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Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Best-laid plans ripped by immigration issue
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When tens of thousands of people take to their feet in suburban Atlanta, that means something.
The Monday march through the immigrant section of DeKalb County - think on the peculiarity of that phrasing - was the equal, perhaps the superior, of another march nearly 20 years ago in Forsyth County.
That demonstration drew 30,000 and was a last hurrah of the old guard of the Civil Rights era. The target was Forsyth County’s racial insularity - a certain eagerness to cling to a culture long out of favor.
Given Forsyth County’s sky-high economic trajectory, the outcome and impact of that 1987 march through suburbia was never in doubt. Growth settles many arguments in Atlanta.
The same can’t be said for Monday’s march.
The immigration issue has turned out to be just as volatile as Republicans feared - perhaps because growth is seen as a cause, not the solution.
Business was the quiet, practical force that pushed the South out of its segregated cocoon. This time, not a few people think that a corporate thirst for cheap labor is why we’re having this discussion.
Let us point out just a few patches where the illegal immigration issue has ripped some carefully stitched political fabric.
Catholics are the fastest-growing religious denomination in the South.
For three years, Gov. Sonny Perdue and the state GOP have nurtured a permanent alliance between conservative Protestants and like-minded Catholics over issues such as school vouchers and abortion.
Illegal immigration has become the fly in that ointment. Last week, the archbishop of Atlanta and the bishop of Savannah loudly expressed their disappointment that the Legislature had passed S.B. 529.
That’s the bill designed to satisfy the Republican base on illegal immigration, without threatening GOP business interests. Gov. Sonny Perdue is all but obliged to sign it.
The fact that Catholic criticism was aimed at a specific piece of legislation was highly unusual - and doesn’t bode well for an alliance of the magnitude Republicans might have once hoped for.
In a conversation last week, a top Republican confessed he was worried about the angry direction in which this debate was headed. That was immediately followed by an exchange between Casey Cagle and Ralph Reed, the two GOP candidates for lieutenant governor.
“Reed flip-flops on illegal alien amnesty,” was the headline over the Cagle press release.
Cagle’s opposition research crew had discovered a transcript of Reed appearing on MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country” in January 2003.
But the most important fact that Cagle didn’t mention: Reed was appearing as a spokesman for the Bush/Cheney ‘04 re-election campaign.
Said Joe Scarborough: “Ralph, as you know, a lot of conservative Republicans are very angry with the president’s plan to grant, in effect, what they believe is amnesty for illegal aliens who work in America.
“Why is he doing that?”
Said Reed: “No. 1, this is a much more conservative policy than the Reagan policy of 1986 of blanket amnesty.
“What Reagan did was, he said to everyone who was in the country illegally, you can achieve citizenship. This president has not done that. This is a guest worker program that does not encourage law-breaking and doesn’t encourage illegal immigration.
“They have to go in and register. They have to have a job. They have pay to a fee. The employer has to certify that they attempted to hire an American citizen and couldn’t.
“They have a three-year period, renewable for three more years, that doesn’t guarantee them a green card and doesn’t guarantee them citizenship…..
“This is a responsible policy by the president. And he should be applauded for allowing a problem that has festered for decades and to grab the bull by the horns and fix it.”
And what’s Reed not saying? He’s not saying that in a post-911 world, Bush’s proposal to fix the country’s immigration problem was an immediate flop - denied if not denounced by most Republican leaders in the South.
Perhaps America’s post-Bush period started last year, in one of Reed’s first appearances as a candidate. Reed very bluntly said he was against amnesty in any form — a decision to put air between himself and the president for whom he once spoke.
Cagle’s unlikely to let the argument go. Prepare for many arguments over the meaning of the word “amnesty.� And more rents in the political fabric.
Another sign of the post-Bush era
Gingrich doesn't recommend a pull-out in Iraq, but a "pull back." And calls occupation an "enormous mistake."
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Words on Iraq from former House speaker and possible presidential candidate Newt Gingrich: “It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003. We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it.”
The venue was the University of South Dakota. Here is the entire article.
