The following article by James Hohmann with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve was posted on the Washington Post website September 6, 2017:
THE BIG IDEA: The House passed a Dream Act in 2010 that would have allowed illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship if they entered the United States as children, graduated from high school or got an equivalent degree, and had been in the United States for at least five years.
Five moderate Democrats in the Senate voted no. If each of them had supported it, the bill would have become law, DACA would have been unnecessary, and this manufactured political crisis now facing Congress would have been averted.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) is the only one of those five Democrats still left in the upper chamber. Two lost reelection in 2014 (Kay Hagan in North Carolina and Mark Pryor in Arkansas), and two retired (Ben Nelson in Nebraska and Max Baucus in Montana). West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said he would have opposed the bill, but he skipped the vote.
Despite being up for reelection next year in a state that Donald Trump carried by 21 points, Tester spoke out yesterday against the president’s decision to end the DACA program. Compare the press release he sent out after his “no” vote seven years ago to what he said last night:
“Illegal immigration is a critical problem facing our country, but amnesty is not the solution,” he said in Dec. 2010. “I do not support legislation that provides a path to citizenship for anyone in this country illegally.”
Discussing the exact same group of people – undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as minors — Tester said yesterday: “America’s immigration system is badly broken and needs fixing, but breaking a promise to these children–who are here through no fault of their own–is not the solution. Congress must work together, Democrats and Republicans, to secure our borders, crack down on folks illegally entering our country, and provide a way forward for innocent kids.”
Yes, this is a cautious statement. But it’s also a clear change in his position that reflects Tester’s desire to avoid the backlash he faced from his left flank in 2010 after voting no on the Dream Act.
What to know about the decision to end DACA
— Understandably, most of the media’s coverage of the Trump administration’s Tuesday announcement has focused on cleavages in the Republican ranks. The president has placed his adopted party in a bind by putting the onus on Congress to protect the 800,000 “dreamers” with a legislative fix in the next six months. Reflecting the fraught politics, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) – who is chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee – backed a bipartisan bill yesterday that would shield young immigrants from deportation and give them a pathway to citizenship.
— The untold story, though, is the degree to which Democrats are now in lockstep on what not long ago was an issue that divided them. Not a single Democrat in either chamber of Congress has expressed support for getting rid of DACA.
— This is part of a larger lurch to left in the Democratic Party on a host of hot-button issues. No matter where you’re from, it is harder than ever to be a Democratic candidate who is against gun control, abortion rights or single-payer health insurance. That doesn’t mean you cannot be, but one risks losing major donors and drawing the ire of the progressive grassroots – even if you represent a red state.
— Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), who voted against the Dream Act as a House member in 2010 and like Tester faces a tough race in a red state next year, also reversed course:
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— Others “evolved” sooner. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) voted against a 2007 version of the Dream Act, but she decided to vote for the 2010 version. And thanks to Todd Akin’s talk of “legitimate rape,” she got reelected in 2012. “My faith played a big role in my decision,” she said in a statement explaining her flip. “Ezekiel 18:20 reads: ‘The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him.’”
Yesterday she unabashedly decried Trump’s announcement. “Taking young people who were brought here through no fault of their own, and have never known another country, and kicking them out of America is as dumb as it is counterproductive,” McCaskill said. “Over 90 percent of them are in school or working and many have proudly served our country in uniform.”
— Fifteen Senate Democrats, plus a democratic socialist named Bernie Sanders, voted against a carefully crafted immigration bill in 2007 that would have created a pathway to citizenship for 12 million illegal immigrants. Ted Kennedy negotiated with George W. Bush’s White House, but the AFL-CIO mobilized against the hard-won compromise because union leaders believed that more competition in the labor force from guest workers would depress wages for the native-born.
Sanders, who joined with Jeff Sessions to kill what turned out to be the last best hope in a generation for true reform, paid a political price in the 2016 Democratic primaries for siding with organized labor over the Latino community.
