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GOP’s Wrestling Match Over Immigration–Schizoid or Fixed?
Commentary
By Roberto Lovato, Pacific News Service
Immigration seems to be wedge issue in the Republican Party, between
those who tout the immigrant story, like Arnold Schwarzenegger to those
who advocate strict controls. But the differences might be more of
play-acting than real.
NEW YORK CITY - September 1, 2004 - Blockbuster California Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger used his personal story and star power to deliver
one message to the immigrants watching this week’s Republican
Convention: Immigration is still the stuff of dreams. Tom Tancredo,
Colorado congressman and head of the Congressional Immigration Reform
Caucus, came to New York to deliver another message. On the surface the
men appear to represent opposite sides of the Republican platform on
immigration, with Schwarzenegger holding out the American Dream center
stage, while Tancredo rages about the coming immigration nightmare from
stage (extreme) right.
Here at Madison Square Garden, near the vortex of U.S. theater and
television, on the once gritty and now Disneyfied corridors of Broadway,
the Republican Party is displaying what many are calling “schizophrenia”
and “divisions” about immigration policy. Closer diagnosis of the
Republican party’s behavior towards immigrants, however, reveals another
drama, one at once simple and complex, one not captured by the
simplistic “schizophrenia” metaphor.
Translating his own Austrian immigrant success story into good political
theater, Schwarzenegger made “moderate” appeals to the imagination of
migrant masses when he said, “We Republicans admire your ambition. We
encourage your dreams. We believe in your future.” The overwhelmingly
nonimmigrant – and still mostly white -- audience applauded forcefully
in what sounded like a new, more liberal immigration script for the
Party.
But many immigrant rights advocates in New York and the rest of the
country say that since 9/11, the Republican Party has transformed the
story of immigrants in America from one of hopes and dreams into one of
deferred dreams and extended nightmares.
Opposing what they feel is a staged and closed event led by
Schwarzenegger, Karl Rove and the immigration “moderates’ of the
Republican party, are the marginalized forces of the anti-immigrant set.
Tancredo told me that the actor-governor and others are practicing
“Clintonesque doublespeak” around immigration. Tancredo says he didn’t
see the Republican immigration platform containing President Bush’s
“earned legalization” proposal – or the politicians responsible for it –
until hours before it was announced.
“Remember when he first got elected?” asks the congressman. Rubbing his
Old Glory tie, Tancredo adds, “He [Schwarzenegger] got in on a wave of
anti-immigrant feeling on driver’s licenses that ousted the previous
governor. He was adamantly opposed to giving everybody driver’s licenses
and now he’s moderating that view? Yeah, that’s Clintonesque.”
The Tancredos of the party are incensed at statements like this one made
by Schwarzenegger about driver’s licenses: “Let's do it the right way,
let's make every Californian happy and let's make the undocumented
immigrants happy.” Yet, despite playing the role of Republican moderate
on immigration, Schwarzenegger is about to veto another proposal on
immigrant driver’s licenses. It appears as if Schwarzenegger’s
amerikanischer Traum (American Dream) and Tancredo’s traumatic nightmare
(i.e., a “porous border” allowing more terrorists in) are one and the
same when it comes to immigrants not having a license to drive the new
car in the driveway of the new home.
Appearing as if they’re two different personalities in the mind of the
“schizophrenic” Republican Party, Schwarzenegger and Tancredo are, in
fact, loud but inconsequential voices within a party that is, in
practice, of one mind about both national security-focused immigration
measures and barring anything beneficial to immigrants. In preparation
for his impending veto of new driver’s license bill and just before his
plea to immigrants, Schwarzenegger had his spokesperson cite “national
security” concerns as the reason for denying the licenses.
“More and more immigrants have been denied the American Dream since
9/11,” says Ana Maria Archila from the offices of the Latin American
Integration Center, an immigrant service and advocacy organization on
Staten Island. “Special Registration, increased detentions, increased
raids and other measures send a direct message to immigrants here: it’s
all about law enforcement and security,” says Archila, an immigrant from
Colombia who says she knows how immigrants “need to make themselves as
invisible as possible in this environment of fear.” She and other
advocates see a relationship between the national security climate and
anti-immigrant sentiment in liberal New York and elsewhere.
Local and national groups like United Patriots of America (UPA)
converged on Staten Island, deploying relatives of 9/11 victims to
oppose agricultural worker legalization programs or the recently shelved
DREAM Act, which would have given 60,000 studious undocumented youth
access to university education. Advocates fear that a second Bush
administration will unleash the more punitive CLEAR Act , which
essentially turns local law enforcement officials into immigration
agents.
Tancredo’s denunciations of the DREAM Act (“Let the undocumented
students return to their country of origin – now!”) seem more honest
when weighed against the star- studded immigration policy rhetoric that
has, in the words of one advocate, “yielded zero positive results for
immigrants from Bush and the Republicans.”
Whether the Republican rhetoric paints a dreamy or nightmarish scenario,
the end result, it seems, is still traumatic for tired and hungry
immigrants living near and beyond the Statue of Liberty and Ellis
Island. The immigration drama played out in Madison Square Fortress
turns out to be just another Broadway show, a staged Wrestlemania match.
Readings of Related Interest
Nice Words About Immigrants, but Where's the Bill?
By Roberto Lovato, Pacific News Service
July 29, 2004 - Democratic National Convention: Their words can make
a hardboiled immigrant cry, but the actions (and inaction) of many a
Democratic Convention spellbinder demonstrate neglect of immigrant
issues.
Roberto Lovato (robvato63@yahoo.com) is a Los
Angeles-based writer. This article was produced with the support of the
Independent Press Association. |
