As far back as April I said that immigration reform could not pass this year and that the president would be crazy to try. I was critical of Harry Reid for ‘jerking around’ the Latino community by suggesting that immigration reform would come up before energy legislation and then reversing himself. I was a bit worried that I would upset some my Latino friends and readers with my analysis, but I had to say what I thought was true. And I still think I was right about the politics. In fact, it’s worse that I feared. The top story at the New York Times this morning is about Democratic governors being upset with the administration for legally challenging the Arizona immigration law. They don’t seem to care about the merits, they just know it’s bad politics. It’s this kind of friction within the Democratic Party that makes an effort to pass immigration reform this year a hopeless task. Advocates for undocumented workers are not going to care about the politics and that’s not their job. But my concern is that the administration gets credit for doing the politically courageous thing. The temptation is to argue that they are punting on the issue, but they’re actually going out on a limb. And people should be grateful rather than griping.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
As I said below:
I’m confused. I thought the right thing to do was to challenge the Arizona/’What About If You Ain’t White, Don’t You Understand?’ Law.
I really do wish they’d tell the truth about those fucking polls.
it’s WHITE PEOPLE who find nothing wrong with the law, because they know it’s not their little Bobby or Jimmy that will be pulled over for NO FUCKING REASON.
I think immigration is a fool’s folly because if Shrub couldn’t get immigration reform through, and he was able to lie us into 2 wars..
that should tell you how ridiculous this is.
As I’ve said before, I’m Hispanic (fuck it, I consider myself Hispanic and thats what I am!) but I have only ever been a lukewarm support of comprehensive immigration reform. I’m ambivalent about a guest worker program and wary of the kind of fight it would take to enact guest worker+path to citizenship. Even Bush+Dems failed on this miserably. So I was surprised he would try to take on this issue and would much rather he had gone full bore with a leftist response to the financial crisis (which would have succeeded more) and climate change (which endangers the only sentient race in the entire universe).
But there’s really no choice but to challenge the law, it’s a state v. federal power preemption issue. I have no problem with them punting on the issue but I’m not going to act like their challenge of the law was courageous. It was procedurally expected.