“Sanctions against employers who employ illegal immigrants (are) virtually nonexistent,” the Vermont senator complained at a press conference 10 summers ago, as he stood alongside union leader Richard Trumka, now the AFL-CIO’s president. “Our border is very porous. … At a time when the middle class is shrinking, the last thing we need is to bring over, a period of years, millions of people into this country who are prepared to lower wages for American workers.”
Fast forward to this Labor Day. Speaking Monday at a breakfast sponsored by the New Hampshire AFL-CIO, Sanders called Trump’s decision to end DACA “one of the most cruel and ugly decisions ever made in the modern history of this country by a president.” The senator said Trump is “trying to divide our nation up based on the color of our skin (and) based on the country in which we were born.” “Our job as trade unionists, as our job as progressives, is to bring the American people together and to fight any and all attempts to divide us up,” Sanders told the crowd of union members.
— That 2007 vote was only a decade ago, but it feels like an eternity. In the intervening years, there really has been a sea change in Democratic politics. Not a single Senate Democrat, or Sanders, opposed the bipartisan immigration bill that passed the Senate in 2013 but never got a vote in the GOP-controlled House.
— Don’t forget the origins of the DACA order. Barack Obama signed it during the heat of the 2012 campaign in response to intense pressure from Latino leaders, who were angry that he had prioritized health care over immigration when he took office and that he was overseeing large-scale deportations. The then-president’s strategists believed (correctly) that DACA would help galvanize Latino turnout in battlegrounds like Nevada, Colorado and Florida.
Obama was not always a leader on immigration. In fact, he was often a follower. He dragged his feet for years on taking executive action, concerned about its legality, until it was clear Congress wouldn’t do anything on immigration during his presidency. In 2006, afraid of looking weak, the then-freshman senator voted for the Secure Fence Act, which authorized a barrier along the southern border. This is now the legal mechanism that Trump is using to push forward with his plans for a border wall.
Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrants, said the constellation of outside groups like his were not as organized or powerful 10 years ago. “It’s an underreported story. There really has been a shift,” he said in an interview last night. “Obama is a good example of how the electoral and movement politics underneath him shifted, and they finally adjusted to it. … Progressives generally have become much more supportive of immigration reform, and the public has become more supportive of immigrants.”
— A big part of the story is the degree to which the complexion of the party has changed. Three in four Democrats were white 25 years ago. Now, it’s just 57 percent. A breed of Blue Dogs has become endangered, if not extinct. Conservative Democrats a generation ago, especially whites in the South, are now Republicans.
— Jim Manley, who was a top aide to former Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said there might have been a time in the past when Democrats would look seriously at a proposal that tied protecting the “dreamers” to funding for a border wall. “Those kinds of deals are DOA to Democrats in both the House and Senate,” said Manley, now a Washington lobbyist.
“Two things have changed,” he emailed. “Politically, they watched the Hispanic community put Sen. Reid over the goal line in his close 2010 election. And since then, there have been others that have won because of their support. Now every smart Democrat is working hard to build alliances with Hispanic voters. But even more importantly, as they have gotten to know the community better they realize what is at stake and that something needs to be done to protect those that are here in this country.”
— The big unions, which have also become markedly more diverse, have begun to show far more solidarity with Latinos than they once did. “This indefensible act will make our workplaces less fair and less safe and will undermine our freedom to join together and fight to raise wages and standards,” Trumka said in a statement attacking Trump’s decision yesterday. “This direct attack on union members and union values only strengthens our resolve to overcome racial divisions…”
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a former member of House Democratic leadership, said the push for an immigration bill during Obama’s second term may represent a breakthrough in hindsight, even though nothing became law, because organized labor was able to successfully negotiate with the business community, represented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Rather than trying to fight the last century’s wars, I think people have figured out that we should come together,” Becerra said by phone from Sacramento last night. “Rather than fight, I think labor and the business community – which often times would use immigrants but not defend them – they see the potential. … That’s the kind of compromise you want.”
