Anti-immigration forces are gaining new clout in a U.S. political climate characterized by fear and vulnerability. Until recently, immigration restrictionists had been unable to generate much interest in their draconian proposals to crack down on all immigration flows. However, the surge in xenophobic sentiment associated with the “global war on terrorism” and widespread job loss have given rise to a new wave of anti-immigrant initiatives.
This backlash against immigrants has, until recently, been most visible in local and state politics. National anti-immigrant lobbies such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform and NumbersUSA have long supported restrictionist bills in Congress, but they have had more success working closely with anti-immigrant forces outside the Beltway.
Like most local and state restrictionist initiatives, the November state ballot measure “Protect Arizona Now,” is linked to white supremacist and nativist groups. The measure would sharply curtail all state government services to
immigrants. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, playing to anti-immigrant sectors led by such blatantly racist groups as the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, last month vetoed a measure authorizing the issuance of drivers’ licenses to undocumented residents.
But on Capitol Hill immigration restrictionists have, until recently, failed to gain much traction for their proposals to reduce visas for refugees, deny U.S. citizenship to the U.S.-born children of “illegal aliens,” prohibit the granting of amnesty to anyone who entered the U.S. illegally, and accelerate
deportation procedures by limiting appeals and hearings. However, the immigration restrictionists, led by Tom Tancredo (R-Col.), succeeded in attaching many of their anti-immigration proposals to the intelligence reform bill passed by the House on October 8th.
The Immigration Reform Caucus, created in 1999 by Tancredo, has more than 70 members. The caucus, while rhetorically committed to “addressing the positive and negative consequences of our immigration policies,” espouses an alarmist view of immigrants. It warns that there is a “widespread problem of voting by illegal aliens” and “an explosive growth of legal immigration.” The caucus also raises concerns about illegal immigration flows, calling for increased border and law enforcement.
The website of Tancredo’s Immigration Reform Caucus bears many similarities to the websites of nativist, vigilante,
supremacist organizations such as the American Border Patrol and Council of Conservative Citizens. It features two television documentaries—titled “Terrorist Alley” and “The Terrorist Next Door”—in which Tancredo warns, providing no hard evidence whatsoever, that the U.S.-Mexican border offers an open door to Islamist terrorists. The homepage of the caucus displays a photo of a grave with a wooden cross bearing the words: “No Olvidado” (Not Forgotten). Beneath the photo the authors of the caucus webpage placed the following caption: “The
residents of Imperial County, the poorest in California, face Constant Reminders of the Costs of Rampant Illegal Immigration, which Imposes Incredible Financial Strains—sometimes in the Least Likely Ways.” The concern of Tancredo and members of the restrictionist caucus is not the thousands of immigrants dying as they attempt to cross the desert borderlands, but the cost to the public of burying them.
When the 9/11 Commission issued its final report, Congressman Tancredo said that he found “the lack of border enforcement recommendations troubling.” Repeating his
one-note message, Tancredo warned, “The report fails to
recognize one fundamental fact. Unless we dedicate the energy required to shore up our first line of defense—border security and immigration enforcement—many of the other
recommendations will be cosmetic at best, and at worst, completely irrelevant.”
Tancredo’s tag-ons to the House Intelligence Reform Bill
bring through the back door measures that he and other
anti-immigration restrictionists have been unable to pass on direct votes. The House Bill—approved in a 282-134 vote—
differs considerably from both the Senate version and the 9-11 commission recommendations in that it contains restrictions on immigrants seeking political asylum, a curtailment of
due-process rights for noncitizens, and federal restrictions on the type of documentation that government entities can accept as valid forms of identification.
The House bill, which was supported by the House leadership despite concerns expressed by the White House, also includes a provision that would abbreviate the deportation procedures for immigrants who have been in this country for less than five years. According to the liberal National Immigration Forum, “These ‘drive-by’ deportations, with no immigration judge, no due process, no day in court, and no realistic opportunity to defend one’s self from swift deportation, have no business being in a bill that purports to implement the 9-11 Commission’s recommendations.”
In reference to the anti-immigration provisions in the House bill, Leaders of the Family Steering Committee for the 9-11 Commission, an organization of relatives of the attack, said that the intelligence reform bill should be “unencumbered by language or amendments containing
extraneous provisions or extending or expanding the Patriot Act.” House Majority Leader Tom DeLay defended the House bill saying that the additional items were “just commonsense things we need to fix.”
Once again, intelligence issues have become a conduit for other agendas. After the 9-11 attacks, the neoconservatives together with Rumsfeld and Cheney launched operations to manipulate U.S. intelligence as part of their game plan to invade Iraq, despite the lack of hard evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or ties with al-Qaida.
This time the immigration restrictionists in the Republican Party are bending intelligence reform to their own interests.
In a gambit to win Latino votes, while at the same time
supporting the big business agenda that supports increased flows of cheap immigrant labor, President Bush had earlier in his administration expressed support for an immigrant amnesty bill and new guest-worker provisions—proposals that were bitterly denounced by immigration restrictionists such as Tancredo.
Now, caught in a tight presidential race, the president
and Senate Republicans may find it difficult to reject the
restrictionist provisions inserted into the intelligence reform bill by House Republicans. As they well know, the immigration restrictionists constitute part of the party’s core social conservative constituency. And just as the president has counted on the fear-mongering and nationalism associated with the “global war on terrorism” to boost his own political standing, the immigration
restrictionists have now also
opportunistically moved their own anti-immigrant agenda by appealing to issues of national security.
It’s likely that over the next few weeks give-and-take politics will result in the passage of an intelligence reform bill. But whatever the final outcome, it’s clear that the hard-line
anti-immigrant forces—from the vigilante units along the
border to the Immigration Reform Caucus—have moved their restrictionist agenda into the center of the new U.S. politics of fear and hate.
Tom Barry is Policy Director of the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC), online at www.irc-online.org. Barry directs the IRC’s Right Web project.
