Immigration Reform: Is It Dead? Where Is It Heading?

Will we ever get back to comprehensive immigration reform? That's the issue on the minds of many progressive reformers as they continue to battle the steady barrage of propaganda from conservative talk radio seeking to blame undocumented immigrants for every imaginable societal ill -- from global warming to overcrowded public schools, bloated welfare rolls, deteriorating inner-city neighborhoods, rising street crime and most recently, identity theft.

And make no mistake about it: For all its shallow meanness, nativist propaganda is having a major policy impact -- in the introduction of hundreds of new state and local anti-immigration proposals, in the stepped-up federal immigration raids on workplaces, and in the unprecedented rewriting of government rules to allow Social Security records to be used to target undocumented workers.

But despite these setbacks, many activists remain hopeful that once the current U.S. presidential campaign ends, the political tide will shift away from immigrant scapegoating, fear-mongering and repression. John McCain and Barack Obama are among the U.S. Senate's strongest supporters of comprehensive reform, and flush from victory, either should have considerable leverage with Congress to pass a new reform bill granting legal status to undocumented workers.

But don't be so sure.

For one thing, the complexion of the Congress is not likely to change dramatically in November 2008. Democrats in the House and Senate will likely win some seats -- especially in the House -- but probably not enough in the Senate to make immigration reform filibuster-proof.

Moreover, to a certain extent, the damage is already done. The mood in much of the country has turned ugly, and unless the economy begins turning around, anti-immigrant sentiments will remain strong, stoked by the right's relentless propaganda.

Activists were hoping that many of the new state and local anti-immigration proposals would be overturned by the courts -- and while some initial proposals were, many others, like Arizona's draconian crackdown on employers hiring undocumented workers, have so far survived court challenges. Unless voters in these jurisdictions decide to rescind the controversial measures, they are likely to survive -- at least for now.

But the main reason for doubting major progress on immigration reform may be far simpler: While the consensus on the need for reform is strong, there are still fundamental disagreements in the U.S. political establishment about exactly what needs to be reformed -- and how.

The "Grand Bargain" -- A Myth?

Despite all the heady talk of a "grand bargain" on immigration reform, last summer's immigration legislation probably foundered because of the profound -- in fact, irreconcilable -- positions that lay at the center of the bill.

Not all of these disputes centered on the fate of the estimated 10 million to 20 million immigrants currently residing in the United States illegally. While media coverage of the bill tended to focus on this contentious issue, the intervention of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., had allowed "pro" and "anti" immigrant forces to agree on a formula that would have allowed most if not all of the undocumented to become legalized and eventually qualify for citizenship -- a huge victory for the reform cause.

Instead, what really sank the bill were outstanding disputes over how the legal immigration system should function -- for families or for business -- and whether U.S. industry should have free reign to import foreign-born workers over native-born workers and to do so at the expense of workplace rights and wage standards for the native-born and immigrants alike.

In other words, it wasn't illegal immigration per se but the underlying economic class issues at the heart of the contemporary U.S. immigration system that most threatened passage of last summer's bill.