov. Romney argued that the “immigration system should help promote strong families, not keep them apart.” To accomplish his goal of family reunification, Gov. Romney suggested two changes: first, “reallocating” green cards to family reunification; and second, exempting spouses and children of legal permanent residents (green card holders) from visa caps. Both policies reflect needed reforms to the immigration system. But the vagueness of the claim to “reallocate” green cards, rather than raising the overall number of visas, makes it all but certain that as president he would push to eliminate some current reunification categories, such as those for the siblings of citizens, as the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies suggested after his speech.

The bad

Some of Gov. Romney’s ideas suggest an awareness of problems with the immigration system but no real commitment to solve them, including:

A DREAM-less DREAM Act: The bipartisan Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM, Act would give a pathway to legal status to the estimated 2.1 million undocumented children who were brought to the country at a young age and who graduate from high school and complete some college or military service. Even though 91 percent of Latinos and 58 percent of the general public support the DREAM Act, Gov. Romney has made his opposition clear. In restating and answering a question from the audience at an appearance in Iowa, he said, “If I were elected and Congress were to pass the DREAM Act, would I veto it? And the answer is yes.”

In his desire to walk back from the cliff of extremism, Gov. Romney has said that he would support providing immigration status to a subset of these youths—those that serve in the military. But as Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) points out, “making military service a requirement for those who were raised here does not make sense because not everyone desires to serve or is qualified to do so.” Likewise Rep. Gutierrez argues that “risking one’s life should not be the only route to receive legal status.” Cornell University Law Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr adds that a military-only option “effectively tells undocumented noncitizens that they are only useful for war, not for improving our economy through their hard work.” In short, this is a bad idea.

Temporary worker visas: It is true that we need to be cognizant of the need for lesser-skilled labor in certain sectors of our economy, at least during periods of economic growth. As native-born Americans have become more educated and more experienced, the pool of labor for lesser-skilled jobs has continued to shrink. For decades some of that increased demand for labor has been met with undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America in the form of an integrated but unregulated labor market.

So Gov. Romney is correct in pointing out that we need to have more legal channels for workers to enter the United States. But temporary worker programs that lack significant protections for the workers, including the opportunity to become permanent residents have been rife with abuse and deleverage similarly situated U.S. workers. He appears to contemplate expansion of the programs that already exist, which are woefully inadequate, while cutting some of the requirements that are designed to protect against abuse. This too is a bad idea.

The ugly

The only area of immigration policy where Gov. Romney has been clear and consistent is his support for harsh, counterproductive enforcement measures in an effort to trigger massive self-deportation.

Mandatory E-Verify: Gov. Romney talks about E-Verify as a solution to the nation’s undocumented immigration issue. He told a Mesa, Arizona, audience during a Republican debate in February, “I will make sure we have an E-Verify system and require employers to check the documents of workers, and to check E-Verify.”

Implementing a mandatory E-Verify program is not as simple as it sounds, however, and presents a number of challenges. First and foremost, the system’s error rates mean that 675,000 legally authorized American workers—including citizens—would lose their jobs because of mismatches between their information and what is on file with the government. An additional 1.2 million to 3.5 million Americans would have to spend close to $200 of their own money in lost wages and transportation costs to travel to a Social Security Administration office to fix erroneous information or risk losing their jobs. And these errors disproportionately fall upon the foreign born: According to a Westat study, naturalized citizens are more than 30 times more likely to receive an error than U.S.born citizens. All for a system that catches unauthorized immigrants only 46 percent of the time—meaning that more than half of unauthorized workers will get through the system without a problem.

A mandatory E-Verify system would also cost a significant amount of money. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, mandatory E-Verify use would decrease federal tax revenue by $17.3 billion over 10 years as workers move off the books and into the underground economy where their tax revenue does not accrue to the government. Running a mandatory E-Verify system would cost the government (the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration) more than $1 billion over five years, while a recent Bloomberg Government study found that small businesses would bear the brunt of E-Verify’s costs, paying an estimated $2.6 billion a year to use the system.

And while Gov. Romney in the Mesa, Arizona, Republican debate pointed to Arizona’s mandatory E-Verify law, passed in 2007, as a “model” for the nation—since in his words “the number of people in Arizona that are here illegally has dropped by some 14 percent”—the law had a number of unintended consequences. In particular, mandatory E-Verify caused a significant number of people in the state to move from the formal economy to the informal economy.

A report on Arizona’s E-Verify law by the Public Policy Institute of California concluded that far more immigrants would move off the books with a federal mandatory E-Verify policy (where their tax revenues would not accrue to the government and where they would be more open to exploitation) than would move out of the country.

Gov. Romney’s administrative agenda

While a Romney administration will have to work with Congress to pass its legislative agenda, it can do a number of things through the executive branch from its first day in office. For instance, Gov. Romney has stated that he will encourage Arizona-style “papers please” laws in more states, make self-deportation federal policy, and build a fence along the entire southwest border.

Encouraging Arizona’s “papers please” law for every state

Gov. Romney told the audience in the CNN Mesa, Arizona, Republican debate that he would drop all government lawsuits against states like Arizona who have adopted their own immigration policies. The Supreme Court, however, has declared such policies unconstitutional. The Supreme Court’s April 25 decision struck down three main parts of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 albeit allowing the insidious “papers please” provision to remain tentatively intact. But the Court’s language definitively made clear that the state was treading unconstitutionally in the federal government’s domain with its attrition through enforcement policy. Dropping federal lawsuits against other states that have similar laws in place would effectively endorse state violations of the Constitution.

Gov. Romney also doubled down on his support for S.B. 1070 on the day of the Court’s decision, releasing a statement stating, “I believe that each state has the duty—and the right—to secure our borders and preserve the rule of law, particularly when the federal government has failed to meet its responsibility.” And during an event in Scottsdale, Arizona, that same day, Romney even repudiated the Court’s majority, telling donors, “I would have preferred to see the Supreme Court give more latitude to the states not less.”

Gov. Romney’s embrace of the law is at odds with the Latino community. Recent polling of Latino registered voters finds that 66 percent oppose the law and a whopping 79 percent believe that Latinos who are legal residents or U.S. citizens will be stopped and questioned by the police. Latino voters view the law as nothing more than legalized racial profiling. By bear-hugging the Arizona law, Gov. Romney further alienates Latino voters who see that measure and other similar state laws as painting a target on their backs.

Ending prosecutorial discretion and rescinding the president’s announcement on deferred action

In June 2011 the Obama administration announced a smart prosecutorial discretion policy that allowed immigration officials to prioritize dangerous criminals over busboys in enforcing the immigration laws. The policy ensured that low priorities—individuals with no criminal record, significant ties to the community, DREAM Act-eligible students, etc.—would have their cases closed in order to focus on serious threats. Gov. Romney’s chief immigration advisor, Kris Kobach, deemed the Obama administration’s policy an attempt to “go further in not enforcing the law.” It is not a stretch to believe that a President Romney would immediately rescind the policy of discretion.

Gov. Romney also refuses to state whether or not he would rescind President Obama’s June 15 announcement that he will grant deferred action to DREAM Act-eligible youth, allowing them to stay and work here legally. Romney will only say that this program, which is supported by a full two-thirds of Americans, “makes reaching a long-term solution more difficult.” His advisors bring no more clarity with the picture, with Gov. Romney’s Hispanic Steering Committee co-chair Jose Fuentes telling reporters that he believed Gov. Romney would not repeal the order, while Ray Walser, co-chair of Gov. Romney’s Latino American Working group, stated the exact opposite. But with Gov. Romney’s strong position on vetoing the DREAM Act, it is plausible to expect that he would terminate this policy as well.

Without the ability to prioritize resources, the government will be forced to spend money deporting anyone who comes into the system even if they have been in the country for well over a decade, have a family here, and have committed no crime. While Mitt Romney states that he is in favor of self-deportation—where immigrants make the choice to leave on their own—rather than using government resources to deport the estimated 11.5 million unauthorized immigrants in the country, ending prosecutorial discretion will mean that far more people end up in deportation proceedings at an average cost to the U.S. government of $23,500 per deportation.

Making self-deportation federal policy

Gov. Romney’s sustained support for racial-profiling laws like S.B. 1070 make clear an aggressive program of self-deportation is the centerpiece of his immigration policy. His ideas are based on those of his immigration advisor Kris Kobach and would mean pursuing a strategy of attrition through enforcement. Restrictionist groups like NumbersUSA define this strategy as “mak[ing] it extremely difficult for unauthorized persons to live and work in the United States,” in the hope that they will leave the country on their own.

During the Florida Republican debate, Gov. Romney told the audience that “the answer [to sending undocumented immigrants home] is self-deportation … which is, people decide that they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here.”

The audience laughed at the proposal, but Gov. Romney’s stance is not a new one. Eric Fehrnstrom, one of the Romney campaign’s top advisors, told The Washington Examiner:

You turn off the magnets, no in state tuition, no benefits of any kind, no employment. You put in place an employment verification system with penalties for employers that hire illegals, that will shut off access to the job market, and they will self retreat. They will go to their native countries.

But how would such a self-deportation program play out in real life? Most importantly, it would not solve the problem of undocumented immigration. According to the Department of Homeland Security, most undocumented immigrants have been in the country for 10 years or more, and the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 47 percent of unauthorized immigrants live in households comprised of families with children.This makes it highly unlikely that they will simply leave the country.

In a recent report, researcher Leah Muse-Orlinoff of the University of California, San Diego, reviewed the evidence from states like Arizona, which has had a mandatory E-Verify law on its books since 2007, and places like Oklahoma City that have passed similar anti-immigrant ordinances. She concluded that “unauthorized immigrants make the decision to stay in the country despite attempts to drive them out,” with some moving to a more welcoming locale within the United States and many more simply going underground.

But while these laws do not drive immigrants out of the country, self-deportation does wreak havoc on the communities where it is implemented. As Eliseo Medina, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, pointed out after the Florida debate, implementing self-deportation means “refusing to rent to them [undocumented immigrants] or to provide access to heat and water,” not to mention going after their children in schools.

We only have to look at Alabama to see the disastrous consequences of self-deportation policies. The state passed its own version of an attrition-through-enforcement bill, H.B. 56, in June 2011 and it went into effect in September. On the first Monday after the law went into effect, more than 2,000 Latino students did not show up to school because many unauthorized immigrants were fearful of arrest under the new law. The Southern Poverty Law Center set up a helpline for people to report racial profiling and abuses under H.B. 56 and it received more than 2,000 calls in its first week of operation.

What’s more, lack of available immigrant laborers threatens to devastate Alabama’s $5.5 billion agricultural sector, while the recent arrest of two foreign auto executives calls into question the state’s status as a leader in attracting foreign investment. Overall, economist Samuel Addy of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Alabama estimates that the state could lose up to $10.8 billion annually and up to 140,000 jobs as a consequence of H.B. 56.

Building the entire border fence

Gov. Romney told the audience at the CNN-Tea Party Republican debate in Tampa, Florida, that under his administration, “of course we’d build a fence” across all 2,000 miles of the border between the United States and Mexico. Furthermore, his campaign website states: “Mitt Romney will complete a high-tech fence” across the border as part of his “strong stand against illegal immigration.” Gov. Romney doubled down on his borderenforcement-first strategy in front on the National Association of Latino Elected Officials in late June, telling the audience that “it is critical that we redouble our efforts to secure the borders,” and arguing that the United States “should field enough border patrol agents, complete a high-tech fence, and implement an improved exit verification system.”

Tough talk aside, according to federal government estimates, 81 percent of the border already falls within the top tiers of operational control, meaning that at the very least the Department of Homeland Security can detect all attempts to cross. The remaining 19 percent is in the most inaccessible parts of the border. That 81 percent includes 650 miles of fencing and an extensive use of technology to detect border crossings.

To build a fence along the entire border—enlarging it from 650 miles to 2,000 miles—would be impractical at best and extremely costly at worst. The Government Accountability Office estimated that it would cost on average $3.9 million per mile to build the most secure type of fence (primary pedestrian fencing), meaning that it would cost the government a whopping $5.3 billion of taxpayer funds to complete the fence. At a time of tightening wallets and spending cuts, a $5.3 billion price tag certainly runs contrary to the idea of small government.

Gov. Romney’s positions too extreme for the public

Poll after poll finds Gov. Romney’s positions to be far outside the mainstream of American voters. Instead of harsh and costly enforcement-only laws, most Americans favor a balanced approach where tougher enforcement is paired with a pathway to citizenship for people who are part of our communities, allowing them to learn English and pay back taxes.

