Friday, June 29, 2007
Editorial: Immigration politics ahead
With the immigration debate over, for now, in Washington, the issue is likely to heat up in Virginia. Let the voters beware.
From the RoundTable blog
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The U.S. Senate's refusal Thursday to bring a controversial immigration reform bill to a vote will increase pressure on state and local governments to police the millions of immigrant workers who have entered the country illegally.
The issue is likely to loom large in Virginia's General Assembly races this fall, setting the stage for what could be a campaign season of ugly appeals to fear and racism, both overt and subtle. Virginians worried about the impact of illegal immigration on their communities might be susceptible to demagoguery, even as they assure themselves that they are not prejudiced people.
After all, the country's most recent influx of immigrants, many -- but not all -- of whom arrived without the proper documents, has created crowded public schools and touched off sparks at economic and cultural friction points, from worries about wages to how many cars are parked at a suburban home.
Voters should recall, though, that Virginia already is attempting to take a fair and reasoned approach to immigration issues thrust on the states by the federal government's years of failure to adopt realistic immigration policies. This year, the General Assembly established a Virginia Commission on Immigration to study the impact immigrants, legal and illegal, have on the commonwealth.
The commission has not yet even been formed, much less started to work. But its charge, to look at both the positive and negative effects immigrants have in the state and then to make recommendations on legislation, is a good starting point for sound policymaking.
Unfortunately, its findings won't be available to guide reasoned debate in this year's campaigns.
So beware, Virginians, of appeals to raw emotions and promises of simple solutions to complex problems, however urgent those problems may be.
Republicans, trying to stave off losses to their assembly majorities, are looking at immigration as a wedge issue that also would distance them from an unpopular president. President Bush backed the immigration bill that was filibustered to death Thursday in the Senate.
But Democrats, too, are likely to be feeling anti-immigrant pressure from that part of their political base that looks for government to even out economic opportunity. Illegal immigrants presumably have the most immediate impact at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
After Thursday's rout of a bill deemed too soft on illegal immigrants, Tennessee's Sen. Bob Corker, an opponent, said: "Americans feel they are losing their country."
Voters need to take care to protect that part of it that makes it America: its ideals.
