Obama can’t even win the easy one: Immigration
Most House Republicans oppose reform
WASHINGTON To prove he is more than a leader with a silver tongue and soaring ideals, U.S. President Barack Obama needs a win and immigration reform was supposed to be an easy one.
Bipartisan agreement between Republicans and Democrats promised to give it a smooth ride into law.
But that’s not what happened. While the 600-page bill quickly won approval in the U.S. Senate, House Republicans just as quickly made it clear they had no intention of passing the senate bill.
“We are not going to do the Senate bill,” House speaker John Boehner announced this week. “The Senate bill in my view is flawed.”
Blocked by Congress on gun control, climate change, a budget and the smooth enactment of ObamaCare, Obama’s domestic program is floundering.
Immigration should have been a happy story that would pull 11 million undocumented immigrants out of the shadows. But as the debate progressed, many lawmakers hesitated because of concerns raised among supporters in their home districts.
Republicans — and some Democrats — worried that border security remains weak. They also worried that, as Arizona Republican congressman Paul Gosar stated this week, “rewarding people for illegal behaviour” by granting them citizenship was not sending an appropriate message.
In the 10 years following 9/11, the U.S. government spent $90 billion to shore up the 3,000-kilometre Mexican border. Yet studies show that illegal immigrants and drugs continue to pour through.
It is widely considered that in the long term each party has nothing to lose and everything to gain from supporting immigration reform, particularly one that opens a path to citizenship, however arduous that might be.
Former U. S. president George Bush has repeatedly urged Republicans to support reform and has pronounced himself in favour of the Senate bill. Without Latino support at the polls, it’s unlikely the Republicans will regain the White House soon. Many prominent Republican senators also support the bill, including John McCain and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Both are members of the so-called non-partisan Gang of Eight that wrote the Senate bill.
Yet 74 per cent of house Republicans are elected in districts with large white majorities. These voters generally don’t consider they have a personal stake in legalizing undocumented immigrants, but do consider border security and unlawful entry into the U.S. significant issues.
Historian Robert Dallek, who has written widely on presidential politics, said that history shows that no amount of cajoling will help a president get his policies approved when the other side rules Congress.
His advice to Obama: “Fight like hell to win back the Congress in 2014.
“Hold onto the Senate and win the House and you will have possibly a final good two years.”