These results are consistent regardless of who is asking the question. A Fox News poll from December 2011, for example, found that two-thirds of all voters believed that unauthorized immigrants should be allowed to remain in the country and eventually stay in the country, while only 19 percent supported sending all unauthorized immigrants back to their home countries. On the flip side, a Latino Decisions/Univision News poll from November 2011 found that only 25 percent of the general public would be more likely to support a candidate with harsh views on immigration, while 41 percent would be less likely. By contrast, 46 percent of voters would be more likely to support a candidate with positive views on immigration and only 15 percent would be less likely. The DREAM Act polls equally high, with 58 percent of all voters and 91 percent of Latino voters favoring it.

Voters should ask themselves whether they want to support a potential administration with immigration positions far more extreme than their own. Do they support a candidate who would reject the DREAM Act, push self-deportation and E-Verify on the nation, and make Arizona a model for the country at large? Do they support the purported “small government” candidate who would spend more than $5 billion to build a fence, spend billions of dollars more in deportation and enforcement costs, and lower government revenues by $17.3 billion over a decade through mandatory E-Verify use?

That’s exactly what they’d get with a Romney administration.

Angela Maria Kelley is Vice President for Immigration Policy and Advocacy, Marshall Fitz is Director of Immigration Policy, Philip E. Wolgin is Immigration Policy Analyst, and Ann Garcia is Research and Policy Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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Endnotes and citations available in pdf version of this issue brief.

For more facts on Gov. Romney’s plans for America, a Center for American Progress Action Fund series entitled “Romney University,” click here.

Read more here.

SOURCE: AP/ Haraz N. Ghanbari

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is gaining popularity as a potential vice presidential choice for Mitt Romney. A Romney-Rubio presidency would push a number of counterproductive policies on immigration.

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Mitt Romney is almost certainly going to be the Republican presidential nominee. But as he looks toward the general election, his profound disconnect with Latino voters has generated growing concern within his campaign and across the Republican establishment. A recent Fox News Latino poll, for example, found that only 17.5 percent of Latino voters believed Romney actually cares about Latinos and Latino issues, while even fewer people—14 percent—would vote for him over President Barack Obama. Those dismal numbers of course are far below the estimated 40 percent of the Latino vote share that he would need to win the presidency.

Now a fledgling two-part strategy to address this deficit is emerging from the Romney camp: attack the president’s failure to enact immigration reform and court a Latino running mate. Romney’s recent cynical offensive against the administration’s immigration policies suggests, however, that rather than try to court these voters with policy substance, he is content with trying to diminish enthusiasm and, presumably, voter turnout for his opponent.

Romney recently told a Wisconsin audience, “Let the immigration community not forget that, while he uses this [immigration] as a political weapon, he [President Obama] has not taken responsibility for fixing the problems we have here.” At its core, his message is: “I know you don’t like me, but you shouldn’t like the other guy either.”

A barrage of conservatives tout first-term Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) as Romney’s potential lifeline to Latino voters. Sen. Rubio is cast as an appealing candidate to balance out the ticket—he is Catholic, Latino, telegenic, and from an important swing state. Last Thursday Jeb Bush told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that he believed Rubio should be the vice presidential pick, while a few days earlier Roll Call spoke to the increasing view that Rubio would energize the Republican ticket with the headline: “Who Else for Vice President but Marco Rubio?” In Wisconsin Romney recently stated that immigration reform “will be a priority of mine if I become president.” But what kind of reform and what sort of immigration agenda can we expect if Romney and Rubio are elected?

The short answer is nothing that would cure our nation’s dysfunctional immigration system. A Romney-Rubio administration would advance the following counterproductive legislative priorities:

• Make E-Verify, the nation’s flawed internet-based work-authorization system, mandatory for all employers in the hope that undocumented immigrants will self-deport
• Pursue a “DREAM-less” DREAM Act, which would grant legal status but no path to earn citizenship for unauthorized immigrants who were brought here at a young age.

We can also be certain that a Romney-Rubio administration would adopt the following regressive administrative priorities:

• Support for states seeking to pass anti-immigrant laws like Arizona’s S.B. 1070
• Implementation of a comprehensive “self-deportation” strategy for undocumented immigrants in which the government would make life as miserable as possible to try to force undocumented immigrants to leave the country on their own
• Elimination of prosecutorial discretion that helps enforcement agents prioritize serious criminals over nannies and busboys
• Construction of another 1,400 miles of border fencing despite the exorbitant cost

These legislative and administrative strategies would create burdensome and costly new regulations that would grow the size of the federal government at taxpayer expense, affect all Americans—immigrant and native born alike—undermine community safety, stifle economic growth, and rob the United States of a large pool of talent all while tearing families apart. These policies are also outside the mainstream of American public opinion on immigration.

Based on Romney and Rubio’s records and commentary, below is an analysis of who would play a role in shaping a Romney-Rubio immigration agenda and what that agenda would look like in detail:

Legislative agenda

While legislative accomplishments are hard to come by or predict, it is likely that both a mandatory E-Verify program and a DREAM-less DREAM Act will be on a Romney-Rubio administration’s legislative agenda. Here’s why.

Mandatory E-Verify

Both Romney and Rubio talk about E-Verify as a solution to the nation’s undocumented immigration issue. Rubio is one of 11 co-sponsors of S. 1196, a bill by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) that would make E-Verify mandatory for all employers. Similarly, in the Mesa, Arizona Republican debate in February, Romney told the audience that “I will make sure we have an E-Verify system and require employers to check the documents of workers, and to check E-Verify.”

Both Romney and Rubio talk about E-Verify as a solution to the nation’s undocumented immigration issue.

Implementing a mandatory E-Verify program is not as simple as it sounds, however, and presents a number of challenges. First and foremost, the system’s error rates mean that more than three-quarters of a million legally authorized American workers—including citizens—would lose their jobs because of mismatches between their information and what is on file with the government. An additional 1.2 million to 3.5 million Americans would have to spend close to $200 of their own money in lost wages and transportation costs to travel to a Social Security Administration office to fix erroneous information or risk losing their jobs. And these errors disproportionately fall upon the foreign born: According to a Westat study, naturalized citizens are more than 30 times more likely to receive an error than U.S.-born citizens. All for a system that catches unauthorized immigrants only 46 percent of the time—meaning that more than half of unauthorized workers will get through the system without a problem.

A mandatory E-Verify system would also cost a significant amount of money. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, mandatory E-Verify use would decrease federal tax revenue by $17.3 billion over 10 years as workers move off the books and into the underground economy, where their tax revenue does not accrue to the government. Running a mandatory E-Verify system would cost the government more than $1 billion over five years, between the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration, while a recent Bloomberg Government study found that small businesses would bear the brunt of E-Verify’s costs, paying $2.6 billion a year to use the system.

And while Romney in the Mesa, Arizona Republican Debate pointed to Arizona’s mandatory E-Verify law, passed in 2007, as a “model” for the nation, since, in his words, “the number of people in Arizona that are here illegally has dropped by some 14 percent,” the law had a number of unintended consequences. In particular, mandatory E-Verify caused a significant number of people in the state to move from the formal economy to the informal economy.

A report on Arizona’s E-Verify law by the Public Policy Institute of California concluded that far more immigrants would move off the books with a federal mandatory E-Verify policy (where their tax revenues would not accrue to the government and where they would be more open to exploitation) than would move out of the country.

A DREAM-less DREAM Act

The bipartisan Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM, Act would give a pathway to legal status to the estimated 2.1 million undocumented children who were brought to the country at a young age and who graduate from high school and complete some college or military service. Even though 91 percent of Latinos and 58 percent of the general public support the DREAM Act, Romney has made his opposition clear. In restating and answering a question from the audience at an appearance in Iowa, he said, “If I were elected and Congress were to pass the DREAM Act, would I veto it? And the answer is yes.”

Romney has said that he would support a military-service only version of the DREAM Act, but as Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) points out, “making military service a requirement for those who were raised here does not make sense because not everyone desires to serve or is qualified to do so.” Likewise Rep. Gutierrez argues that “risking one’s life should not be the only route to receive legal status.” Cornell Law Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr adds that a military-only option “effectively tells undocumented noncitizens that they are only useful for war, not for improving our economy through their hard work.”

“If I were elected and Congress were to pass the DREAM Act, would I veto it? And the answer is yes.” —Mitt Romney

Rubio has of late softened his strict opposition to the DREAM Act, but even he is unwilling to support the full DREAM Act. As he told Juan Williams last week, he bases his opposition on the misguided idea that the DREAM Act would cause further “chain migration” of unauthorized immigrants (where immigrants gain citizenship and then bring over their family members). The idea of mass chain migration is a myth: According to the most up-to-date projections by sociologist Bin Yu, the average immigrant brings only 2.1 family members to the United States over their lifetime. What’s more, this process occurs over decades—as former Immigration and Naturalization Service official Stuart Anderson has pointed out, it takes a minimum of 19 years for a U.S. citizen to bring an adult child from Mexico. Under the provisions of the DREAM Act, it would take at least 11 years just for an immigrant to obtain citizenship, a prerequisite to bringing one’s parents over—to say nothing about the availability of a visa.

Nevertheless, Rubio has stated that he will support a version of the DREAM Act that gives legal status with no possibility of earning citizenship. Rubio’s plan would force the 2.1 million undocumented students into a second-class status for life instead of allowing them to become full and equal members of society.

In short, a Romney-Rubio administration would end for good any possibility of passing the DREAM Act.

Administrative agenda

While a Romney-Rubio administration will have to work with Congress to pass its legislative agenda, it can do a number of things through the executive branch from its first day in office. For instance, Romney has stated that he will encourage Arizona-style “papers please” laws in more states, make self-deportation federal policy, and build the entire border fence.

Encouraging Arizona’s “papers please” law for everyone

Romney told the audience in the CNN Mesa, Arizona Republican debate that he would drop all government lawsuits against states like Arizona and their anti-immigrant laws.

Notwithstanding the Supreme Court, which is set to hear arguments on the constitutionality of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 on April 25, stopping federal litigation against places like Arizona would give a green light to other states considering copycat bills. With the knowledge that they will not have to worry about federal government lawsuits, these states will be far more likely to pass their own versions of “papers please” laws, allowing the local police to check the status of anyone they suspect might be in the country without status.

Ending prosecutorial discretion

Since Romney advisor Kris Kobach deemed the Obama administration’s policy of prosecutorial discretion—allowing immigration officials to prioritize the worst of the worst in immigration enforcement and to ensure that people with no criminal record, or DREAM Act-eligible students, have their cases closed—an attempt to “go further in not enforcing the law,” it is not a stretch to say that President Romney will immediately rescind the policy of discretion.

Without the ability to prioritize resources, the government will be forced to spend money deporting anyone who comes into the system even if they have been in the country for well over a decade, have a family here, and have committed no crime. While Romney states that he is in favor of self-deportation—where immigrants make the choice to leave on their own—rather than using government resources to deport the estimated 11.5 million unauthorized immigrants in the country, ending prosecutorial discretion will mean that far more people end up in deportation proceedings at an average cost to the government of $23,500 per deportation.

Making self-deportation federal policy

Romney in particular is pushing an aggressive program of self-deportation as a centerpiece of his immigration policy. Romney’s ideas are based on those of his immigration advisor Kris Kobach, and would mean pursuing a strategy of attrition through enforcement, which restrictionist groups like NumbersUSA define as “mak[ing] it extremely difficult for unauthorized persons to live and work in the United States,” in the hope that they will leave the country on their own.

“The answer [to sending undocumented immigrants home] is self-deportation… which is people decide that they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here. ” —Mitt Romney

In the Florida Republican debate, Romney told the audience that “the answer [to sending undocumented immigrants home] is self-deportation…which is people decide that they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here.”

The audience laughed at the proposal, but Romney’s stance is not a new one. Eric Fehrnstrom, one of the Romney campaign’s top advisors, told The Washington Examiner that “You turn off the magnets, no in state tuition, no benefits of any kind, no employment. You put in place an employment verification system with penalties for employers that hire illegals, that will shut off access to the job market, and they will self retreat. They will go to their native countries.”

But how would such a self-deportation program play out in real life? Most importantly, it would not solve the problem of undocumented immigration. According to the Department of Homeland Security, most undocumented immigrants have been in the country for 10 years or more, and the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 47 percent of unauthorized immigrants live in households comprised of families with children. This makes it highly unlikely that they will simply leave the country.

In a recent report, researcher Leah Muse-Orlinoff of the University of California, San Diego reviewed the evidence from states like Arizona, which has had a mandatory E-Verify law on its books since 2007, and places like Oklahoma City that have passed similar anti-immigrant ordinances. She concluded that “unauthorized immigrants make the decision to stay in the country despite attempts to drive them out,” with some moving to a more welcoming locale within the United States and many more simply going underground.

But while these laws do not drive immigrants out of the country, self-deportation does wreak havoc on the communities where it is implemented. As Eliseo Medina, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union pointed out after the Florida debate, implementing self-deportation means “refusing to rent to them [undocumented immigrants] or to provide access to heat and water,” not to mention going after their children in schools. We only have to look at Alabama to see the disastrous consequences of self-deportation policies. The state passed its own version of an attrition-through-enforcement bill, H.B. 56, in June 2011 and it went into effect in September. On the first Monday after the law went into effect over 2,000 Latino students did not show up to school because many unauthorized immigrants were fearful of arrest under the new law. The Southern Poverty Law Center set up a helpline for people to report racial profiling and abuses under H.B. 56 and it received over 2,000 calls in its first week of operation.

What’s more, lack of available immigrant laborers threatens to devastate Alabama’s $5.5 billion agricultural sector, while the recent arrest of two foreign auto executives calls into question the state’s status as a leader in attracting foreign investment.

Overall, economist Samuel Addy of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Alabama estimates that the state could lose up to $10.8 billion annually and up to 140,000 jobs from H.B. 56.

Building the entire border fence

Romney told the audience at the CNN-Tea Party Republican Debate in Tampa, Florida that under his administration “of course we’d build a fence” across all 2,000 miles of the border between the United States and Mexico. Furthermore, his campaign website states that “Mitt Romney will complete a high-tech fence” across the border, as part of his “strong stand against illegal immigration.”

Tough talk aside, according to government estimates 81 percent of the border already falls within the top tiers of operational control, meaning that at the very least the Department of Homeland Security can detect all attempts to cross. The remaining 19 percent is in the most inaccessible parts of the border. That 81 percent includes 650 miles of fencing and an extensive use of technology to detect border crossings.

To build a fence along the entire border—enlarging it from 650 to 2,000 miles—would be impractical at best and extremely costly at worst. The Government Accountability Office estimated that it would cost on average $3.9 million per mile to build the most secure type of fence (primary pedestrian fencing), meaning that it would cost the government a whopping $5.3 billion of taxpayer funds to complete the fence. At a time of tightening wallets and cutting spending a $5.3 billion price tag certainly runs contrary to the idea of small government.

Romney and Rubio are out of step with the American public

Poll after poll finds Romney and Rubio’s positions to be far outside the mainstream of American voters. Instead of harsh and costly enforcement-only laws, most Americans favor a balanced approach where tougher enforcement is paired with a pathway to citizenship for people who are part of our communities, allowing them to learn English and pay back taxes.

These results are consistent regardless of who is asking the question. A Fox News poll from December 2011, for example, found that two-thirds of all voters believed that unauthorized immigrants should be allowed to remain in the country and eventually stay in the country, while only 19 percent supported sending all unauthorized immigrants back to their home country. On the flip side, a Latino Decisions/Univision News poll from November 2011 found that only 25 percent of the general public would be more likely to support a candidate with harsh views on immigration, while 41 percent would be less likely. By contrast, 46 percent of voters would be more likely to support a candidate with positive views on immigration and only 15 percent would be less likely. The DREAM Act polls equally high, with 58 percent of all voters and 91 percent of Latino voters favoring it.

Conclusion

Voters should ask themselves whether they want to support a potential administration with immigration positions far more extreme than their own.

Voters should ask themselves whether they want to support a potential administration with immigration positions far more extreme than their own. Do they support candidates who would reject the DREAM Act, push self-deportation and E-Verify on the nation, and make Arizona a model for the country at large? Do they support the purported “small government” candidate who would spend over $5 billion to build a fence, spend billions of dollars more in deportation and enforcement costs, and lower government revenues by $17.3 billion over a decade through mandatory E-Verify use?

Because that’s what they’d get with the Romney-Rubio ticket.

Angela Maria Kelley is Vice President for Immigration Policy and Advocacy, Philip E. Wolgin is Immigration Policy Analyst, and Ann Garcia is Research and Policy Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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SOURCE: Center for American Progress

Sally Steenland, Director for the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress, talks to Angela Kelley, Vice President for Immigration Policy and Advocacy at the Center, about the harsh immigration laws spreading around the country, the anti-immigrant rhetoric on the campaign trail, and how faith leaders are speaking out on these issues.

Sally Steenland: My name is Sally Steenland and I direct the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress. With me today is Angie Kelley, Vice President for Immigration Policy and Advocacy here at the Center, and a good friend. Welcome, Angie.

Angie Kelley: Thanks, Sally. Great to be here.

SS: So let’s get right into it. I want to start off talking about Alabama. So last June Alabama passed what’s being called the harshest anti-immigration law in the nation. And it was in the headlines for weeks, but then it slipped from the news. Recently your team released a report called “Alabama’s Immigration Disaster,” and you bring the law back to national attention. Can you tell us what you found in the report and give us an update on what’s happening in Alabama?

AK: Sure. Thanks very much for having me. We tried to capture different aspects of the law’s impact in our report. And one was “so what’s the economic impact” specifically in the agriculture industry, but also foreign investment, because Alabama had been working hard to try to make itself appealing and attractive to foreign investors. And then another aspect that we looked at was what’s been the damage to both social and civil rights.

And the economic consequences have been staggering and are only going to go up. It could be that they will lose up to $10.8 billion, or 6.2 percent, of their GDP. They may lose up to 140,000 jobs. Their tax revenue, the state tax revenue, could go down by $2.64 million. Their agriculture industry is something that they depend on that brings in $5.5 billion a year, and one tomato farmer said that he’s estimating a loss of $300,000. And those are figures that are going to continue ticking up, because we don’t know fully yet, particularly for farmers, what they’re going to be able to plant next year, whether they’ll have workers there next year.

With foreign investment, we’re beginning to see contracts canceled. So for example a Spanish bank was looking to open up its U.S. headquarters in Birmingham—$80 million that they were looking to invest; gone.

The social impact, which isn’t a dollar value but incredibly meaningful, is perhaps the most poignant and frightening. On the first day after this law went into effect, you had nearly 10 percent of Latino students not showing up to school. You had mobile-home parks, where a lot of Latinos [were] living, empty. Dogs that were their family pets that had to be turned away. People literally packing and fleeing overnight. There was a hotline set up that got 2,000 calls from people desperate for information, fearful, and not knowing what they should do.

Those stories continue even if CNN and MSNBC aren’t reporting on this anymore, and The New York Times isn’t running daily stories. The harm is vast. And what we tried to do was to bring that home in the form of numbers in the report. And then we also released a series of videos called “Is This Alabama?” Go to isthisalabama.org. They were produced by a Hollywood director, Chris Weitz, who has done big blockbuster films like “About A Boy,” one of the “Twilight” movies, and “American Pie.” And he also, through videos, tells the story of Alabamans and what they’ve experienced in their home state, which drives home the impact.

SS: The videos are incredibly moving and they put a face to this story. Can you just share one or two of them with us?

AK: Sure. The one that’s gotten the most hits is a farmer who’s probably in his late 50s, early 60s, a very typical Alabama stereotype. And he’s wearing a hat and flannel shirt, and you would think that the story he would tell is about how much money he’s lost. But the story that he actually tells is about the relationship that he lost. His longtime worker, whom he calls his partner in business, is Paco, and he said, “I’ve been to Paco’s house. I’ve had dinner at his table. He’s had dinner at my table. And his children I call my nietos,” which means grandchildren in Spanish. And in his terrific Southern accent, he goes on and on about the relationship and the impact of a law that tells him who he can drive in his truck. Because under the law he shouldn’t be driving Paco anywhere. And he says, “That’s the state of Alabama telling me who I can be friends with, and that’s not the Alabama I know, and it’s taking us backwards.”

So that’s one story, and there are several others. What they really represent is just a tiny fraction of what’s playing out in that state, and in Georgia, and in Arizona, and South Carolina—states that have decided to take up the anti-immigrant, myopic enforcement-only banner, and run with it. You know, the consequences of it, frankly, harm them economically, and it doesn’t stop illegal immigration.

SS: Just to go back to the farmer for a minute. It really is a very powerful story, and you think, this is probably a pretty conservative guy.

AK: Yeah. He is a Republican, actually.

SS: He’s a Republican. And when he tells it, what it sounds like is, “This is probably a guy who believes in limited government.” But yet this is really government intrusion. So you would think that a conservative view would not want the government to say, “This is who you can put in your car. This is who can be your friend. This is who can come to your house for dinner.” So is that sort of backlash picking up steam? And I just want to bring in faith leaders here, because I know that they have a role to play, and that they’ve been involved as well. So what is the faith community doing along these lines, and what do we see among ordinary, regular folks?

AK: The law really flies in the face of liberal and conservative values, and it’s not consistent with human values. It’s not consistent with the economic self-interest of these states. And those dual messages of “This doesn’t make sense for us economically, nor does it make sense for us as a people and how we should be treating each other” are messages that I think the faith community can deliver. What I think is so brilliant about the faith community is that they’re bilingual. They can talk about this from a moral and a faith perspective but also from an enormously practical perspective.

There was a conference recently that Sanford University held, in Alabama of course, looking at the law, and you had prominent Alabama pastors, bishops, and other religious leaders talking about how “This isn’t who we are. It isn’t who we are as Alabamans. It isn’t who we are as faith leaders or people of faith. It isn’t who we are as people who want to have a healthy economy.” And you had 80 pastors who signed a letter to their state leaders saying, “Enough. Let’s roll back this law.” There are faith leaders that have started a documentary series. So they’re using film as a way of communicating this dual message.

I do think, at the end of the day, Americans are enormously practical people, and I think they’re mainly pretty principled. And it is the range of voices, but most especially faith leaders, reminding them that you can be both principled and practical. And in that vein, you need to speak up against these laws. And only with that kind of moral, grounded voice do I actually think we can turn the tide.

SS: Let’s turn our attention to the Republican primaries, and the candidates, where we’ve heard from just about everybody enormously harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric that’s gone beyond just policy. It’s really been cruel and dehumanizing. Why do they talk like that? Is there a particular group of people that it’s working for, that it’s appealing to? Why do we see that happening?

AK: I definitely can’t read the minds of the Republican candidates. And if I were in a room advising them, I would suggest that they change their tone dramatically around the topic of immigration. Because it is not just a policy conversation but really about people, and it particularly speaks to the Latino community, which is the fastest-growing group of voters in this country. It is a demographic wave that is going to, frankly, overtake the Republicans.

In a way they are drinking a slow poison in how they’re alienating that community. Obviously a Latino voter is here legally, they are not undocumented. But the undocumented don’t all live in one apartment building by themselves. So undocumented people, you know, life is life. They marry, they work with other people, they have friends, they have co-workers. And an astonishing statistic is that one out of four Latino voters knows someone who’s been deported, or is in the queue to be deported. That’s an astonishing statistic.

SS: That’s amazing.

AK: Now what that speaks to are stepped-up enforcement policies by the Obama administration. But the way Republicans are playing this topic, which is not wise, is they’re associating themselves with being all about enforcement, all about deportation. And it’s hard to feel warm toward a candidate who wants to deport your cousin or who’s out to get your grandmother.

I can tell you that my family, for example, who has been here now for decades—my mother was naturalized many years ago—has become very political around this issue even though right now everybody in my family is documented and legal, because they’re speaking in this disrespectful tone. She can’t separate who we’re going to look for that doesn’t have papers. She has dark skin, dark hair, speaks with a thick accent, and you catch her on a weekend and she might look like she’s just finished picking some crops in the field. And that led her to cancel our family vacation in Arizona because she was too afraid she would be stopped and would be humiliated in front of her grandchildren, my daughters.

That conversation is happening around kitchen tables all across the country, of Latinos saying, “Whoa. I may even agree with your economic policy. I may even agree with your position on abortion. But you’re talking about me in a way that’s disrespectful.” And the depth of how tone-deaf the Republicans are is astounding. They’re making Obama’s job a lot easier.

