Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

8/7/01 News Report -- The Washington Post

A powerful alliance of labor and business groups, immigrants rights organizations and Republican political strategists has formed to lobby for immigration liberalization, reversing the anti-immigrant tenor that has dominated the nation's capital for much of the last decade.

As top U.S. and Mexican officials prepare for an important meeting on the immigration plan Thursday, representatives from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have met with State and Justice Department officials. Officials with the American Immigration Lawyers Association are talking with members of Congress and have sent their immigration reform ideas to the White House. The League of United Latin American Citizens met Friday with Vice President Cheney's staff.

Rallies have been held in Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston. Petition drives are underway to send postcards to Mexican President Vicente Fox.

"Things have changed," said Theresa Cardinal Brown, manager of immigration and labor policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a principal in a key pro-immigration business organization, the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition. "This is probably one of the most friendly environments for positive immigration reform that I have seen."

While specific proposals under discussion by the working group of U.S. and Mexican officials have not been made public, they cover a range of issues and could include a legalization plan for some of the estimated 6 million to 9 million undocumented people now living and working in the United States.

Mexicans account for an estimated half of that population, while Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Canadians, Haitians, Filipinos, Hondurans, Poles and other nationalities make up the rest, according to the INS.

The plan may include a system for undocumented workers to earn permanent residency status -- green cards -- which would put them on the road to citizenship. President Bush has said, however, that he does not favor blanket amnesty for undocumented workers like that provided by the 1986 law, which legalized 2.7 million undocumented people.

The proposals being discussed also may include an expanded guest worker program favored by some who oppose legalization or regularization plans.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Attorney General John D. Ashcroft are scheduled to meet with Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda and Interior Minister Santiago Creel Thursday at the State Department. Next month, Bush and Fox are to meet for the first time in Washington, and an immigration plan is expected to be a key issue.

Despite the shortage of specifics, and the possibility of only small changes, the prospect of reform has galvanized a wide spectrum of groups interested in comprehensive change.

John Gay, co-chairman of the Essential Workers Coalition, which represents more than 30 trade organizations, said he has made the case to several senators that immigration reform must be comprehensive.

"A guest worker program alone won't make it through" Congress, said Gay, who is also vice president for governmental affairs for the American Hotel and Lodging Association. "Legalization alone won't make it through. Politically, we believe that a comprehensive bill is the only thing that's going to make it through Congress."

Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said his organization lobbied Cheney's staff to "encourage them to stick with a plan to regularize" immigrants' status and allow them to work legally.

Business and labor groups are generally agreed that penalties against businesses that hire undocumented workers -- enacted in 1986 but rarely enforced -- need to be ended, except in the cases of businesses that actively smuggle illegal workers into the country.

Organized labor and many immigrant groups involved in the issue, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are preparing to call for full legal and workplace rights for temporary workers, including the right to organize and form unions.

This could pit business against labor, and force the Bush administration to choose between the pro-business forces in the Republican Party and the leaders of Hispanic organizations, most of whom are strongly supportive of labor protections.

In the case of immigration liberalization, said Charles Kamasaki, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, an administration program with the potential to achieve at least a partial political breakthrough among Hispanic voters would have to include a legalization program with "an eventual path to citizenship, and real labor rights."

He noted the strong levels of Hispanic support Bush received as Texas's governor, as well as support given to Republican mayors Rudolph Giuliani and Richard Riordan of New York and Los Angeles, respectively.

"There is some basis for the argument that Republicans who make significant policy changes and distinguish themselves from the anti-immigration wing of their party can make very significant inroads on the Hispanic vote," Kamasaki said.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors more controls on immigration, has prepared a detailed study by University of Maryland political scientists James G. Gimpel and Karen Kaufmann. Their analysis suggests that liberalized immigration will not only fail to win votes for the GOP, but that it will backfire by strengthening the Democratic Party over time.

The report indirectly disputes the arguments made by White House political strategist Karl Rove and GOP polling specialist Matthew Dowd.

The report says survey data, including an exhaustive poll of Hispanics by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University, show that Hispanics who are not yet citizens are more inclined to support Democrats than Hispanics who are citizens. It also says there is "no evidence that a significant percentage of the Latino vote is 'in play.' "

Others also note that the Hispanic vote is not monolithic, with Cuban Americans in Miami concerned about very different issues than Mexican Americans are in Los Angeles.

The developments of recent months have left anti-immigration groups on the defensive, forcing them to bolster their traditional lobbying arguments: that immigrants use a disproportionate share of welfare programs, increase urban and suburban sprawl, lower wages and contribute to environmental deterioration.

"They [pro-immigration forces] have got more of the cards in their deck," said Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who is outraged by some colleagues' support of outright amnesty for illegal immigrants. "You have to ask a member of the Congress if they are in fact in support of upholding the laws of the land."

Anti-immigration forces are banking on extended debate to revive substantial public opposition to immigration, which pits the two major forces in the Republican Party, business and social conservatives, against each other.

"As this drags out, people are going to pay attention, and the people it is going to make the most angry are the base of the Republican Party -- law and order voters," said Steven A. Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies.

One of the difficulties facing anti-immigration groups is that key interest groups and constituencies have become convinced of the legitimacy of liberalized immigration.

The most dramatic of these conversions has been within the AFL-CIO, which for years saw immigration as a source of cheap labor that competed with union workers and forced wages down. In 2000, the AFL-CIO abandoned this policy and has since become a leading proponent of amnesty and legalization for undocumented workers, who are now seen as a key organizing target and a source of new members.

"There are immigrants now everywhere where people work," said John Wilhelm, president of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union and chair of the AFL-CIO immigration committee. "The labor movement has embraced that reality and returned to its roots" to become "a labor movement that is being rebuilt by immigrants," he said.

Similarly, for key sectors of the business community, immigrants -- legal and illegal -- are a critical source of workers, often performing jobs that U.S. citizens will not take. For much of the service, restaurant, hotel and construction sectors, immigrant labor has become essential.

"There are not enough people. In spite of the increasing unemployment rate, you can't find enough people to fill the jobs," Brown said.

For religious groups, particularly the Catholic Church, Hispanic immigration has been a huge source of parishioners.

"We estimate that about 70 percent of the Latinos in this country are Catholic," said Kevin Appleby, director of migration policy for the Bishops' Conference. "The primary consideration of the church is that legalization promotes family unity."

He noted that a large number of immigrant children, many of whom are Catholic, live in "mixed status" families, in which an immediate relative, often a parent, lives illegally in this country.