Immigration Reform in Living Color

(Editor's Note: this is a slightly edited version of a story originally posted Sunday on MarcCooper.com.)

Saturday saw the largest political demonstration in the history of Los Angeles, and one of the biggest in recent American history.

A half-million people or more flooded two dozen blocks of downtown L.A. to give voice to some sort of rational, realistic immigration reform.

For some months now I have been warning readers that the immigration issue would break wide open this season -- and here it is in full, living color. Similar demonstrations the past couple of weeks drew 100,000 or more in Illinois, more than that in Denver, and tens of thousands in Phoenix and other cities. Similar protests are scheduled through April 10 as the U.S. Senate begins formal debate on reform this coming Tuesday. (If you have fallen behind in this story, you can catch up by reading one of my overview stories here or here.)

I'm struck by several aspects of this story. Primarily by the way neither party can properly get a hold of this issue. Demographics and global economics are simply racing ahead of any practical political response. The Republicans are deeply divided over the issue. Even as the half-million or so were marching in the streets Saturday, President Bush was on the radio more or less endorsing the protestors' two key demands: that a legal channel be created for the immigration already happening, and that some legal acknowledgement be given to the 12 million "illegals" already living here. Viva Bush!

The Democrats are less divided and generally more inclined toward reform. But can you name even two prominent national Democrats who have taken up this cause in a serious way? (One is Ted Kennedy who, along with John McCain, has co-authored the most sensible reform proposal currently under consideration).

As I have argued previously, what we are currently experiencing is the greatest wave of cross-border migration in recorded history -- a virtual "exodus" of millions from a failed Mexican economy to a country where the wage level is 10-20 times higher. Politicians can only come up with after-the-fact gestures, but policy itself (and walls and fences) will do little to nothing to alter the flow.

My otherwise smart guy friends, Mickey Kaus and Bill Bradley have surely gone off the deep end on this one. They both conjecture that these giant marches, full of Mexican flags and Mexicans chanting 'Mexico! Mexico!' are inviting a virulent nativist backlash. They point to increased voter turnout in favor of the restrictive Prop 187 in California after a similar (and smaller) protest march in 1994. That was then. This is now.

The current situation is not analagous to 1994. There is no hot-button ballot proposition up for a vote this season. And the nativist backlash is already here. The media suck-up to the miniscule Minuteman show of a year ago established an ugly frame for the national debate. The House has already acted in a toxic manner when last December it passed an outrageous and impossible-to-implement measure that would make all illegals (and their employers) into felons. While that bill will not become law per se, the Senate is considering some measures almost as Neanderthal.

It seems to me that when an entire population -- who, after all, cleans our offices, cuts our lawns, serves our food, makes our beds, tends to our children and pays taxes but gets no refunds -- is threatened with criminalization, it has the right and necessity to politically mobilize. It's asking them a lot, don't you think, to remain silent and impassive as their arrest and deportation are actively being debated?

One other point: the white backlash of 1994 was immediately followed by a counter-backlash. An enraged and energized Latino constituency accelerated its entrance into citizenship and onto the voter rolls, and within four years it steamrollered the California GOP -- a flattening from which California Republicans may never recover.