SS: We know there was disappointment toward the Obama administration within Latino communities for not passing comprehensive immigration reform. Given how the Republican candidates are playing out, how do you see the issue of immigration playing out between now and November, given, as you just said, the fast-growing Latino voting bloc?

AK: Well you already see Romney trying to run some ads in Spanish-language press, and coming across as someone who can somehow relate to the Latino community that he’s just said he wants to deport. And certainly someone like Marco Rubio, who’s a senator from Florida and is of Cuban descent, is being talked about as a possible VP candidate. So I think that they’re going to try to do their best. But frankly, the Republican Party, particularly Mitt Romney if he emerges as a candidate, is in a very deep hole, and he can’t seem to help but continue to dig.

The Obama administration is recognizing that there has been a growing connection between how Latino voters are viewing this administration and their immigration policies, and it has tried a bit to take its heavy foot off the enforcement gas pedal. They announced, for example, last August, guidelines for who is going to be deported. They’re going to look carefully now at whether you’re someone who might be a DREAM Act student—a person who’s been here since they were a youth, has basically grown up in this country, and somebody who it makes no sense to send back to a country that they haven’t been to since they were perhaps an infant. They’re going to be looking at people who have long ties to the United States, that sort of thing, and making some very reasonable assessments as to where to execute prosecutorial discretion and where not to. They’re going to go back and open up 300,000 cases—and they’ve already started that process—and will be closing some cases.

This is all policy that sounds very technical, like, “Is anybody really paying attention?” But yes, they are paying attention, because if your family’s attorney sends an email, or makes a phone call and says, “Oh my God, José’s immigration case has been closed,” that sends a ripple effect throughout the entire Latino community. Similarly, if there are roadblocks around the elementary school and DHS agents checking papers, that word goes through the community very quickly as well.

I think the administration is trying to do what it can, and there’s more that it can do that they would still be enforcing the law but without being as heavy-handed. And so we’ll see if there’s more of that. But honestly, because so much of this campaign, like any campaign, gets down to “What’s a sound bite? What has he said?”, there is a lot of fodder there that Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum have all provided that make Obama’s job a lot easier.

SS: In terms of vetoing the DREAM Act, for instance—

AK: Exactly.

SS: By Romney—

AK: Yeah, vetoing the DREAM Act, embracing Alabama, embracing Arizona—

SS: Right.

AK: Embracing Jan Brewer, embracing a guy named Kris Kobach. Again, a lot of people don’t know who he is, but to the Latino community he is the architect of all those laws, and he’s their boogeyman.

SS: Right.

AK: So yeah, so I think that the importance of this issue will continue to play out throughout the campaign. Those people who, like most of us, follow politics and the national conversation in English-language press are going to declare the issue dead. People will say, “Oh, they’re not talking about it at all.” But if you can dig out your rudimentary Spanish and listen to Univision, or just watch the commercials, as in ’08 with McCain and Obama, there is a very active conversation going on about immigration.

SS: So let’s skip over November and look at the next four years. What should happen? What’s the smart thing to do and what’s the right thing to do? What would you like to see happen with comprehensive immigration reform?

AK: If members could vote anonymously for smart policy, it would have passed a long time ago, with a substantial majority, and I think it would look something like this: I think it would be enormously practical in dealing with the people who are here without papers, and we would set up a program where people would come forward; we would know who was here; they would pay taxes; they would learn English; we would do a background check on them; they would be able to work legally, thereby not having their wages depressed or U.S. workers’ wages depressed so everybody would be on a level playing field; and over time they would earn residency and eventual citizenship.

I think that we’re not going to be able to deport 11 million people. It would be harmful to our economy. It would also be harmful to the character of this country, so we should just deal practically with those folks.

Next part: How do we avoid more illegal immigration so we don’t have the same problem in five years? So the second part of a smart policy would be, “All right. We want people to come with visas, not with smugglers.” So we should have a flexible system that assesses, “What does our country need?”

Right now we have very small, limited numbers of visas for people to come to work, and we treat our economy as if it’s perfectly stagnant, as if the number that we need today is the same that we needed five years ago, the same that we needed 15 years ago. That’s crazy. And we need to have a much more sophisticated analysis of “What kinds of visas do we need? What kinds of jobs?” Make sure that we’re bringing people in who are filling needed job openings.

And given the wave of retirement we have—the baby boom wave has just begun, so we will have openings, and we are doing harm to our economy if we don’t have the right workers in those jobs.

The third [part]: We have the most secure border we’ve ever had now, the lowest levels of illegal immigration since when President Nixon was in office.

SS: Wow.

AK: And that’s because one, we’ve built up at the border. We’re using much more smarter technology, and we need to keep doing that. The border is also dynamic, so we need to stay on top of that and be sure that people aren’t finding creative ways to enter illegally. I actually think if they had a line, if there were visas available to them, they wouldn’t come in illegally. Who would? That doesn’t make sense.

We also need employers to be accountable, and we do need some kind of a verification system so when someone presents themselves to you and says, “I want to apply for this job,” you have a way of verifying that they’re here legally. Those things all work together. You can’t have any one of those pieces of a policy and hope that that’s going to be enough.

That would be my prescription, and we also have a lot of family members who are here in the United States illegally, they have a U.S. citizen family member, but they’re stuck in a family backlog. It would make a lot of sense to clear out those backlogs. Let’s make sure that we have families reunited in a quick way. But let’s at the end of the day be sure we’re serving our national interest and that we know who is here, and that we put them on a path to belonging here.

SS: And what you said earlier was so intriguing—if people could vote anonymously, just because it makes sense, and it’s left or right, it just makes perfect—

AK: Smart policy, right.

SS: It’s smart policy. And the fact that names and faces are attached to those votes means those people would get demonized on Fox News, or what’s the penalty?

AK: You only have to go back to 2006—which wasn’t that long ago, despite what my children would say—and 23 Republicans in the Senate supported an immigration bill that would have legalized most people who are here illegally. Twenty-three Republicans.

SS: Wow.

AK: That’s how much we’ve deteriorated and made it so that the moderate Republican, the moderate Democrat, is a relic. It’s like a dinosaur. It’s like my old cell phone that had an antenna. And so we can’t have a sensible conversation, unfortunately, because you have too many people that are afraid of a right-wing, Tea Party challenge if they’re sensible on the issue. Think Sen. [Bob] Bennett from Utah, for example. Sen. [Orrin] Hatch, who shed his pro-immigration policies a decade ago, and this is an issue he’s afraid of because of the emergence of the far right.

The John McCain that I knew in 2006 could talk about this issue without his face turning red and declaring that the border is unsafe.

SS: Yeah.

AK: The Ted Kennedy, who’s sadly passed away, could knit together that kind of left-right coalition and drive a legislative product that both sides were proud of. And it’s those kinds of leaders that we need to have back. Until then, I actually do think that the responsibility sits on the Obama administration to examine its immigration policies, examine the role of police in enforcing immigration law, and the ways that’s making us less safe because people are afraid to report crimes. What is a threat? Who means to do us harm? Who are people with criminal records? Let’s go after them. But for the other folks, I don’t think it serves anybody’s interest to be targeting them for removal.

SS: I’ve got one last question for you. You were talking about 2006, and when immigration reform legislation almost passed, you were there, and then it didn’t. So you’ve been doing this work either as an advocate or as a service provider for quite some time, and it’s been a rollercoaster. It’s had its moments of triumph. It’s certainly had a lot of heartbreak. So why do you do this work?

AK: That’s such a great question. I do this work for a couple reasons. One is because I was privileged enough as a young lawyer to represent mainly Central Americans, some African refugees, who came to this country, and who had endured extraordinary pain and hardship and tragedy, that I couldn’t have survived a day, and they were surviving years. And they inspired me. They taught me courage. They taught me character. And so they became my North Star, and that’s just how my compass points.

The second is my own family’s story. My grandfather sent his six daughters to this country, and they were lucky enough to come legally because he believed in the character of this country and the promise that it holds, and that’s something that I firmly believe in and I want to fight for.

And then the last, I guess, you know, I’m a mother. I have two daughters who are 11 and 15, and they get this issue, they’ve grown up with it. My kids could do roll call votes on the Senate floor. They would call me from home and ask me how somebody voted. And I think it’s for them, because I want them to see the world—the way they see it now isn’t about whether somebody’s gay or straight, whether they have papers or they don’t. I mean they can’t believe that there was a time that black and white people couldn’t marry. And so it’s really for them. I need to leave the world better for them and that they feel an obligation to leave the world better for their kids.

SS: Amen. Thank you so much, Angie.

AK: Thank you.

Sally Steenland is Director for the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative and Angela Kelley is Vice President for Immigration Policy and Advocacy at the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/ Charles Dharapak

Mitt Romney's recent embrace of hardline anti-immigration rhetoric could cost him in key states like Florida and Nevada.  

This article was originally published on Huffington Post

Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney once tacitly supported immigration reform. Sadly, his recent embrace of hardline immigration positions is a show we’ve seen before with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2008, and it targets the fastest-growing demographic in the country. With his new stance Romney risks losing not only the Latino vote but many non-Latino voters as well.

In the last few weeks we’ve seen Romney take a hard right-turn on immigration, first telling an audience that he would veto the DREAM Act if president, and then accepting the endorsement of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), the author of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 and Alabama’s H.B. 56, among a slew of state and local anti-immigrant bills.

Remember that Sen. McCain had been a strong supporter of immigrants and in turn had received overwhelming support from Latinos in his home state before running for president in 2008. He was the creator and driving force behind the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, and he supported the 2007 comprehensive immigration reform attempt before talking tough on immigration in order to stay competitive in the Republican primary.

Latino voters caught on quickly to Sen. McCain’s political doublespeak on immigration. The GOP’s share of the Latino vote, which George W. Bush had raised to 35 percent in 2000, and at least 40 percent in 2004, was reversed, and only 31 percent of Latinos voted for the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008.

Moving into the 2012 election cycle, a number of recent polls illustrate that Romney will go the way of McCain, and continue the GOP’s slide with Latino voters, if he continues down the anti-immigrant path.

The (d)evolution of Romney’s immigration views

Mitt Romney’s position on immigration has meandered for years, but today his hardline stance is clearer than ever.

In a 2005 interview with The Boston Globe, Romney talked about Sens. McCain and Edward Kennedy (D-MA)’s comprehensive immigration reform bill as “reasonable proposals.” And just months later he told The Lowell Sun that he didn’t believe in the mass deportation of the 11 million undocumented persons living in the country.

In the heat of the 2008 primary, however, candidate Romney’s stance on immigration hardened. He presented GOP supporters at the Reagan Library debate with a gradual mass deportation scheme whereby recently arrived undocumented immigrants would be deported immediately, and those that had been here for a long time and were raising kids could have sufficient time to “organize their affairs and go home.”

But that wasn’t all. He also proposed building a border fence and calling on undocumented immigrants to “get in line with everybody else who wants to come here.” A month later Romney brought on Kris Kobach, at the time the general counsel of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (an anti-immigrant hate group), as an adviser on border security and immigration issues.

If his views in 2008 were bad, though, his current position on immigration is even worse. Romney has now promised to be a president who gives no path to “permanent residency or citizenship for those that have come here illegally,” forcing the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the country to “settle their affairs and then return home and get in line.”

Today’s Romney has most notably chosen to distinguish himself from his primary opponents by promising to turn off “magnets of amnesty,” including ending in-state tuition, and vetoing the DREAM Act, a program supported by 91 percent of Latino voters.

Still, Romney seems to think he can pander to immigration hardliners in English and simultaneously appeal to Latino voters. Just two weeks after promising to veto the DREAM Act, Romney unleashed his Spanish-language television ad “Nosotros” in Florida, in which his son boasts of his father’s belief in “liberty” and “opportunity,” two American values imperiled by his very proposals.

Romney’s anti-immigrant line goes mainstream

More than anything else, Romney’s enthusiastic acceptance of extremist Kris Kobach’s recent endorsement illustrates just how mainstream his anti-immigrant views have become. As ThinkProgress reported, Kobach gushed that “[i]llegal immigration is a nightmare…[and] Mitt Romney is the candidate who will finally secure the borders and put a stop to the magnets, like in-state tuition.”

Kobach’s endorsement ignited a firestorm of criticism in the mainstream press, with The New York Times arguing that Romney “has dropped the pretense” of moderation on immigration, and Andres Oppenheimer of The Miami Herald stating that the move shows that Hispanic voters will be Romney’s “biggest problem” in the upcoming election.

