Lack of Progress on Immigration Reform Rankling Latinos

This post first appeared on the Daily Kos.

Probably the last thing Pelosi and Obama need right now:

The Senate language would prohibit illegal immigrants’ buying healthcare coverage from the proposed health exchanges. The House-passed bill isn’t as restrictive, but it does — like the Senate bill — bar illegal immigrants from receiving federal subsidies to buy health insurance.

Hispanic Democrats say they haven’t moved from their stance that they will not vote for a healthcare bill containing the Senate’s prohibitions.

They claim that while it may be politically popular in some parts of the country to ban illegal immigrants from using their own money to buy coverage, it is not good policy. Illegal immigrants will, one way or another, need medical attention in the United States, and it would be cheaper and more humane to provide them coverage if they pay for it. Otherwise, they will seek treatments in the nation’s emergency rooms, effectively increasing medical costs.

This wouldn’t be an issue, if Congress and the president had passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill the last year. Still, this is probably just a ploy to extract a firm commitment to tackle the issue after health care reform passes.

President Barack Obama vowed to continue partnering with congressional leaders on comprehensive immigration reform.

Obama, after a meeting with Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who are working to craft a comprehensive immigration bill, pledged support for the senators and other leaders to craft an immigration reform bill.

“Today I met with Senators Schumer and Graham and was pleased to learn of their progress in forging a proposal to fix our broken immigration system,” Obama said in a statement following the meeting. “I look forward to reviewing their promising framework, and every American should applaud their efforts to reach across party lines and find commonsense answers to one of our most vexing problems.”

Schumer and Graham have been working to put together a bill to win bipartisan support, upon which some congressional leaders have hoped to move this year.

You legalize the nation’s 11-13 million undocumented immigrants, then it doesn’t matter whether undocumented immigrants are barred from coverage under the health care reform bill. It’s pretty much that simple.

Aside from the policy consideration, however, is the political:

Candidate Obama promised to make immigration reform a priority during his first year in office, and the Latino vote surged to 10 million, from 7.8 million in 2004, and swung eight percentage points toward the Democrats.

Latinos gave 59 percent of their vote to John Kerry in 2004 but gave Obama 67 percent in 2008. The immigrant Latino vote expanded from 52 percent for Kerry to 75 percent for Obama, enough to deliver Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Florida — and arguably North Carolina, Indiana and Pennsylvania [...]

In its first year, the Obama administration was on track to deport some 400,000 immigrants — far more than during George W. Bush’s last year in office. On the anniversary of Obama’s inauguration, Hoy, the Spanish-language newspaper in Chicago, ran a full-page picture of the president on its cover under the headline “Promesa Por Cumplir” (”Unkept Promise”). The sense of betrayal among Latinos — especially immigrants — is palpable, just as it was after Obama’s 2006 vote on the border fence.

As president, Obama has followed the cerebral strategy that increased enforcement will win support for immigration reform. But if there is no serious progress on the issue, many disillusioned Latinos will stay home in November.

And it’s not even just Latinos, but a significant and growing Asian population as well.

Early whip counts are that we can depend on 40 Democrats and one Republican — Lindsey Graham. 3-5 Democrats are definite no’s (Ben Nelson, Robert Byrd, and Kent Conrad, I think), the rest are gettable. On the Republican side, there are about 30-32 definite no’s, leaving another 9-11 possible pickups, like the Maine twins, Voinovich, Lugar and even McCain — bitter as he is over getting practically no Latino support in 2008. Then again, Graham claims that if health care reform passes via reconciliation, that immigration reform is dead because Republicans won’t want to work with Democrats.

Here’s the thing, though. Even if supporters can’t get to 60, and this will be subject to the Mother Of All Filibusters, have the vote anyway. Show Latinos you are fighting for them. People don’t mind losses. In fact, losing votes are a great way to identify roadblocks to reform. What people hate are Democrats making promises, then helplessly shrugging their shoulders because they don’t have 60 votes.

People voted for Democrats because they promised to fight for issues they cared deeply about. This is one of the issues they promised to deliver on. Now they should either deliver, or hold a vote to show Latinos and Asians who it is standing in the way of reform. If Lindsey Graham wants Latinos and Asians to see his party once again standing en masse in the way of a key priority, all the power to him.

Nothing energizes voters than a good villain, and heavens knows, Democrats need their base voters energized.