Government shutdown overshadows immigration reform efforts

Immigration reform advocates rallied around the country this weekend. For now, it looks like bitter Washington partisanship and the government shutdown have stalled any chance of reform.

|
Shari Vialpando-Hill/The Las Cruces Sun-News/AP
Jose Gonzalez of El Paso, Texas, carries the American flag as he leads hundreds of marchers in Las Cruces, N.M. Saturday in a rally for immigration reform.

With immigration reform eclipsed by the federal government shutdown, advocates hoped to regain momentum with weekend marches and rallies in numerous cities.

"This marks the beginning of the escalation for the pro-immigrant-rights movement," says Dawn Le, deputy campaign manager for the Alliance for Citizenship in Washington.

Reform supporters want lawmakers locked in a bitter political fight over funding to act on immigration legislation that would legalize an estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally. The  Senate in June approved a bill that also incorporates beefed-up border enforcement but the full House has yet to vote on a measure.

Some experts say it won't be easy for reform advocates to steer the attention of Congress back to immigration.

"There's a loss of energy in all of this," says Josiah Heyman, an anthropologist at the University of Texas at El Paso whose teaching and research focus on immigration.

While Professor Heyman still counts immigration reform as viable, he says the shutdown throws a wrinkle in what already was a volatile debate.

"The circumstances right now mean that there's a great deal of rigidity," he adds. "There's an increasingly isolated, very conservative faction of representatives in the House that's an obstacle."

That the marches and rallies coincide with the shutdown is "terrible timing," says Lisa Magaña, a political scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe. "Everything is being so overshadowed by the government being closed down right now."

The breakdown came after the Republican-controlled House passed a spending bill excluding funding for the Affordable Care Act that the Democratic Senate and President Obama want fully funded.

Some of the same Republicans pushing against the president's signature health care law also oppose granting permanent residency and eventual citizenship to immigrants, adds Professor Magaña, who teaches in ASU's School of Transborder Studies.

"It's the same sort of thinking," she adds. "And my understanding is that they don't have to worry about their constituents because immigration is not a big issue in their district."

An immigration reform bill that House Democrats unveiled Oct. 1 carries little weight, she says. "It's more about trying to show that Democrats are more supportive of immigration reform and Republicans  are not. I think it's just all sort of branding right now."

But as deep political divisions rage over the budget and members of Congress prepare for potentially tough negotiations on whether to increase the limit on federal borrowing to avert default, Ms. Le holds  the view that immigration reform can serve to unite.

"Right now, during this partisan gridlock period, immigration reform is the one lone bipartisan issue that's before Congress right now," says the campaign manager, whose advocacy group coordinated events in what was dubbed a National Day of Action.

Although not as large as the 2006 marches that revealed the sheer numbers of immigrants in the country without legal status, the Saturday demonstrations drew throngs of reform advocates to the streets. From Phoenix to Miami and Los Angeles to New York City, protesters aimed to keep the need for immigration reform front and center while attempting to "break through the logjam that's happening," Le adds.

In Phoenix, reform advocates marched through the city's downtown, training the spotlight on the Obama administration's record number of deportations and young immigrants whose lack of legal status means  limited options for a college education.

"No one in the movement is going to give up," says Tony Navarrete, operations manager for Promise Arizona, an immigrant-advocacy group in the Arizona capital.

"We really need to have a vote on immigration reform, that's one of the messages we're going to keep pushing," he adds. "We're going to continue to fight for our families because this is an issue that must  transcend divisive politics."

While the demonstrations could fall on deaf ears because of the shutdown, they remind that immigration reform is still on the table, at least from the perspective of supporters, says Tom Wong, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego.

"It's also reminding the advocacy community in general that this fight is long from being over and that at this stage, in the congressional debate, the fight is becoming much more difficult."
 
 Mr. Wong created a model based on population and other data from states and districts that in the spring accurately predicted Senate passage of an immigration reform bill. For now, he is sticking to his  prediction that the House will fail to pass such legislation by 15 to 20 votes.

"If the political fight drags on, it may further muddy any hopes for immigration reform to move forward," he adds.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Government shutdown overshadows immigration reform efforts
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/1006/Government-shutdown-overshadows-immigration-reform-efforts
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe