GOP Is Not Serious About Immigration Reform This Year

After the last election the national leaders of the Republican Party realized they had a serious problem -- a problem that would only grow over time. The problem was that they have lost several voting groups (women, young people, minorities). Especially important among these groups is the growing Hispanic population in this country. It is by far the fastest growing portion of the population, and that trend is not expected to change in the future.

With the percentage of Whites dropping by about 2% in each presidential election, and the Hispanic portion growing (and expected to grow even faster in the future), it is clear that if the Republican Party clings to its "whites only" policies it will continue to make up a shrinking portion of the electorate. It could become irrelevant on the national stage and might even cease to exist (as the Whigs did).

The national leaders urged congressional Republicans to alter their policies against immigration reform (a reform considered to be very important by Hispanic voters). By moderating their policy on immigration, and helping to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill, they hoped to reach out to Hispanic voters. This would have been reasonable, and might have even worked (since Hispanics have voted for Republicans in the past). But the congressional Republicans didn't listen to the advice from the national party, and continued to block any comprehensive reform bill. They preferred to address only punitive measures (border security and deportations).

Recently the party tried one last time to come up with an immigration reform bill, and thought they had done so. It was not a good bill -- offering only legal status to undocumented workers, but no path to citizenship. It was a feeble attempt at reform, but an attempt nonetheless. But it would require all House Republicans to be unified to pass it (since Democrats would be unlikely to support any bill not offering a path to citizenship). But now it looks like even this feeble attempt at reform will be unable to get through the Republican-dominated House, because too many right-wingers are opposing it.

Paul Ryan, one of the authors of the inadequate reform bill, admits now that the bill is not going to be able to be passed this year. And seeing that they will once more be opposing real immigration reform, Ryan and his fellow Republicans are now trying to deflect blame away from themselves. They now claim that their inability to pass comprehensive immigration reform is not because of their own bigoted and anti-immigrant views, but because President Obama cannot be trusted to enforce any new bill (especially on border security and deportations).

This is not just untrue -- it is an outrageous lie. The truth is just the opposite. The flow of unauthorized immigrants into this country has slowed, and at this time there are more undocumented workers leaving than entering the country. In addition, the Homeland Security Department has given our border security its top rating. The fact is that we have already done what can be done to close our borders.

As for the willingness of President Obama to enforce the immigration laws, that is also untrue. The chart below shows the deportations for the last three years of the Bush administration and the first three years of the Obama administration. Note that the Obama administration has deported more undocumented people in each year than any of the years under George Bush. The one thing that the Obama administration has accomplished is that they have put a greater effort toward deporting those convicted of criminal violations (a fact I think most Americans would appreciate).

Clearly the Obama administration has done a better job of enforcing current immigration law than the previous Republican administration did -- making the current Republican excuse a ludicrous one. And there is no reason to believe he would enforce a new law any less rigorously than he has enforced the current law.

So, what is the real reason the Republicans can't even pass their latest feeble attempt at reform? That's pretty obvious to anyone willing to think -- the Republican base remains in the grips of a xenophobic fever, and they are not willing to accept any reform that would make life easier for undocumented immigrants. Note in the chart below that those GOP base voters oppose any level of legalization for those workers -- whether it is temporary, permanent, or a path to citizenship.

The congressional Republicans are just doing what their bigoted base wants them to do (regardless of what is good for the country as a whole). They are afraid if they vote for reform, they will face a right-wing opponent and possibly lose their seat in Congress. There attempt to deflect blame to President Obama is just a futile attempt to help them in the general election (after they survive the primary). I doubt it will help much though. It is just too obviously a lie.

The charts below were made from a recent YouGov Poll -- conducted on January 28th and 29th of 1,000 nationwide adults, with a 3.9 point margin of error.