Polls suggest his new strategy will backfire

So how will Mitt’s anti-immigrant moves affect his candidacy?

A number of recent polls suggest that he could be in serious danger of losing the Latino vote, which comprised 6.9 percent of all voters in 2010, and a significant proportion of voters in key states like Florida and Nevada. Florida in particular, which holds its primary on January 31, presents a challenge to Romney’s immigration stances—he is in favor of making English the official national language, while simultaneously putting out campaign ads in Spanish.

His positions on issues stand in opposition to those of Latinos. According to a recent Pew Hispanic Center poll, a full 91 percent of Hispanic voters support passage of the DREAM Act, while only 7 percent oppose it. Voters were also asked if unauthorized immigrants should be eligible for in-state tuition, and again, 84 percent agreed, while only 12 percent did not.

As Center for American Progress Action Fund Senior Fellow Ruy Teixeira argued, “To say that Republicans are on the wrong side of Latino public opinion considerably understates the case.” Even the recent decision by Romney to follow Newt Gingrich’s support of a military-service-only DREAM Act will likely not pass muster with Latino voters that support the full DREAM Act.

Adding to Pew, a Univision News / Latino Decision poll from early November found that only 14 percent of Latinos would be more likely to support a candidate whose economic plans they supported, but who had stated that “illegal immigrants are a threat to America.” A full 59 percent stated that they would be less likely to support that candidate.

When asked if they would be more or less likely to support a candidate whose economic plans they agreed with, and who argued that “we need to treat immigrants with respect and dignity,” more than 76 percent answered in the affirmative, and only 6 percent in the negative.

What this means is that even Latino voters who might be drawn to the Republican talking points on economics find it impossible to support a candidate with hateful immigration rhetoric.

What’s more, the reaction among non-Latino voters in the same poll was similar—only 25 percent said that they were more than likely to support the candidate with harsher public statements on immigration, while 41 percent were less likely. On the other hand, 46 percent stated that they would support a candidate with positive views on immigration, and only 15 percent said that they were less likely.

Ultimately, Mitt has nothing to gain and everything to lose with his anti-immigrant strategy. Just ask Sen. McCain.

Ann Garcia is Research Assistant and Philip E. Wolgin is Policy Analyst for Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

This article was originally published on Huffington Post

SOURCE: AP/Cliff Owen

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich addresses the 2012 Republican Presidential Candidates Forum hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Download this issue brief (pdf)

Republican presidential hopefuls are not shy about how to stop undocumented immigration into our country. Nearly every immigration-related answer by the candidates involves some permutation of these phrases: “We cannot give amnesty,” "We are going to secure the border first," “Let’s build a fence first,” and “Enforce the laws that are there.” But until very recently, the candidates by and large avoided the question of what exactly they would do about the 11.2 million undocumented immigrants now living in the United States.

They ducked this fundamental policy question based on conventional wisdom that you can’t square the anti-immigration stance of Republican primary voters with the more pragmatic immigration positions embraced by most voters in the general election. While it is true that the only answer acceptable to some far right primary voters is some form of mass deportation, they are a minority of Republican voters, and an even smaller fraction of the general electorate. In fact, a National Journal poll released today highlights that a plurality of Republicans favor tough enforcement plus legal status.

Still, rather than risk the ire of hard-line primary voters (who tend to be more vocal and vote at higher rates), until recently the candidates bobbed and weaved around the question. This group evasion strategy collapsed, however, after the former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, broke ranks and answered the question directly, honestly declaring that we aren’t going to deport every undocumented worker in the country. Instead, he proposed the (extremely) modest idea of granting guest worker status to some undocumented workers who have been here for decades.

The rest of the pack of presidential contenders smelled blood and tried to bludgeon Gingrich with the "pro-amnesty" tag. But in doing so, they too were forced to answer the question about what they would do with the millions of undocumented people working and living in the United States. What ensued was a typical frenzy of hard-linerism.

Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) doubled down and clarified that she supports mass deportation. Texas Gov. Rick Perry hit the campaign trail with the infamous, anti-immigrant Sherriff Joe Arpaio and declared that his policy “will be to detain and deport every illegal alien that we apprehend.” Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, perhaps sensing he was being led down the garden path, tried to continue evasive maneuvers. But when his hand was forced, he and his advisors articulated a position known in anti-immigrant circles as “attrition through enforcement”—a less crazy way to say “mass deportation.”

That left Gingrich as the only top-tier candidate standing to express support for anything short of massively expensive and economically self-defeating enforcement policy. He has characterized his approach as humane, compassionate, and realistic. But is it really a kinder, gentler, approach that could actually win Latino support in the general election if he wins the nomination? In a word, no. In fact, Gingrich twists himself up like a pretzel trying to be all things to all voters.

In this issue brief, we take a closer look at Gingrich’s proposal and strategy, concluding it is doomed to fail for three reasons. First, the substance of his proposal does not begin to solve the problem and could actually make the situation worse. Second, the other harsh enforcement policies he embraces would undermine any good will he might have garnered with Latinos. And finally, he won’t be able to escape the deeply tarnished Republican brand on this issue given the fundamentally modest step he is proposing in the first place.

A weak and ineffective proposal

First and foremost, the former speaker of the House’s proposal falls far short of the rhetoric he used to promote it. The universe of people who might qualify is exceedingly small and the benefits they would receive are tenuous.

Gingrich envisions the creation of “citizens review” committees that would make decisions about who does and does not deserve legal status. Without providing explicit eligibility criteria, he suggests that favorable dispensation by these local committees would be available only to people who have been here for decades—he has floated 25 years of residence as the key qualifier—and can demonstrate deep ties and contributions to their communities.

Some exaggerated estimates are now circulating about how many people this proposal might benefit. Extrapolating from a recent Pew report written by Jeff Passsel, one of the leading experts in estimating the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States, some speculate that 3.5 million immigrants might be eligible for legal status. But Passel indicated that the data is insufficiently robust to estimate how many people have been here for more than 20 or 25 years.

More pointedly, Passel also suggests that 3.5 million is an unreasonably high starting point. “A lot of the people who came in as undocumented immigrants 25 years ago are already legalized,” he notes. This is because the last major legalization program was enacted 25 years ago and there have been other (albeit limited) opportunities since then for undocumented immigrants with strong family or employment ties and long-time presence in the United States to regularize their status.

Even assuming there are a substantial number of people—say 1 million—who meet this length-of-time criteria, what percentage of them are likely to make it through the citizens’ review? If they’ve been here for 25 years, many or most would have developed ties and relationships needed to pursue legal status. And for those who haven’t, why would we expect them to be eligible to obtain legal status now?

Gingrich claims that his proposal is just common sense. He argues that the draft boards of an earlier generation could serve as a model. But it is hard to envision many people who have been here for 25 years (and who did not previously qualify for legal status) coming out of the shadows to have their fate determined by a community review board. This sounds an awful lot like that reality TV show “Survivor,” where the contestants get voted off the island by their peers.

What’s more, those few who could presumably pass this immigrant fitness test would be barred from ever pursuing U.S. citizenship or receiving any federal benefits. To gain legal status they would have to demonstrate employment income sufficient to pay for private health insurance and pay a $5,000 fine. That alone would disqualify many Americans.

But those able to demonstrate that income threshold would still be in a highly precarious position. If they lose their qualifying job, they lose their legal status. So the number of people who might qualify appears to be exceedingly small. And those who did would only earn a status marginally more secure than having none at all.

In short, Gingrich’s “humane,” “compassionate” proposal is really a high-risk, low-reward program that will provide little comfort to Latino voters who want the issue solved.

A proposal offset by harsh enforcement policies

Significantly, at the same time Gingrich was defending his citizens review proposal, he doubled down on his commitment to harsh enforcement. He first made it clear that anyone not falling into that small universe of citizens able to pass muster with a citizen’s review board would be subject to harsh expedited deportation procedures. Then in South Carolina he praised the state’s harsh immigration law and called on all states to replicate the disastrous Arizona/Alabama experiment. And he followed that assertion with a trip to Iowa where he signed a pledge committing to build double layer fencing across the entire U.S.-Mexico border.

Even assuming that this narrow, partial legalization program would generate some goodwill with Latino voters, couching his support for it in a context of promoting harsh enforcement negates whatever gains he might have hoped to make with Latino voters. Make no mistake, Latinos have strong opinions and a sophisticated perspective on immigration and border policy. Spanish-language media covers these issues with laser-like focus on a daily basis and is extremely influential in shaping Latino public opinion.

And a proposal that, charitably speaking, might benefit 1 million people but which would simultaneously crack down hard on another 8 million to 10 million people will not be viewed as either humane or compassionate by the average Latino voter. The reality is that although Gingrich has distinguished himself from the other candidates by opposing a universal deportation program, he has nonetheless endorsed a strategy of mass deportation. That will not inspire Latino voters.

The same is true for his border fence pledge and state law pronouncements. Latinos see the “Great Mexican Wall” as an insult. Of course, Latinos, like all Americans,. want a secure, safe border, but the construction of a 2,000-mile barrier is an offensive symbol. Sixty-one percent of Latinos oppose building any more fences.

Worse still is Gingrich’s full-throated embrace of Alabama-style immigration laws. Those laws swiftly created a profoundly hostile environment for immigrant communities in the states. They’re an invitation to unlawful profiling and abuse. Unsurprisingly, Latino opposition to these state measures is broad and deep, with 79 percent opposing such laws.

Gingrich obviously has internalized the advice of some misguided strategists who suggest that Republicans’ “Latino problem” is one of tone, not substance. But beating undocumented immigrants with a heavy stick while talking sweet about some small set of undocumented workers won’t cut it with Latino voters.

The proposal fails to fix the tarnished Republican brand

The final reason Gingrich is unlikely to gain traction with the Latino electorate is guilt by association. The Republican brand is so strongly anti-Latino that even an actual former champion such as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) received only 31 percent of the Latino vote when he ran for president in 2008.

In the last three years since Sen. McCain’s defeat, Republicans have only lost ground with these voters. Latinos are frustrated with the Obama administration’s enforcement policies, but they are also keenly aware that Republicans have unified in opposition to Democratic legislation that would deal constructively and humanely with undocumented immigrants often living side-by-side with Latino voters.

The fact that Gingrich’s smallish proposal caused such a stir among political pundits is a telling commentary on just how far Republican politicians have tilted toward an anti-immigrant platform. And that is a problem for Republican candidates given how important this issue is to the Latino community—even during this economic crisis 42 percent of Latinos think immigration reform and the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to people who were brought here at a young age and who complete high school and some college or military service, are the most important issues facing their community. Since this is the initial lens through which they view politicians, it will be difficult for Gingrich or any other candidate to make inroads with these voters while waving the Republican flag.

Conclusion

If Gingrich wants to reach out in earnest and contend for these voters, he is going to need to start by proposing a more realistic and more generous reform proposal. He is also going to have to aggressively walk back his embrace of due-process free deportations, harsh state initiatives, and building fences. Lastly, if he expects to make a play for these voters, he is going to have to lead his party in an about face on this issue. Sounds a bit like scaling Mt. Everest without oxygen, theoretically possible but . . .

Marshall Fitz is Director of Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund in Washington D.C.

Download this issue brief (pdf)

SOURCE: AP/Drew Angerer

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and many of his Republican colleagues falsely claim that it is the will of the American people, not congressional Republicans, that has stymied immigration reform. This flies in the face of obstructionist votes by Republicans in Congress that have blocked reform over the past five years as well as polling of the American public that demonstrates overwhelming support for comprehensive reform over the same period.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) this past weekend delivered a stunning array of patently mistaken or obviously disingenuous arguments aimed at denigrating President Barack Obama’s immigration enforcement record and denying the need for comprehensive reform. Such falsehoods should not go uncorrected, so let’s expose Rep. Smith’s six main canards.

First, Smith and many of his Republican colleagues falsely claim that it is the will of the American people, not congressional Republicans, that has stymied immigration reform. This flies in the face of obstructionist votes by Republicans in Congress that have blocked reform over the past five years as well as polling of the American public that demonstrates overwhelming support for comprehensive reform over the same period. So let’s set the record straight.

In the 109th Congress, House Republican leaders used their extreme, anti-immigrant legislation known as the Sensenbrenner bill to block the Senate’s bipartisan immigration reform bill from becoming law in 2006. The Sensenbrenner bill, named after its primary author, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), would have made felons of every undocumented immigrant as well as all of the service providers and faith leaders that assist or counsel them. Then in the 110th Congress, Senate Republicans backpedaled from their prior support for immigration reform out of fear of primary challenges from the radical right, depriving the Senate of the votes needed to send a bill to the House. In the 111th Congress (2009-2010), Sen. Graham (R-SC) could not get a single Republican to join him in negotiating a bipartisan bill, thereby spelling the demise of the effort.

