Hispanic groups have welcomed President Bush’s immigration proposal as a “good sign” that the issue may rise to the front of politics, though they say it appears to be aimed at political gain more than successful passage in Congress.
“On one hand, people really appreciate the addressing of the issue, but the concern is this is going to be done hastily, and in turn it is going to fuel anti-immigrant sentiment,” said Luis Arteaga, executive director of the Latino Issues Forum in San Francisco.
He compared it to the election-eve conversion by Gov. Gray Davis in California last year, when the Democrat, after two prior vetoes, finally signed legislation making undocumented aliens eligible for driver’s licenses.
“Even the people who wanted to see it passed didn’t like the way it worked out,” Mr. Arteaga said.
A couple of weeks later, California voters recalled Mr. Davis and replaced him with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Austrian-born actor opposed the license measure, and polls showed that the stance helped him and hurt Mr. Davis.
Coming at the beginning of an election year, the timing of the Bush proposal also caused some advocates to say that they were being used as political pawns.
“The details of the proposal, however, reveal that this is at best an empty promise, and at worst a political ploy,” said Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza.
Mr. Bush last week laid out principles for changing the U.S. immigration system, including allowing the 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens in the country to apply for guest-worker status. The president also proposed a general increase in legal immigration to the United States.
Mr. Bush met with Mexican President Vicente Fox yesterday in Monterrey, Mexico, where Mr. Fox endorsed Mr. Bush’s principles and urged the U.S. Congress to pass the proposal quickly.
Adam Segal, director of the Hispanic Voter Project at Johns Hopkins University, said the new initiative marks a return to Mr. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, when he tried “to raise the comfort level that Hispanics outside Texas had with Bush and the Republican Party.”
Many conservative activists, including key Republican leaders in Congress, said the proposal appears to reward aliens for their illegal behavior by making them legal and allowing them to enter the regular process for permanent residence.
Still, Mr. Segal said, the measure might be enough to help Mr. Bush win states with large Hispanic populations, such as New Mexico, which he lost by a few hundred votes in 2000.
The Bush administration vehemently denies that the plan amounts to amnesty.
Mr. Segal explained that some Hispanics regard the Bush proposal, by contrast, as placing too much emphasis on illegals seeking work, not citizenship.
“What he hasn’t done is answer criticisms about how a Bush administration beyond 2004 will take steps to help immigrants who are living in this country and want to stay here and continue to live here, rather than those who are here to work,” he said.
A poll by Latino Opinions in the summer of Hispanics in the country found that 75 percent thought it important to reduce illegal immigration by increasing the flow of legal workers. And 87 percent said they would support an effort to “normalize the status of illegal immigrant workers in this country who have a clean criminal record.”
The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials sees the proposal as “a good sign” that Mr. Bush is refocusing on the issue, after having put aside looser immigration rules after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
But the organization said the principles Mr. Bush laid out “do not focus enough on offering hardworking immigrants a path to citizenship and full participation in our society.”
Not all the groups agreed that the timing was a purely political move on Mr. Bush’s part.
Antonia Hernandez, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the group is “optimistic that [Mr. Bush] will come through with concrete legislation before the November election.”
But for now, Mr. Bush’s principles leave too many questions, including what happens after someone’s guest-worker terms expire.
MALDEF officials and Mr. Arteaga, pointing to past guest-worker programs, wanted to know more about whether the workers would have the same rights against their employers as American citizens do.
“Is this going to open up the floodgates of abuses?” Mr. Arteaga wondered.
The Congressional Hispanic Conference, made up of Hispanic and Portuguese Republicans in Congress, gave the president credit for raising the issue.
“Reforming our nation’s immigration laws is critical for our nation’s security, as well as the Hispanic and Portuguese American communities,” the conference said in a statement. “By continuing to focus national attention on this important issue, the president has ensured a national debate in which the CHC is looking forward to participate.”
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