by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
Riding the media blitz that followed the DREAM Act's recent defeat, Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) unveiled their own comprehensive immigration reform bills just before Congress adjourned last week. The bills are enforcement-heavy, party-line bills that were immediately referred to committee, where they are expected to languish for some time.
The "DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama" is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service. With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!
Today marks the completion of the second week of the DREAM Now series. I am sorry I was not able to get a letter out on Wednesday. Too much travel and not enough sleep led me to come down with a soar throat and a fever on Tuesday. Thankfully, I'm starting to recover, today. If you're not getting enough of your DREAM Now fix I recommend reading Matias Ramos' post on why he stood up during Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) speech at Netroots Nation.
Representative Luis Gutierrez has some harsh words for Democrats in Congress due to their inaction on immigration reform:
In a press conference today blasting a new anti-immigration law in Arizona, Gutierrez said, "It seems to me that is an option for people to stay home [in November]. The choices have always been framed the following way -- the Republicans are so mean-spirited and so anti-immigrant that they simply push immigrants and Latinos into the waiting arms of Democrats."
"There is a third option for those voters," he added. "They don't necessarily have to fill the ranks of the Democratic Party. They can simply stay home, and that to me is an option that is there. It is not an option that I have called for. But let me be clear: It's not an option I have ruled out... Will I rule it out in the future? Absolutely not!"
While I don't doubt Rep. Gutierrez's frustration, this threat rings extremely hollow.
First Gutierrez is really hedging here. Rather than actually calling for Latino voters to stay home out of protest, he says that he will not rule out doing so in the future. Kind of like the way he threatened to vote against the health care bill because it was too harsh on immigrants, but ended up voting for it anyway.
Second, the entire "voters will stay home unless you address their issue" threat is based on a very questionable premise. Specifically, it posits that infrequent voters, who tend to be the less engaged in civic life that other portions of the electorate, are actually heavy consumers of political news who engage in transactional, advocacy organization type politics over wonky legislative details.
This is just silly. Not many people stay home because they are pissed about the failure of the governing party to pass legislation HR 27891, or about the wording of page 391 of HR 27891. Even fewer people will publicly declare their intent to not vote for those reasons, thereby offering some sort of public proof that they exist and should be taken seriously.
Infrequent voters are generally disengaged, and don't follow political news much. Their disengagement makes it difficult to organize them into directed, collective, public action of the sort that would actually threaten members of Congress. As such, threats about groups of voters staying home just ring hollow because the people making the threats can't back them up with proof or organizational prowess.
Has there ever been a prominent advocacy campaign that successfully proved it convinced a decisive number of voters to stay home because a governing party failed to address the issues of those decisive voters? If there is, I haven't heard of it, but I'm pretty sure I never heard of it because it never happened.
Unless you can actually prove that you can convince a bunch of voters to stay home unless Member of Congress X passes legislation Y, it is probably best not to claim that you represent the interests of a large number of infrequent voters.
I wrote the other night about the Gutierrez immigration reform bill leaving out a major provision for LGBT bi-national couples to have the same access to sponsorship. Currently, if one member of an opposite-sex bi-national couple is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident and the other is foreign-born, the U.S. citizen or permanent resident can sponsor the foreign-born individual for immigration benefits. Same-sex bi-national couples do not have this option. The Uniting American Families Act, sponsored by Rep. Nadler and Sen. Leahy, is a stand-alone bill towards this right. The Gutierrez immigration reform bill as introduced does not contain it, but Gutierrez and LGBT leaders in the House are hoping to add it in committee.
What was interesting to me is how much blowback, privately, that I've heard on this. Over e-mail to me with permission:
Going along to get along is not working anymore. Why should LGBT activists be there for immigration folks if they aren't there for us?
Big surprise. Just like ENDA in 2007, we are expected to press on while others are left behind. This bill is now worthless for LGBT people.
Over the phone today, I spoke to Rachel Tiven, the executive director of Immigration Equality, and found out that there are actually a number of provisions in the bill that are very strong for the LGBT community.
Path to citizenship. Just like heterosexual individuals, there are LGBT individuals who are "out of status"- meaning they are here on a visa that has expired, or they entered without inspection over a border- who need a path to citizenship. I myself dated an Indonesian citizen who lived here for years on an H-1B visa and had employer sponsorship towards a green card, but nearly became out of status. The Gutierrez bill provides a pathway to staying in the country. This is especially important for LGBT people. Imagine being sent back to Uganda if you're gay, or Singapore, where consensual sexual relations between men is illegal.
The DREAM Act, which is aimed at teenagers who are undocumented immigrants brought in the country as children and have grown up here, is included in the Gutierrez bill, and that affects LGBT teenagers, particularly those who have come out and would face discrimination if they were forced to return to their native country.