Meanwhile, an incredibly consistent array of polling by a variety of polling firms over the past four years continues to show that Americans of all political stripes support tough, fair, and practical solutions that include requiring undocumented immigrants to register, undergo background checks, pay taxes, learn English, and go to the back of the line. Most recently, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that 72 percent of all Americans support creating a path to citizenship for eligible undocumented workers. Indisputably, congressional Republicans have thwarted, not upheld, the will of the American people.

Second, an argument by Smith and his conservative colleagues mistakenly conflates any solution for undocumented immigrants short of mass deportation with “amnesty.” Most people, however, don’t believe that being required to pay a fine, pay back taxes, learn English, and go to the end of the line equals amnesty. The purveyors of the amnesty argument falsely intimate that undocumented immigrants will get a free path to automatic citizenship. But under the most generous bills that have been introduced in past years, the earliest an undocumented immigrant could earn citizenship would be 12 years after bill enactment. The proposal that Senate Republicans blocked in 2007 would have required a considerably longer delay.

Third, no anti-immigrant argument is more stale than Smith’s assertion that a legalization program will lead to more undocumented immigration. This fiction misinterprets illegal immigration patterns since the last legalization in 1986. In the years immediately following the enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, or IRCA, the nation saw a greater decline in unlawful entries than ever before. Significant undocumented immigration only commenced again when the economy started to catch fire in 1994.

Smith speciously draws a causal nexus between the 1986 legalization and today’s large undocumented population. He bases it not on evidence but on a Pavlovian theory: that rewarding unlawful behavior encourages more unlawful behavior. Even setting aside the obvious fact that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants make the perilous journey to the United States to work grueling jobs to improve their lot, not in anticipation of future legal status, the less-tortured explanation for the current population is that the 1986 law failed to create new legal channels for future economic migrants. The lack of a functional legal system to regulate our integrated labor market combined with an inadequate enforcement infrastructure led to our current dysfunction, not a conditioned disposition towards law breaking based on a legalization that occurred before many of today’s border crossers were even born.

More to the point, Smith’s argument that past is prologue intentionally ignores (1) the enforcement developments since 1986 that have profoundly transformed today’s migration context, and (2) the substance of current legislative proposals that will make these enforcement programs even more effective. To wit:

• Over the past 18 years, we have built more border security infrastructure and deployed more border security personnel than ever in the nation’s history—the difference between now and then is night and day.
• We have a dramatically larger and better-equipped interior enforcement agency than ever before—again, a stark difference from 1986.
• All comprehensive reform proposals today would require the enforcement agency to roll out an electronic employment verification system, making it easier to prevent future illegal hiring.
• All comprehensive reform proposals also recognize that we need to create more flexible legal channels to match workforce needs, thereby funneling would-be economic migrants into legal channels and making illegal immigration that much more unappealing.

Then there is Smith’s fourth and perhaps most remarkable misstatement: He rejects the claim that the border is more secure than ever before. Relying on a GAO report concluding that the Department of Homeland Security has 44 percent of the southern border under “operational control,” Smith assigns the agency a failing grade. This simplistic analysis likewise ignores the basic facts. The GAO report measured operational control against DHS’s own basic standard: “the ability to detect, respond, and interdict border penetrations in areas deemed as high priority for threat potential.” This is in contrast to Congress’s own impossible standard of an absolute seal against human or contraband border crossings—something akin to holding the NYC police commissioner to a zero-crime standard.

But it also is in contrast to the more flexible, risk-based standard that DHS now employs to provide a more accurate picture of different levels of control. DHS levels include “controlled,” “managed,” “monitored,” and “low-level monitored.” The reason: The agency wisely devotes more intensive resources to areas where the threats are greatest. The agency should be resourced to “detect, respond, and interdict” incursions in high-threat, high-traffic areas. Similarly, it’s a waste of resources to establish that same level of control in remote areas with inhospitable terrain where very few individuals are crossing.

More importantly, that GAO report and every other report that has been done negate the very claim that Smith is making. They all demonstrate that enforcement resources deployed at the border are historic in both size and effectiveness. The ability to observe, intercept, and impose consequences on border crossers and smugglers has never remotely approached today’s levels.

Fifth, Smith willfully misstates that worksite enforcement efforts have dropped precipitously under the Obama administration. He has to know that’s not true because the numbers speak for themselves. Smith may not like it that the administration has made it a priority to go after employers rather than conduct SWAT-style raids on workers. And, in fact, he has waffled between praising the administration’s expansion of employer audits as effective and then condemning them as insufficient. Either way, worksite enforcement audits have resulted in 180 employers being charged with criminal violations related to unlawful hiring following more than 2,200 audits in fiscal year 2010. Penalties resulting from these audits totaled nearly $43 million. These are huge increases, not decreases, over the Bush administration.

Sixth, without a shred of evidence to bolster his claim, Smith maintains that the Obama administration can improve the economy and create jobs by deporting undocumented workers who are here. A wide array of economic analyses by economists on the left and the right belie this assertion. The Center for American Progress’s economic report, which closely mirrors a study by the conservative CATO Institute, demonstrates that comprehensive immigration reform will increase cumulative U.S. gross domestic product by $1.5 trillion over 10 years, add billions in revenue to the U.S. Treasury, and create jobs.

The mass deportation alternative posited by Smith and others will have precisely the opposite effect by creating a gaping hole in the economy to the tune of $2.6 trillion over 10 years. And that doesn’t include the massive cost (which we place at approximately $285 billion over five years) to the government of implementing such a policy—which is amazing in its own right coming from supposed small-government Republicans.

Smith and his restrictionist colleagues seem to hope that by repeating these canards, people may eventually believe them. But they aren’t fooling the American public; they are just singing to their base. Sadly, in the process, these deportation-only proponents are standing in the way of enhanced border security and increased economic growth. They are blocking enactment of additional layers of control that would funnel migrants into a legal system and restore the rule of law by requiring undocumented immigrants to register, pay taxes, and earn status.

We need to put to rest this false narrative that serves an ideological perspective while blocking the will of the American people. Enough with the soundbites already. Americans want solutions to fix, once and for all, our broken immigration system.

Marshall Fitz is Director of Immigration Policy at American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/Chris O'Meara

Senator-elect Marco Rubio, above, is one of the most extreme Latino candidates when it comes to immigration, but his record was unchallenged during the election. He was very savvy when speaking to the Latino community, and he emphasized his personal story and his parents’ pursuit of the American Dream.

A few conservative talking heads are pointing to the slight increase in Latino support for Republicans in the 2010 election as evidence of growing support for the GOP among Latinos. Careful scrutiny, however, reveals that this assertion is nothing more than spin. Republican support among Latinos is actually at one of its lowest points due to the fact that Republicans have done a good job at alienating the Latino community in the last few years.

The GOP is trying to salvage its reputation and brand among Latinos. Just last week Newt Gingrich hosted an outreach event bringing together conservative leaders to discuss their agenda. But these efforts are not enough to placate years of beating down on immigrants, including efforts to criminalize the immigrant community; denying birthright citizenship to children born in the United States; and promoting Arizona-like policies across the nation. And with unified opposition to the upcoming DREAM Act vote, Republicans continue to marginalize the Latino community.

Conservative Republicans argue that they made inroads among Latinos in the 2010 election because the GOP got 38 percent of the Latino vote. This represents an increase of 9 percent compared to the 29 percent of support among Latinos in 2008.

There are two points to make in regard to this increase. First, national polling numbers likely overstated Latino support for Republicans by a significant amount because pollsters rely on small sample sizes of Latino voters, do not take into consideration the fact that the Latino electorate is concentrated in more urban locations, and do not accurately capture Spanish-dominant Latino voters. A more accurate analysis, therefore, needs to be made to better assess voting trends, particularly among those who are Spanish dominant. But even if we accept the poll numbers cited by Republicans, the claims of a rosy future between them and Latinos are fundamentally wrong.

Second, while it’s true that there was a slight increase in support for the GOP, this is not surprising nor a trend because in every midterm election the party in power usually losses votes. The 8 percentage-point decline in Latino support for Democrats is identical to the 8 percentage-point decline in non-Hispanic support for Democrats between 2008 and 2010. In other words, Latino support for Democrats declined in line with the rest of the electorate.

Conservatives try to further their argument by comparing the 2010 election to the 2006 election when Republicans had 30 percent of support among Latinos. They conclude that there is a 17 percent increase in total Latino support by adding the 8 percent increase from 2006 to 2010 and the 9 percent increase from 2008 to 2010. They make this claim, however, while ignoring the well-known fact that in 2006 Republicans lost 10 percentage points among Latinos after the high-water mark of 40 percent support in 2004.

They also point to a few races where Republicans won with Latino support—mainly Gov. Rick Perry in Texas, Sen. John McCain in Arizona, and Marco Rubio in Florida. But these states have a traditionally Republican bent, so it is no surprise that Republicans are winning there. More importantly, the Republicans that ran and won those races value the Latino vote. Perry, McCain, and Rubio went to great lengths to avoid the extreme rhetoric on Latinos, immigrants, and immigration that often comes from the GOP’s highest levels.

Gov. Perry was named the number one Hispanic-friendly politician of the 2010 election by Somos Republicans, an Arizona-based organization. And Sen. McCain has a long, and for the most part positive, relationship with Latinos in his state. At one point he enjoyed a whooping 70 percent of the Latino vote—a rarity among Republicans. True, he has completely flipped his position on immigration reform from being one of its champions to turning his back on his own proposals. But some believe (or hope) that he may still support reform should it come to a vote.

Rubio’s race deserves a more nuanced analysis. First of all, he is emblematic of a new breed of Latino elected officials who have chosen not to support immigration reform and promote an enforcement-only posture. This is significant because it shows the GOP is supporting and promoting Latinos who are adopting a stance on immigration that is out of step with most Latinos and the rest of the electorate.

Senator-elect Marco Rubio is, in fact, one of the most extreme candidates when it comes to immigration and other progressive issues. He supports Arizona’s SB 1070, is against the DREAM Act and immigration reform, and doesn’t even think that the undocumented should be counted in the census. (He even opposed Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination.) Yet his record on immigration was unchallenged during the election.

Rubio was successful in downplaying his extremist position when speaking to the Latino community because he emphasized his personal story and his parents’ pursuit of the American Dream and often avoided the details of what he would actually do to address the 12 million undocumented. He instead often declared his support for legal immigration—but aren’t we all in favor of that?

He managed to win 45 percent of the overall Latino vote in Florida. But this number is less impressive when you compare it to the other Republican Latinos in Florida. Mel Martinez, the Cuban American Republican senator whom Rubio will replace, won 60 percent of the Latino vote in 2004. And in the 2008 election Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) received 64 percent of the Latino vote while Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) won 67 percent. What this means is that Rubio is walking a very tight rope when it comes to maintaining support among Latinos even in traditionally Republican Florida.

The lesson that the GOP should learn from 2010 is that in a historically bad year for Democrats with historically bad economic circumstances, Democrats still got 22 percent more Latino support with 60 percent of the their vote. The GOP should also note that they did worse among Latinos in 2010 than they did in 2004 even though 2004 and 2010 were both good years for the party.

Instead of spinning the facts, conservatives should heed the call of those who want to reposition their party in the Latino community. By all accounts they have their work cut out for them. The 112th Congress brings a Republican majority with notorious antireform leaders such as Steve King (R-IO) and Lamar Smith (R-TX), and an agenda that is clearly out of step with what matters to Latinos.

Vanessa Cárdenas is the Director of Progress 2050, a project of the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., which seeks to build a progressive agenda that is more inclusive of the rich racial and ethnic makeup of our nation.

SOURCE: AP/John Raoux

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum concedes his bid for governor ro Rick Scott. McCollum was the favorite to win the primary until he reversed his immigration stance and lost the support of influential Hispanic leaders.

Primaries in key states this week may have made it seem like smart politics to oppose a smart policy like comprehensive immigration reform. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, the godmother of her state’s severe immigration control law, won the Republican ticket for the November general election. And Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a former immigration reform advocate, gave voters a rhetorical whiplash by grabbing onto immigration hardliners to stave off a primary challenge from a fierce immigration opponent.

