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Backlash Against the Backlash Grows
By Frank Sharry, New America Media
WASHINGTON, D.C.– If 2005 was the Year of the Minutemen, 2006 is
becoming the Year of Immigrants Rising. Just look at the tens of
thousands of immigrants who marched in downtown Chicago last March
11 for immigrant rights and against restrictive immigration
proposals.
Less than three months ago, the leadership of the House of
Representatives, in a vicious act of "drive-by" legislating, rushed
through a bill that experts consider to be the most anti-immigrant
piece of legislation in the United States in 80 years.
Here are some of the lowlights of the Sensenbrenner bill, HR 4437:
- 11 million undocumented immigrants would be declared "aggravated
felons" for having come to this country to do back-breaking work at
low wages in order to feed their families.
- Priests, nuns, health care workers, and other helpers would be
threatened with jail time for assisting the undocumented.
- Local police would have to enforce federal immigration laws,
undermining community policing strategies meant to build confidence
between police and immigrant communities.
- Day labor sites would be shut down by federal law, overruling
the hard work of activists and enlightened local communities
attempting to solve problems caused in part by Congressional
inaction on comprehensive immigration reform.
- Seven hundred miles of walls would be built between the United
States and our friendly neighbors to the south, an act that has
touched off a diplomatic crisis with Latin America.
The self-righteous politicians who cooked up this bill were
undoubtedly pleased with their handiwork. They wanted their colleagues
to go back to their districts over the holidays with something to crow
about on talk radio and at town hall meetings. The lucky were invited to
the Lou Dobbs show.
But politics is like physics: For every action there's a reaction. What
looked so tempting last year is looking counterproductive this year. It
seems the House anti-immigrant tantrum has angered and activated
immigrants, their allies, religious leaders and local governments like
never before.
Here is are some recent events:
- On March 7, over 30,000 immigrants showed up on the west lawn of
the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., to protest the Sensenbrenner
bill and to call for legalization. Families came from work and from
up and down the East Coast to show their faces and raise their
voices. Many carried simple homemade signs that said, "I am not a
criminal."
- Later that week Chicago was the scene of a rally that according
to police drew at least 100,000 immigrants, and organizers claimed
drew over 300,000. Both the Chicago and D.C. rallies were marked by
unprecedented cooperation between the labor movement, immigrants
rights advocacy organizations and community organizations led by
immigrants.
- Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles recently announced that if the
Sensenbrenner bill becomes law he will instruct his priests to defy
it and provide services to the undocumented, even if it means going
to jail.
- City councils and county supervisors from Southern California to
Ohio and Massachusetts are passing resolutions against the
Sensenbrenner bill and calling for comprehensive reform that puts
immigrants onto a path to citizenship.
- Beyond Chicago, in Portland, Ore., 5,000 people protested HR
4437. Religious leaders are staging vigils in Ohio. Activists are
demonstrating in the Michigan State House, and immigrants are
pouring into Washington, D.C., to lobby for comprehensive reform
along the lines of the McCain-Kennedy bill pending in the Senate.
When Sen. John McCain traveled to Miami and New York to talk about
immigration reform, 1,000 immigrants showed up in each city to
cheer.
- Even the undocumented Irish from the New York and Boston are
becoming active. Some 2,000 descended on Washington, D.C., this
week. Wearing T-shirts emblazoned with green lettering that said
"Legalize the Irish," they lobbied lawmakers to back the
McCain-Kennedy bill with its earned legalization provisions.
- The business community is also upset over the Sensenbrenner
bill. Groups of employers are flying into Washington, DC and
demanding meetings with their representatives. Their message: they
need immigrant workers and want to see their work force legalized,
not deported.
Call it the backlash to the backlash. Some are even calling the
passage of the Sensenbrenner bill the "Proposition 187 moment" of this
decade, referring to 1994, when California Gov. Pete Wilson and the
Republican Party won re-election by supporting the anti-immigrant ballot
initiative Prop. 187. The measure and the ugly campaign for it so
angered Latino and Asian immigrants that it led to a surge in
citizenship and voting that threw the Republican Party out of virtually
every statewide office for a decade.
Obviously, some Republicans understand that supporting immigrants is
good for the country and their party. Sen. McCain of Arizona, a leading
contender for the 2008 Republican nomination for president, gets it. So
do some of his possible rivals for the Republican nomination, Sens. Sam
Brownback of Kansas and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
But more typical of the current thinking in GOP leadership circles is
Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee. He's gearing up to usher a
Sensenbrenner-like bill in the Senate, presumably to score points with
the same rabid anti-immigrant crowd the House played to. He probably
thinks it will help him in the GOP presidential primaries.
Well, Pete Wilson thought his 1994 anti-immigrant platform would help
his 1996 run for president. But his role in turning California from a
purple state into a blue one and his reputation as a polarizing figure
in immigrant communities made Wilson so radioactive no national
politicians will be seen with him to this day.
Think about it. Over the past three decades, the GOP has systematically
targeted employers, Catholics and Hispanics in order to forge a
governing majority. Now, House Republican leaders are targeting
employers, Catholics and Hispanics in order to appease talk radio hosts
and the loud-but-not-large anti-immigrant zealots.
Here's a political prediction: over time, the Minuteman vote will pale
in comparison to the political tsunami gathering strength in immigrant
communities and among pro-immigrant constituencies across America.
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