Barack Obama’s immigration speech in El Paso May 10 was an exercise in electioneering and hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, because while Obama complained about “politicians” blocking comprehensive immigration bills, he was one himself.
In 2007, when such a bill had bipartisan backing from Senate heavyweights Edward Kennedy and Jon Kyl, Sen. Obama voted for union-backed amendments that Kennedy and Kyl opposed as bill-killers.
In 2009 and 2010, President Obama acquiesced in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to pass cap-and-trade and bypass immigration and in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision not to bring an immigration bill to the floor.
Both times the votes were probably there to pass a bill. Obama didn’t lift a finger to help.
But that didn’t stop the president, who’s constantly calling for civility, to heap scorn on those seeking stronger enforcement. “They’ll want a higher fence. Maybe they’ll need a moat,” he said to laughter from the largely Latino audience. “Maybe they’ll want alligators in the moat. They’ll never be satisfied.”
Was that on the teleprompter, or was it ad-libbed? Either way, Obama was showing his contempt for those who bitterly cling to the idea that the law should be enforced. That’s no way to assemble a bipartisan coalition to pass a bill.
Nothing like the legalization provisions considered in 2007 can pass in this Congress. They’d never pass the GOP House, where Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith is a longstanding foe and Speaker John Boehner won’t schedule a bill not approved in committee.
Nor will this Congress pass the most attractive proposal Obama mentioned, the Dream Act, providing a path to legalization for those brought in illegally as children who enroll in college or serve in the military.
Some new approach is needed, yet Obama did little to point the way. One idea, advanced by a bipartisan Brookings Institution panel, is a bill that would strengthen enforcement and shift us away from low-skill and toward high-skill immigration, as Canada and Australia have done. With a sluggish economy, it makes little sense, as current law does, to give preference to low-skill siblings of minimum-wage workers rather than to engineering and science Ph.D.s.
But the lobbying forces backing comprehensive legislation don’t favor such an approach. Latino groups and lobbies for employers of low-skill workers want to legalize the low-skill Latinos who make up most of the 11 million illegal immigrants.
High-tech firms seek more H-1B visas for high-skill graduates, but these tie immigrants to particular employers. They don’t have an interest in provisions allowing these people to work for anyone they don’t like or to start their own businesses.
In the absence of significant lobbying support, the only way to get backing for Brookings-style legislation is a bold presidential initiative.
Obama didn’t come close to doing that in El Paso. He included a few words about letting in more high-skill folks, but didn’t suggest any reduction in low-skill immigration. And he said only a few words about workplace enforcement, on which his administration has developed a valuable tool: a refinement of the E-Verify electronic system, in which employers can verify the Social Security numbers of new employees.
The Homeland Security Department has been ironing out glitches in E-Verify and, as former National Security Agency General Counsel Stewart Baker reports, DHS now allows job-seekers in some states to use E-Verify before applying for a job.
The administration has been attacking state laws requiring employers to use E-Verify. If Obama were serious about enforcement, he’d be calling for mandatory E-Verify. That would be a more effective tool against illegal immigration than even the strongest border enforcement.
But as Obama’s record makes clear, he’s not really interested in passing a law. He knows his support has been slipping among Latino voters, and he wants to goose it. El Paso was about election 2012, not immigration reform.