But take a closer look.

Beneath the aura of party primary victories this year are the ashes of failed, scorched-Earth strategies against comprehensive immigration reform that all candidates should heed—regardless of party affiliation.

Politicians are again being reminded that the harshest rhetoric on immigration does not always win the approval of voters who prefer solutions to the broken immigration system. If they ignore the warnings, backlash will come from Latino voters in the November general election. And these voters represent the fastest growing segment of the electorate and a group that is increasingly being alienated by those who talk negatively against immigrants or those who might look like immigrants.

The harsh and condescending tone of the immigration debates in Arizona and across the country is the reason Latino voters named immigration as their top concern this year, even more frequently than unemployment and the high cost of living, according to a poll released last month by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

Political analysts agree that how a candidate talks about immigration—or tries to avoid the subject—will go a long way in determining the level of Latino voter support in key states.

Conservative political strategists understand the equation: a campaign without Latino support in key states equals defeat. But the candidates themselves are just beginning to understand the math, despite years of forewarnings. The chasm between conservatives and Latino voters meanwhile grows wider.

Florida

Latinos’ alienation is so great that one prominent supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, Republican lobbyist Ana Navarro, surveyed the remains of Florida’s primaries and wondered whether her party could recover by November. Florida’s two GOP candidates for governor botched the immigration issue so badly—ratcheting up the anti-immigrant rhetoric to new heights—that voters in Latino-voter rich Miami-Dade County largely stayed away from the polls.

“What now?” Navarro asked after gubernatorial candidate state Attorney General Bill McCollum, who began with the support of the Florida Hispanic establishment, finished second to millionaire Rick Scott. McCollum’s mortal mistake was to cave into Scott’s draconian position on immigration and propose a measure even tougher than Arizona’s S.B. 1070, which is now being challenged in court on the grounds that Arizona overstepped its bounds by imposing new immigration restrictions in an area that lies under federal jurisdiction.

Not only did McCollum reverse his immigration stance, he did so without the advice and consent of influential Hispanic leaders. Some quit his campaign after the policy switch while others spoke out in dismay. One of them was Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American whose congressional district covers most of Miami. The result was a very low voter turnout for the primary—only 17 percent in Miami-Dade County compared to about 21 percent in other Florida counties.

One thing is clear: a Republican candidate will not win a statewide primary or general election without strong support from Hispanic Republicans in Florida. And Cuban-American voters—a long-time reliable base of the Florida’s GOP—are now outnumbered by Democratic-leaning non-Cuban Hispanic voters, making the Latino electorate truly up for grabs in Florida.

Arizona

Arizona is the epicenter of the fractious immigration debate this year. The immigrant bashing that has occurred around S.B. 1070 has intensified interest among Arizona Latinos, who comprise 15 percent of the electorate. That dynamic makes the November gubernatorial contest between Brewer and Democratic nominee Terry Goddard the main race to watch on the issue of immigration.

In the U.S. Senate race, McCain’s toughest election challenge may be behind him after trouncing party rival J.D. Hayworth by 24 points in this week’s Arizona primary. The contest was ugly, as Hayworth carried the anti-immigrant banner for conservatives groups such as the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC and the Tea Party, while McCain tried to shed his record as a previous sponsor of comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

The incumbent senator’s victory does not mean he handled the issue well. Indeed, his credibility emerged in tatters. It rather shows that the harshest anti-immigrant rhetoric usually does not work.

Some political analysts say that Arizona is poised to become the next California because of the immigrant bashing that has occurred around S.B. 1070. Golden State conservatives were punished at the ballot box after an anti-immigrant law was enacted—an episode that today’s candidates in California have not forgotten.

California

The legacy of the Latino vote in California will forever be marked by the election of 1994, when then-Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, sponsored the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 on the state ballot. The initiative passed and Wilson won re-election. But his actions spurred a record number of Latino immigrants to naturalize and vote in the following elections, resulting in Wilson’s party being doomed to defeat in every presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial election for 16 years, with only one exception.

Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman ignored that valuable lesson this year. She bent to conservatives’ demands on the immigration issue and even turned to Wilson, her campaign chairman, to bolster her pledge that she would be tough on immigration enforcement.

Whitman is now spending millions heading into the November election on bilingual advertising to court the Latino vote, a move that has made her political motivations exceedingly transparent. And she beat back a move by conservatives at her party’s recent state convention to pass a resolution in favor of Prop. 187 and Arizona’s S.B. 1070, the anti-immigration law.

But if Whitman is the cellophane candidate, her Democratic rival Jerry Brown is the invisible one in the Latino community. Brown’s less-than-aggressive outreach to Hispanic voters in the Golden State has led to the open question of whether he has a “Latino problem.”

Perhaps after this election season, officeholders can temporarily set aside their urges to pander and focus on practical solutions on immigration. That will certainly be demanded of McCain, who previously championed comprehensive immigration reform and enjoyed overwhelming support of Latinos in his home state.

After all, voters want solutions.

Gebe Martinez is a Senior Writer and Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

SOURCE: AP/Khampha Bouaphanh

A U.S. Border Patrol Agent searches a man in Pima County near Three Points, Arizona.

As calls for immigration reform reverberate across the country and frustration with our broken system rises, Arizona has landed once again at the epicenter of the immigration debate.

The tragic murder of a prominent Arizona border rancher last month put a spotlight on the violent smuggling syndicates operating along the border. It also poured gasoline on the political firestorm raging in the state between Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his Republican primary challenger, former Congressman J.D. Hayworth, a notorious anti-immigration hardliner who lost his seat in 2006 to immigration reformer Rep. Harry Mitchell (D-AZ). Hayworth, trying to rekindle his political career, is gunning for McCain by fomenting anti-immigrant fervor among their partyís conservative base.

Apparently adopting the "if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em" mantra, McCain has abandoned his prior positions in favor of comprehensive immigration reform and is now trying to dethrone Hayworth as the stateís top immigration hardliner. Sen. McCain and his Arizona colleague Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) are leveraging the tools of incumbency to promote a border enforcement bill in Congress that would simply pour more resources into failed enforcement strategies.

Sen. McCain, who once championed comprehensive immigration reform as the only viable solution to our border challenges, has transformed into the most vocal proponent of a "secure the border first" approach. This strategy is one he previously deemed untenable, but now declares imperative. Indeed, he has recently vowed to hold hostage any attempts to enact the type of tough, fair, practical reforms that America has been demanding.

Yet these ugly political skirmishes pale in comparison to the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature, which has just passed the most draconian, anti-immigrant legislation in recent memory. If the governor signs the bill, it would require police to check the documents of anyone they suspect might be undocumented and arrest them on trespassing charges. It would, in effect, criminalize the undocumented population in Arizona and institutionalize racial or ethnic profiling on a stunning scale.

Sen. McCain seemingly refuses to be outdone by his anti-immigrant challenger and favors the legislation, keeping with his recent conversion. This is a remarkable about face by the man who called the 2005 Sensenbrenner legislation "anti-Hispanic." The only remaining question is whether the Republican governor will rein in the insanity and veto this bill or whether she will let a costly litigation battle ensue.

The fear and tension that this destructive legislative debate has created on the ground, combined with the ongoing assault on civil liberties by Sheriff Joe Arpaio—the infamous "Sheriff Joe" of Maricopa County—was heightened still further last week. A joint federal agency enforcement action, which was designed to take down a large-scale smuggling operation in Tucson and Phoenix, brought hundreds of law enforcement personnel into the state. News of the large-scale action by Immigration and Customs Enforcement spread virally through immigrant communities and created a sense of terror. It highlighted all too clearly that even enforcement actions like this one, which Immigration and Customs Enforcement commendably designed to target criminal actors, leave a trail of victims in its wake.

The combustible elements mixing together in Arizona portend an explosive ending. And the people who will suffer are by and large those who wanted just one thing: a shot at the American dream. Congress and the president should take a close, hard look at whatís happening there and realize that they can wait no longer to own up to their responsibilities and solve this problem. The time has come for comprehensive immigration reform.

 

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Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) speaks at a rally for immigration reform on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol.

Author’s note: This article relies in part on polling done by Research 2000 for DailyKos. DailyKos and Research 2000 are now in dispute as to the validity of that polling. For purposes of this article, the Research 2000 polling was used to establish in part that Latino support for Democrats was falling. I am no longer comfortable relying on Research 2000 polling to establish this fact. Gallup polling for the first six months of 2010, however, showed a decline of 12 points in Latino support for Obama. During the same period, Gallup determined that black and white support remained constant. Gallup went further and attributed this decline to inaction on immigration reform. Thus, the points in the article about declining support among Latinos because of perceived inaction on immigration reform are validated by the Gallup polling.

President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) have a problem. The large Democratic majorities that delivered the president and both houses of Congress electoral victories were built on a new coalition—and that coalition has at its core Latino voters. Senator Reid’s strong majority in the Senate and also his own re-election in Nevada rely on the Latino vote. But Latino support for Democrats has taken a dive over the last seven months (see graph).

Let’s go under the hood to understand this collapse of support. President Obama repeatedly stated during his campaign and postelection that he would deal with immigration reform in his first year. Spanish-language media dubbed this "La Promesa de Obama," or "Obama’s Promise." The problem that Obama faces with La Promesa can be witnessed in a September interview of Obama by Jorge Ramos, a Univision news anchor who is watched and trusted by millions of Latino Americans.

But what I wanted to ask you is about what Latinos call, "La Promesa de Obama"—Obama’s promise. On May 28 you told me, and I am quoting, "What I can guarantee is that we will have in the first year an immigration bill that I strongly support." And then I asked again, "in the first year?" And you said, "Yes, in the first year." This is your promise and the question that many of them have is: Are you going to keep your promise? Can you do it before January 20?

La Promesa de Obama was a game changer in the 2008 election. Obama beat McCain in CNN exit polls among Latinos 67 percent to 31 percent, a 36-point spread, while Kerry beat Bush 53 percent to 44 percent, a 9-point spread. In other words, Latinos in one election cycle swung 27 percent. Immigration was key to this swing, with Republicans seen as too often offering hate-filled rhetoric with no responsible solution and Democrats offering an inclusive party with a solution in the form of comprehensive immigration reform and the will to get it done.

How could one issue so drive the nation’s fastest-growing large voting block? Latino voting specialist Bendixen and Associates did large-scale polling of Latinos in May 2009 across the country, and Bendixen’s poll shows how deeply and personally immigration reform matters to Latinos. When asked if they knew an undocumented immigrant personally, 69 percent said yes. Even for those who did not know such a person the impact was still personal, as 75 percent agreed that all Hispanics were facing anti-immigrant sentiment.

The solution? Almost unanimously, 89 percent of Latinos said "Give most of them a path to citizenship," while only 4 percent supported deportation.

As 2009 slipped into 2010 the promise of immigration reform remained unfulfilled. Well-known and respected Latino voices have begun to speak out aggressively. La Opinion, the most-read Spanish language newspaper in America, ran a hard-hitting February 16 editorial that singled out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Obama:

The time for empty words is over…Campaign promises win supporters and build hopes. The proclaimed commitment to immigration reform secured key votes to win the election.

No Latino elected official is more identified publicly with immigration reform than Rep. Luis Gutierrez, who held a series of mass meetings in 2009 at Latino churches around the country to draw attention to the need for immigration reform. Gutierrez, a Democratic congressman from Illinois and a strong Obama supporter for some time, has changed tone dramatically in the last month. Last week, speaking before the National Council of La Raza, he said:

In the [presidential] campaign we were promised comprehensive immigration reform during the president’s first year of his first term. That was then, this is now. Now, we had a State of the Union address in which over 70 minutes were spoken and only two were given to comprehensive immigration reform.

Democrats need to fear that this "broken promise" meme is taking hold. In a Sacramento Bee article entitled "Latinos who backed Obama are frustrated by the lack of immigration overhaul,"California State Sen. Gil Cedillo expressed on February 16:

I think [Obama's] in danger of breaking the spirit of solidarity and hope. More than a broken promise, it’s the danger of breaking people’s sense of hope in the Latino community.

The same article, syndicated nationally in other newspapers through McClatchy, noted that:

Republican candidates will gain ground from Latinos once Latinos realize "that what the Democrats offer is just a bunch of empty promises," said Hector Barajas, a communications consultant for the California State Senate Republican Caucus. Barajas said the issue had been particularly hot on Spanish talk radio ever since Obama gave that speech [State of the Union without commitment on immigration reform].

