The Democrats and the border

I DON'T want us to do something just for the sake of politics that doesn't solve the problem."

That was Barack Obama last April, making it clear that before the November election, his administration had no intention of pursuing immigration legislation that provided a program for legalization. This had been a major campaign promise that won him enthusiastic support from Latino voters, but Obama declared that lawmakers lack the "appetite" to get behind such a proposal.

The statement has more consequences than what Congress will vote on this year. By not advancing the case for legalization--or any form of immigrant rights--at the federal level, the administration and Congressional Democrats have allowed the Republican Party to appropriate the issue at the federal, state and local level and launch a revived anti-immigrant crusade.

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THE DEMOCRATIC Party strategy under Obama starts from the premise that any form of legalization would have to include a package of austere enforcement measures in order to secure Republican support. Obama's position has changed little from this statement written while he was a U.S. senator in 2006:

[I]mmigration problems in our country require a three-pronged response: 1) strengthen border security; 2) establish a path to legalization that includes fines and adherence to the rule of law for immigrants and their families who may have entered the United States illegally but are now contributing and responsible members of society; and, 3) create a "guest worker" program whereby American businesses can temporarily recruit foreign workers for jobs that American workers cannot or refuse to fill.

This approach--which reflected the main points of legislation put forward at the time by the bipartisan team of Sens. Ted Kennedy and John McCain--was crafted to reconcile the three main conflicting forces in motion around the immigration debate: the Republican right; the immigrant rights movement and immigrant constituencies; and sectors of big business eager to maintain access to migrant labor, but with significant restrictions.

Similarly, under the Obama administration's strategy today, immigration reform can only begin with confirmed Republican support. This emphasis on a bipartisan approach is reflected in the positions of Sen. Charles Schumer, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security and Obama's point man in the Senate on the issue.