The GOP debate over immigration

In his nationally syndicated column today David Broder reminds us that there is, and has been, an intense debate inside the Republican Party over what to do about our broken immigration system. Up until late 2005 the GOP's position, as defined by the President, was to support the national effort to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform, a process that generated one of the most bi-partisan and broad-based coalitions in the Bush era and a good and thoughtful bill. This more open approach to Hispanics and their concerns doubled the GOP's share of the fast-growing Hispanic vote, and was critical to his two very close election wins in 2000 and 2004.

In 2006 the GOP Senate, prodded by Bush, actually passed Comprehensive Immigration Reform with the votes of all 44 Democratic Senators and 18 Republicans. But this more enlightened Republican strategy was rejected by the crumbling Congressional GOP, and a new strategy - call it the Sensenbrenner-Tancredo-Romney strategy - that demonized immigrants challenged the prevailing Bush approach. In 2006 the House GOP refused to even take up the Senate bill and immigration reform stalled. The President was so determined to fight the rise of this new approach that he appointed an Hispanic immigrant to be the RNC Chair in 2007.

When Senate Democrats reintroduced Comprehensive Immigration Reform earlier this year we saw the same tensions play out in the GOP. Despite its failure the final bill had key Senate Republican leaders backing a version of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, calling for keeping all 11 million undocumenteds in the country.

As Michael Gerson, President Bush's former speechwriter wrote recently in the Washington Post, the anti-immigrant sentiment that has prevailed in today's GOP if unchecked will likely cost the GOP the Presidency in 2008. 5 states with heavily Hispanic populations - AZ, CO, FL, NM and NV - won by Bush in 2004 could very easily now flip to the Democrats. Just adding the 4 Southwestern states to John Kerry's total in 2004 would have given him the Presidency.

As Broder details today there two GOP candidates - McCain and Huckabee - who have come out aggressively for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, recognizing as they do both the moral necessity of fixing our immigration system, and the political necessity for their own possible Presidential race next year. Thus as Democrats look to 2008, and the absolute requirement for them to win over the Hispanic vote - one of the most volatile swing voting blocks in American politics today - it would not be wise to assume that over the next 12 months the nativistic Tancredo strategy continues to trump the more enlightened Bush approach to immigration reform inside the GOP.

For more on immigration and the Hispanic vote read our new report, Hispanics Rising.  On Friday EJ Dionne wrote a hard-hitting column echoing these same themes.  

Update: Of course the Huckabee as enlightened on immigration narrative seemed too good to be true.  Matt Ortega found this story showing that Huckabee wants to revisit the idea that citizenship is a birthright.  As the now leading GOP candidate in Iowa says:

” ‘I would support changing that. I think there is reason to revisit that, just because a person, through sheer chance of geography, happened to be physically here at the point of birth, doesn’t necessarily constitute citizenship,’ he said. ‘I think that’s a very reasonable thing to do, to revisit that.’ “