Students look to 2012 after immigration bill fails

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Students look to 2012 after immigration bill fails
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Emboldened by months of phone calls to lawmakers, hunger strikes and sit-ins, a group of college students and graduates in Los Angeles say they plan to take their fight for immigrant rights to the states and the 2012 election after Senate Republicans blocked a key piece of legislation.
But it won't be easy.
The Senate vote Saturday to toss the proposal that would have granted young illegal immigrants a route to legal status dealt a harsh blow to student activists who will face an even steeper uphill battle in the next Congress.
Immigrants see rough times ahead in the next two years, with many Republicans vowing to push for tougher immigration enforcement, but they also say Latino voters are getting fed up with lawmakers at a time when they are accruing greater political clout.
"This is a movement," said Nancy Meza, a 23-year-old illegal immigrant and college graduate who wore a University of California, Los Angeles sweatshirt as she watched the televised vote. "We don't have lobbyists and paid staff. It's a movement by students."
In the hours after the vote, Meza and about 50 other student activists who had gathered at the UCLA Downtown Labor Center said they would remind Latinos who stood by them — and those who did not — in the next election cycle. They will push for access to financial aid and drivers' licenses in states more friendly to immigrants like California.
Few said the legislation, many called the Dream Act, had a chance in the next two years with Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives and a shrinking Democratic majority in the Senate. But they said that wouldn't derail the networks they had set up across the country to support illegal immigrant students and help them reveal their status and learn to live unafraid.
Some at the UCLA center, including university student Leslie Perez, 22, wept as they watched the vote on a big screen.
Minutes after it was over, many donned jackets and umbrellas to take to the rainy streets of Los Angeles, chanting "undocumented and unafraid."
Republicans might consider some kind of measure to help the students, but it would probably be much narrower, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates stricter limits on immigration.
"This has a real demoralizing effect," Krikorian said of the student activists. "There's only so long you can keep up these hunger strikes and all this political theater they've been engaging in, especially if there's no specific target."
Another challenge is students could wind up feeling excluded when they can't work after graduation, despite their political activism.
"It may alienate the group we most want to incorporate," said Louis DeSipio, a professor of political science at University of California, Irvine.
Immigrant rights groups said they planned to turn up the pressure on the Obama administration to slow deportations, end local police enforcement of immigration laws and look out for the students, many of whom publicly revealed their immigration status over the last few months.
Students also said they planned to fight for immigrant benefits — though it's not legalization — locally as they've seen anti-illegal immigration activists do to pass tougher enforcement measures in states like Arizona.
"They're winning by state, they're winning by region," said Cyndi Bendezu, a 25-year-old University of California, Los Angeles graduate who was brought to the United States from Peru when she was 4 years old. "We have to win smaller victories."
Bendezu, who had been an illegal immigrant when she started college, attained legal residency through a relative's petition. Now, she said she can't wait to become a citizen to be able to vote.
Students said Saturday that momentum they had gained in recent months was bigger than the legislative defeat.
The legislation would have provided a route to legal status for immigrants who were brought to the United States before age 16, have lived in the country for five years, graduated from high school or gained an equivalency degree and who joined the military or attend college.
It targeted the most sympathetic of the 10 million to 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States — those brought to the country as children, and who in many cases consider themselves American, speak English and have no ties to their native countries.
Critics of the bill called it a backdoor to amnesty that would encourage more foreigners to sneak into the United States in hopes of being legalized eventually.
The Mexican-born Meza said the vote makes it harder for her to finance graduate school to get a doctorate in education policy and become a professor.
But Meza, who came to the country when she was 2, said she'll find a way — just as she did baby-sitting, tutoring and waiting tables to pay for college even though her degree now lies covered in dust in her living room, unused.
"It's not going to stop my educational goals," she said.
The legislation was proposed almost a decade ago. But it got its closest shot at getting passed this year after students stepped up their activism by making thousands of calls to lawmakers and leading marches and demonstrations. Several activists were arrested for refusing to leave Arizona Sen. John McCain's office.
The House of Representatives passed the measure earlier this month, but the Senate fell five votes short of the 60 needed to win its enactment.
Now, immigrant advocates who had touted the bill as a first push toward a broader legalization of immigrants will be working to deflect anticipated efforts by Republicans to ramp up restrictions on immigration.
"All of us are definitely preparing for much more defensive work," said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/art...ote-907972.php

Post-DREAM Act: Is Real Immigration Reform Dead?
The failure of the Senate to achieve cloture on the DREAM act has not ended the immigration debate. Politically, both sides will attempt to capitalize on this vote. Democrats will argue that they are the only ones who care about the Hispanic community, while Republicans will claim that they are the only ones serious about enforcement. But from a policy perspective, where might the debate go during the next Congress with Republicans running the House and a stronger GOP presence in the Senate? Even more importantly for enforcement proponents, is immigration the next policy ripe for triangulation?
FrumForum spoke to Mark Kirkorian of the Center for Immigration studies before the DADT vote to see if proponents of tougher enforcement may expect some progress in the next two years. The policy that Kirkorian was most interested in was making the E-verify system more widespread and possibly even mandatory for employers.
E-verify is an electronic database that employers can use to check the status of their employees. It allows them to verify their social security number and checks if the employee can legally work in the United States. The effect of this is that it decreases the likelihood that illegals will be able to end up on the books of their employers. Kirkorian noted that at least 60% — if not more — of the illegal population lie and use fraudulent or stolen identification to gain employment.
Of course, without the program being mandatory, its efficacy is limited. Some states, such as Arizona, mandate its use but others do not. Some states only mandate its use for public sector employees. There are also obvious competitive disadvantages that occur if one company uses the system, while another company doesn’t and continues to hire lower paying illegal workers.
Surprisingly, Kirkorian suggested that he could see a situation where the push for wider E-verify use actually comes from President Obama and the Democrats. “If the President wanted to triangulate, I could see him backing mandatory E-verify as a step towards a future amnesty debate.” Krikorian said that the proponents of immigration “agree in principle” to E-verify but hold it hostage to amnesty.
While not likely to happen, the strategy behind supporting DREAM to lock up Hispanic support, while also supporting E-verify could show that Democrats are “serious” on immigration. This could help them win independents; a plan that would also appeal to Democratic pollsters looking for ways to help the party rebound in 2012.
Unfortunately, the larger GOP benches in the House and Senate are unlikely to lead to any meaningful reform in legal immigration, despite the desperate need for the U.S. to modernize and set up a system to prioritize and accept high skilled immigrants, and not simply hand out citizenship through a lottery process. Kirkorian remarked that this process “continues through inertia.” Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute also spoke to FrumForum about the difficulties in achieving reform in this part of America’s immigration policy.
Mac Donald suggested that a skills based system of immigration would undercut the vision of America’s “Ellis Island” immigration policies. “It is somehow easier for politicians to oppose illegal immigration than to argue that the U.S. has the right to be more selective in its immigrants and that doing so is in its self-interest.”