Becerra, who said he is “ready to sue” to defend DACA, said the program has allowed young immigrants to prove they can make valuable contributions to society if allowed to come out of the shadows. (One in four DACA recipients lives in California.) “What’s come to a head for folks on the Democratic side is that this is not working,” he said. “Now we’re seeing the results of not getting immigration reform done.”
Sessions says DACA ‘wind-down’ will give Congress time to legislate
— The Democratic Party platform on immigration has changed rapidly over the last decade. “We cannot continue to allow people to enter the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked,” it said in 2008. “Those who enter our country’s borders illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of the law.” This was excised by 2016, as were three references to “illegal” immigration.
In 2016, Trump successfully exploited xenophobia among working class whites who feel left behind. Hillary Clinton wrongly banked that the Hispanic share of the electorate was growing quickly enough, and that her opponent’s comments regarding Mexicans were offensive enough, to offset the grievance Trump tapped into. Trying to gin up Latino turnout, she was far less nuanced when discussing immigration than she’d been during her first campaign in 2008.
— A few prominent left-leaning pundits have been arguing this summer that Democrats are becoming too absolutist on immigration. “Look at the Democracy Fund’s voter study done in the wake of the 2016 election,” Fareed Zakaria wrote in a column last month. “If you compare two groups of voters — those who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, and those who voted for Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016 — the single biggest divergence on policy is immigration. In other words, there are many Americans who are otherwise sympathetic to Democratic ideas but on a few key issues — principally immigration — think the party is out of touch. And they are right. Consider the facts. Legal immigration in the United States has expanded dramatically over the last five decades. In 1970, 4.7 percent of the U.S. population was foreign-born. Today, it’s 13.4 percent. That’s a large shift, and it’s natural that it has caused some anxiety. The anxiety is about more than jobs. … Democrats should find a middle path on immigration. They can battle President Trump’s drastic solutions but still speak in the language of national unity and identity.”
Peter Beinart wrote that “Democrats lost their way on immigration” in a lengthy piece for last month’s Atlantic magazine: “The myth, which liberals like myself find tempting, is that only the right has changed. In June 2015, we tell ourselves, Donald Trump rode down his golden escalator and pretty soon nativism, long a feature of conservative politics, had engulfed it. But that’s not the full story. If the right has grown more nationalistic, the left has grown less so. A decade ago, liberals publicly questioned immigration in ways that would shock many progressives today. … Liberals must take seriously Americans’ yearning for social cohesion. To promote both mass immigration and greater economic redistribution, they must convince more native-born white Americans that immigrants will not weaken the bonds of national identity. This means dusting off a concept many on the left currently hate: assimilation.” Beinart faults Clinton for not talking at all about cutting down on people entering the U.S. illegally.
“National polls show majorities in support of granting legal status or citizenship to undocumented immigrants,” Thomas B. Edsall observed in the New York Times this February. “The problem for those calling for the enactment of liberal policies, however, is that immigration is a voting issue for a minority of the electorate. And among those who say immigration is their top issue, opponents outnumber supporters by nearly two to one. In this respect, immigration is similar to gun control — both mobilize opponents more than supporters.”
— Democratic strategists are hopeful that Republican infighting over DACA will work to their advantage, as primary challengers try to outdo one another in expressing support for Trump’s order. Kelli Ward, who is running against Sen. Jeff Flake in Arizona, endorsed the president’s decision to end “Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty program.” Danny Tarkanian, who is running against Sen. Dean Heller in Nevada, called DACA “unconstitutional” and said it should “never have been implemented” in a tweet yesterday. Rep. Lou Barletta, seeking the GOP nomination to run against Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey (D), commended Trump for “putting America first” and called the announcement “a victory for the forgotten American worker.”
“The decision creates yet another riff for GOP candidates navigating crowded and contentious primaries while Democratic incumbents can do what they do best: work across the aisle to find commonsense solutions that grow our economy and reflect America’s values,” said Lauren Passalacqua, communications director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
View the post here.