Immigration Debate Heats Up

Immigration Debate Heats Up

March 29, 2006

President George Bush is heading to Cancun today to meet with Mexican President Vicente Fox at a time when the immigration debate is heating up at home. His visit comes against a backdrop of protests over the weekend and yesterday where an estimated one million people rallied against the immigration bills being proposed by House Republicans and President Bush. That sentiment is echoed in a new poll released yesterday by New America Media and co-sponsored by American Progress and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund. President Bush should pay attention to what happened this weekend — people are certainly paying attention to what is happening in D.C.

• The immigrant community in the U.S. is alarmed by the tone of the immigration debate. As evidenced by the spontaneous rallies across the country, legal immigrants are disturbed by the tone of the debate in D.C. The poll shows that majorities of legal immigrants from Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe feel that “the anti-immigrant sentiment is growing in the United States” and that it is affecting their daily lives.
  
  
• The immigrant community is not impressed with the actions of those in Congress. The major political “actors” in the immigration debate receive relatively low ratings from legal immigrants on what they have done so far on immigration. That result is not surprising — with the exception of the Senate Judiciary action on Monday (the poll was conducted prior to this action), what’s come out of Congress on immigration has not been encouraging. Bills, including the one Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) is set to introduce today, are more about criminalizing people than truly addressing the problem.
  
  
• Immigrants, like the majority of Americans, support comprehensive immigration reform. When asked about various ways to address immigration, the top three proposals were components of the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. Legal immigrants also overwhelmingly support McCain-Kennedy when asked to compare it to President Bush’s proposal and to House-passed legislation. And judging from the rallies over the past few days, the U.S. immigrant population is not going to sit on the sidelines during this debate.