http://www.frumforum.com/post-dream-...on-reform-dead
DREAM Act defeat reveals failed strategy
Whenever Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and other immigrant-rights advocates asked President Obama how a Democratic administration could preside over the greatest number of deportations in any two-year period in the nation's history, Obama's answer was always the same.
Deporting almost 800,000 illegal immigrants might antagonize some Democrats and Latino voters, Obama's skeptical supporters said the president told them, but stepped-up enforcement was the only way to buy credibility with Republicans and generate bipartisan support for an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws.
On Saturday, that strategy was in ruins after Senate Democrats could muster only 55 votes in support of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, a measure that would have created a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. Under Senate rules, Democrats needed 60 votes to overcome Republican opposition to the bill. The House of Representatives had passed the measure this month, 216 to 198.
The irony of the DREAM Act's failure is that it had strong bipartisan support at the start of the administration, and advocates thought it could generate momentum for more policy changes.
But as the country's mood shifted on illegal immigration, support among Republicans and some Democratic senators evaporated, with many decrying it as a backdoor amnesty for lawbreakers.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who led Republican opposition to the measure, said: "This is an amnesty bill because it provides every possible benefit, including citizenship, to those who are in the country illegally."
Virtually no one thinks an immigration overhaul is possible in the next two years, given the views of many members of the incoming Republican majority in the House.
Now many immigrant-rights supporters are second-guessing Obama's efforts to woo Republicans by ramping up deportations.
"It is a strategy which has borne no fruits whatsoever," Gutierrez said. "This administration has unilaterally led the march on enforcement, yet the other side has not given one modicum of compromise."
"If you really want to bring Republicans to the table," he added, "so long as they are getting everything they want, every piece of enforcement, why, why would they come to the table?"
At a recent press briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano denied that the administration had increased deportations to bring Republicans to the bargaining table.
"I don't view it as a quid pro quo," Napolitano said. "We enforce the law because we took an oath to enforce the law."
But a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said that although there was no explicit quid pro quo, the administration had indeed hoped that tougher enforcement could create a new climate in which legislative compromise became easier.
"One of the arguments that gets trotted out regularly is that the government can't do its job," the official said. "We believe the government can do its job, and our work hopefully is evidence of that."
Being tough enough

Latino groups pushed hard for passage of the DREAM Act, mobilizing thousands of students to campaign for the measure across the nation. They went on hunger strikes, conducted prayer vigils, and organized holiday food drives and Thanksgiving dinners with citizens.
The DREAM Act would have given hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants brought to the United States before age 16 a chance to gain legal status if they have been in the country for five years, have graduated from high school, have no criminal record, and attend college or serve in the military for two years.
"I am not asking for just a vote for the DREAM Act today," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who tried, along with Gutierrez, Napolitano, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and others, to round up enough Republican votes for passage. "From some of my colleagues, I am asking for much more - I am asking for a vote of political courage."
But the Obama administration miscalculated conservative antipathy on the subject of immigration, said a senior Democratic Hill staffer, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the issue. Even as the administration stepped up deportations, conservatives charged Obama with being too soft on the country's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.
"Short of marching these people naked over the border at the point of a bayonet, there is no such thing as being tough enough" for those who want to target illegal immigrants, the staffer said.
Immigrant-rights advocates think the issue will reverberate through the 2012 elections. Obama will have to persuade Latinos - who turned out for him in record numbers in key states in 2008 - to do so again, despite the lack of progress on legislative initiatives. For Obama to get into trouble, Hispanics don't have to switch sides on Election Day - they just have to stay home, Latino leaders said.
Republicans, meanwhile, have found that they can talk tough on immigration and still appeal to Latino voters by picking conservative Hispanic candidates. That produced three significant Republican victories this year: Marco Rubio captured a Senate seat in Florida, and Susana Martinez won a gubernatorial race in New Mexico, as did Brian Sandoval in Nevada. Rubio is being mentioned by some as a vice presidential pick.
Pain without gain

Ali Noorani, who heads the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant-rights group, said that Obama faces a dilemma going forward. Republicans would now cry foul if the administration eased up on deportations, he said. But Latinos are losing patience with a strategy that has led to pain without gain for their communities.
"The administration is in a pickle of epic proportions," Noorani said. "They are going to feel incredible pressure in the House to increase enforcement, and the record shows they will continue to increase enforcement of a broken immigration system. On the other hand, candidate Obama will need those same Latinos, Asians and other immigrant voters to come out for him in record numbers. How do they square that circle?"
The senior White House official said the administration has no plans to pull back on enforcement just because Republicans are unlikely to support a bipartisan overhaul of immigration laws in the next two years. "In the short term, there is not a lot of evidence [Republicans] will come forward, but our response is not going to be to dismantle immigration enforcement," the official said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...1803271_2.html