A disenchanted Latino electorate’s impact is powerful, and we have already seen it start to play out. According to CNN exit polls, while Latinos were a key part of the Virginia 2008 presidential victory, they were a 40 percent smaller portion of the electorate in the 2009 loss of the Virginia governor’s mansion by Democrats. Even scarier for Democrats is the Massachusetts special election for the seat formerly held by immigration reform zealot Ted Kennedy. According to the Associated Press:

But in Chelsea, Lawrence, and New Bedford, cities with sizable Latino populations that have traditionally voted Democratic, turnout was low. Some residents said they didn’t know—or didn’t care—an election was going on.

The big risk for Democrats in November 2010 is that disenchanted Latinos continue to stay home. Latinos indicated they would do just that in responding to the large national poll done weekly by Research 2000 for Daily Kos:

Immigration reform and Latino civil rights advocates have focused on the broken promises theme and have been ringing the alarms for the White House and congressional leadership for the last couple of months that disenchanted Latinos will exact a toll at the voting booth. Reform Immigration for America plans a large march on Washington on March 21 for immigration rights for new Americans and economic justice for all Americans with the slogan, "March For America, Change Takes Courage." They called their march to "…demand that President Obama and Congress keep their promise."

Tuesday’s Washington Post reports on a press conference by nearly a dozen immigrant rights groups who angrily pointed to the high number of deportations under Obama’s Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement arm and called on the administration and congressional leadership to move forward quickly on a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants:

"Our community is angry. Our members feel betrayed," said Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens. "We never believed in our wildest dreams that President Obama would have a record like this."

"No legalization. No reelection," Emma Lozano, executive director of the Chicago-based Centro Sin Fronteras, told reporters.

This change of tone appears to be having an effect. As the Los Angeles Times reported in an apparently White House-sourced story on March 4:

Obama took up the issue [immigration reform] privately with his staff Monday in a bid to advance a bill through Congress before lawmakers become too distracted by approaching midterm elections…

Immigration is a delicate issue for the White House. After promising to revamp in his first year of office what many see as a fractured system, Obama risks angering a growing, politically potent Latino constituency if he defers the goal until 2011.

The upshot of these high-level discussions is that President Obama is now scheduling a meeting with Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who are leading bipartisan immigration reform talks in the Senate. Later this week the administration is also reaching out to immigration advocates and Latino civil rights groups to meet with senior White House staff. In another encouraging sign, a March 5 La Opinion article citing "various sources involved in the process,"favorably described what is apparently in the Schumer-Graham bill—the first time this bill has gotten public scrutiny. These forward steps are important but unlikely to rebuild Latino electoral energy alone.

In today’s highly partisan political environment much of the president’s agenda relies on the re-election of large Democratic majorities. If Latino voters stay disenchanted and only 33 percent do show up at the polls in November, the president can expect many of his goals to be in jeopardy.

Henry Fernandez is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

SOURCE: AP/Seth Wenig

Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, above, who ran in New York's 23rd District for Congress, started out with a well-reasoned message about immigration on his website but allowed his talking points to be overtaken by hardline radio advertising.

If you dig below the surface of Tuesday’s election results you’ll find that, on immigration, politicians resorted to the politics of anger and fear—a short-sighted strategy that produced mixed results and will be harmful in the long run for both national parties.

The results left Republicans looking like angry right-wing extremists and Democrats appearing afraid and uncertain of how to deal with the issue. It is a political habit for both sides that has become hard to break.

Whether it is in a tight election contest or a tough policy debate, the most conservative side usually resorts to talking tough on immigration, a complex issue that can easily be distorted to create fear. And the impulse to take a “hard right” at the last minute occurred in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race, in which Republican Chris Christie defeated incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine after letting a hardliner stump for him.

The response from moderates in conservative-leaning areas is usually to recoil rather than lean into the immigration issue for the sake of surviving the next election campaign, as we saw in statewide races in Virginia. Democrats there seemed to lose their footing and slide off the path to victory that was charted by President Barack Obama last year and outgoing Democratic Governor Tim Kaine.

The special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district showed the damage that the far-right wing can do to the Republican Party’s national message, especially if it wants to eventually reach out to the Latino vote, the fastest-growing electorate in the nation.

Lost in this limited round of races is the fact that while voters may be frustrated and even angry with the federal government trying to take on too much, voters blame it for the failing immigration system. They would rather see it fixed than have the issue demagogued.

The 2008 national election cycle also showed that the anti-immigrant message is not a winning one at the polls and is a major turnoff among Latino voters.

The various ways immigration was used by campaigns in key election contests in three states offer insight into dealing with the issue and also courting the ever-growing votes of Hispanics, who feel the sting of harsh anti-immigration rhetoric.

New York’s 23rd District

The race to fill the House vacancy in an upstate New York district along the Canadian border was billed as a fight for the “soul” of the National Republican Party. In this district, the debate over “illegal” drugs crossing the border could easily be about U.S. citizens wanting to purchase lower-priced prescription drugs in Canada. Latinos make up only 2 percent of the population.

Though not many Latinos live there, conservative hardliners against legal and illegal immigration such as the Minuteman PAC rushed to the district to rally for Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. The combination of antigovernment, anti-immigrant, antigay marriage anger by conservatives forced Republican centrist Diedre “Dede” Scozzafava to pull out of the race just three days before the election.

Republicans were stunned when Hoffman was defeated by Democrat Bill Owen, losing the House seat held by the GOP for more than a century.

Immigration was not an overriding concern for the district’s previous congressman, Republican John McHugh, who officially ended his 16-year House career in September after being picked by President Obama to serve as Secretary of the Army. (Obama took 52 percent of the district’s vote against John McCain last year.)

Hoffman started out with a well-reasoned message about immigration on his website that is opposite the “enforcement only” approach of immigration restrictionists like the Minuteman PAC. But he allowed his talking points to be overtaken by radio advertising by the Minuteman, who back candidates who agree that “America should welcome legal immigration but reject colonization and Balkanization.”

The Minutemen PAC said Hoffman had “pledged quick action against amnesty and government handouts to illegal aliens.”

The Republican Party’s message from this district is that social conservatives such as immigration hardliners control the party and moderates need not apply. That is no way to court the Latino vote.

New Jersey

The gubernatorial election in New Jersey was the only high-profile race where the major candidates began the race talking about seeking practical solutions on immigration law enforcement while aggressively competing for the votes of Hispanics, who make up 16.3 percent of the state’s population.

Both Republican candidate Chris Christie and Democrat incumbent governor Jon Corzine expressed deep reservations about the federal government’s “287g” program that contracts with local police agencies to enforce immigration laws, an initiative that has been highly criticized by immigrants’ advocates for its potential for abuse.

On another issue, Corzine said he favored letting illegal immigrants pay in-state tuition at the state’s public colleges, while Christie was opposed, making an economic argument that appealed to voters in a state suffering a bad economy.

But in the final weekend before the election, Christie got help from Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), known for yelling to the president, “You lie!” as Obama told Congress in a nationally televised address that his health care plan would not apply to illegal immigrants. Wilson stumped for Christie in New Jersey in the final days of the race.

Christie, after starting his campaign with a solid appeal to Latinos, could not resist the temptation to turn to an icon of immigration restrictionists as the race tightened. But he won Tuesday’s election and his early appeal to Latinos may have been a considerable factor.

Latinos made up 9 percent of the vote in the state, just as they did in the 2008 presidential election year. Christie got only 32 percent of the Latino vote, but it was 11 points higher than what Republican presidential nominee John McCain won in New Jersey last year.

The results beg the question: Would Christie’s totals among Latinos have been even higher if he had projected an even more positive pitch to them and resisted the temptation to bring a conservative voice into his campaign at the last minute?

Virginia

Hispanics now make up 6.8 percent of the population in Virginia, yet voter outreach to this group, as well as African Americans and younger voters, was barely visible. This strategy proved disastrous for defeated Democratic gubernatorial candidate R. Creigh Deeds.

In the 2008 election, Latinos made up 5 percent of Virginia’s total vote and Obama took two-thirds of the Hispanic vote, similar to his national margin of support among Latinos. On Tuesday, the Latino turnout was a dismal 3 percent according to news media exit polls.

Deeds lost by 18 points and the rest of the state Democratic Party ticket suffered, squandering the seven-point margin of victory Obama took in Virginia last year against John McCain.

Republican Governor-elect Robert F. McDonnell smartly focused on transportation and tax issues and avoided the social issues while his party mate, Attorney General-elect Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, carried the flag for the party’s conservatives. Cuccinelli’s immigration restrictionist record includes calling on Congress to amend the Constitution to deny citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants who were born in the United States.

Though Republicans won big on Tuesday, they have yet to be convinced that their national message must include Latinos—and moderates, for that matter—or that this exclusive message will not make their wins short term and their tone too harsh.

Democrats need to show voters who want a stronger immigration system that they can govern, and that they can enact real reforms that will boost the economy, restore the rule of law, and protect basic rights for all workers.

Movement from both sides will be good for the nation.

Gebe Martinez is a Senior Writer and Policy Analyst at American Progress.

View the poll results:

Main sample (pdf)
Oversample of Hispanic Voters (pdf)

Although the last two years have seen an increase in significant anti-immigration measures such as over-broad identity theft protection proposals, stringent voter ID laws, and drivers’ license restrictions, a panel of experts convened at the Center for American Progress Action Fund on Thursday, March 6, to discuss the positive, and progressive, immigration policies state have enacted that have gone largely ignored by the mainstream media.

“The media narrative is almost entirely wrong” when it comes to the immigration debate, argued Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice. Ten states have passed the Dream Act, Illinois grants health care to tens of thousands of undocumented children, and New York courts have granted undocumented workers the full right to sue for worker’s compensation. In fact, according to the panelists, more states have enacted broad-based pro-immigrant laws than have passed the kinds of employer sanction bills that garner so much national attention. Yet what many citizens hear on TV and read in the papers has given rise to a far different narrative.

Understanding this dichotomy in public perception, all the panelists agreed that education needs to be a fundamental component of the progressive fight for fair policies towards immigrants. Texas Representative Garnett Coleman, pointed out that “everybody pays for public schools” through property taxes and sales taxes, and that “it hurts our economy to deny people the right to work,” but these messages aren’t in the mainstream media.

It was further noted that progressives need to focus on solid public policy that lifts everyone, including immigrants. Maryland Delegate Ana Sol Gutierrez lauded the statewide living wage law passed in Maryland in 2007, as an example of public policy that benefits both immigrants and native-born Americans. She also pointed out that since “public safety trumps immigration concerns,” there is also ground to be gained around state’s driver’s license laws.

Statewide immigration efforts will build the base for national comprehensive immigration reform and policies that work for all Americans. Although it is a slow fight, progressives are laying the groundwork in several states, but there is an ongoing educational effort required to get the message out.

• How Progressives Are Addressing Immigration in the States event resources

Introduced by Center for American Progress Action Fund Chairman and CEO John D. Podesta as “a great national leader and a front-line commander,” Napolitano described the vast pressures put on her border state and urged congressional action. Crystallizing the broken immigration policy was the $357 million bill she sent to the Department of Justice—the cost of incarcerating illegal immigrants in her state, and an amount that could have paid for two years of full-time kindergarten for every child in the state.

Napolitano highlighted what she believed was the most realistic and practical approach to solving what she described as an untenable current situation—one that takes up more hours of her state’s legislature time than any other issue and causes frustrated lawmakers to produce increasingly punitive and severe bills.

Napolitano’s priorities for pragmatic and comprehensive immigration reform include:

• Increased—and smarter—border security.
• A path to citizenship for the approximately 12 million undocumented immigrants currently in the country, with penalties for breaking the law and fines for back taxes.
• A real give-and-take temporary worker program that protects American workers.
• No penalization of native-born children of undocumented immigrants or children who entered the country at a very young age and went through the American school system.
• Keeping high-tech workers in the United States through their H1B visas.

Noting that many states were already taking action on the issue, Napolitano said that federal reform was needed to avoid a fragmented and confusing set of 50 different immigration laws.

The governor said that her landslide re-election this past fall was indicative of a general, quiet pragmatism about the issue among most Americans. Estimating that 25 percent to 30 percent of Americans are vehemently opposed to any type of reform, which she calls de facto amnesty, Napolitano believes the rest of the population is hungry for a humane but firm approach to real comprehensive reform.

For more on this topic, please see:

• A Leader in the Immigration Debate
• Governor Janet Napolitano on Immigration Reform