Detainee provisions. According to Rachel, and as one might expect, LGBT people in immigration detention are especially vulnerable to harrassment by peers and by guards. Transgender detainees are especially vulnerable. The bill would improve on alternatives to detention and lessening unnecessary detention, as well as increase steps towards more humane conditions like protection from sexual abuse.
I asked Rachel about the lack of the UAFA provision, and she said:
Immigration Equality is continuing to push hard to make sure all families are included in comprehensive immigration reform. You can't call it comprehensive if it doesn't include everybody's family.
I think that's very true, and correcting the notion that this is comprehensive is a good way to get people's attention. Why the LGBT community should or should not "be there" for the immigration community, in my mind, seems to be the wrong question. LGBT people are immigrants. We have a long way to go on this bill before it is a final draft, and we need to keep pushing for the UAFA provision to be added, but it seems important to dispel the notion that a bill without it contains nothing for the LGBT community.
This may be much ado about nothing, but there is something weird going on with the provision (or lack thereof) in Gutierrez's immigration bill. The provision in question is whether same-sex partners of permanent residents can qualify for a visa sponsorship. From Roll Call (subscription required, full text was e-mailed to me):
House proponents of comprehensive immigration reform unveiled an ambitious proposal last week with much fanfare, but lost in the buzz was that their bill isn't entirely comprehensive: They intentionally left out protections for gay and lesbian immigrants.
A bill introduced earlier this year by Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) dealing with family reunification policies for immigrants was completely rolled into the reform package, except for its provisions allowing same-sex partners of permanent residents to qualify for a visa. The decision behind the little-noted change sparked friction between liberals hoping to kick off debate with an all-inclusive bill and Hispanic leaders more focused on keeping religious leaders on board with the plan.
"All the evangelists, Catholics and churches that are part of this were whacking out "over the gay and lesbian provisions," said a Democratic lawmaker familiar with negotiations on the bill.
The lawmaker said Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), who has led the House effort on comprehensive immigration reform, initially "didn't want to deal with it. At all. "Then he tried to work out a "stupid" compromise whereby the same-sex partner provisions would be in the bill but they wouldn't take effect for five or six years, said this Member.
[...]
The decision was finally made to offer an amendment to the bill when it comes before the Judiciary Committee in February.
Gutierrez denied that he wanted to keep gay and lesbian language out of his bill. "That's just not true," he said, pointing to his long-standing record of supporting the gay community. The real issue, he said, is that same-sex partner matters have not come up in past immigration reform debates and people are still figuring out how to bring the two camps together.
[...]
But other gay lawmakers were not happy about the decision to leave the provision out of the immigration overhaul bill and not as optimistic about it being attached to the measure down the road.
Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) said she was "very frustrated" because she "wanted to see a bill that was comprehensive. But we deal with political reality here." Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who earlier this year pronounced a DOMA repeal "dead" this Congress, predicted it will be a "very, very hard sell" to attach the same-sex provision to the immigration reform bill.
"Don't worry about it. It will happen through the committee process," said Honda, chairman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. "It's about strategy. It will be done."
Honda is the lead sponsor of the LGBT-friendly Reuniting Families Act, so that is reassuring. Given that this is Gutierrez's own bill and, according to the piece, he signed a letter Baldwin circulated in favor of adding the provision, perhaps the strategy here is to let Congressional Hispanic Caucus members "get comfortable in their shoes" around the provision, as Rep. Ortiz suggests in the piece, and prevent outright Catholic opposition to the bill out of the starting gate. I certainly hope so. It depends on whether by political reality Baldwin means the lack of support in the House or the legislative process. What I am most interested in is whether advocates plan to work this on two tracks, via this bill and via Nadler's Uniting American Families Act, which is aimed at this issue, or try to roll it into the immigration bill.
Steve Ralls, a spokesperson for Immigration Equality, told the LGBT newspaper DC Agenda: "We are extremely disappointed, and we pushed very hard to have our families included, but I do take Congressman Gutierrez at his word that when the issue begins to move early next year that he's going to stand with us... Congressman Gutierrez has been very clear throughout this process that, at the end of the day, when Congress takes up a multi-issue immigration reform bill, that he's going to support our inclusion."
Schumer, who is the lead on the bill in the Senate, hasn't introduced formal text but I will be interested to see where he goes on this, as well.
The other interesting (and potentially volatile) aspect will be whether, down the road, this devolves into another disagreement over whether to advance or delay the bill without the provision or not, reminiscent of the non-inclusive ENDA in 2007. LGBT activists will certainly have less reason to support the bill if it does not have the provision, but LGBT activists like myself are also not single-issue activists, and many like myself want comprehensive immigration reform as soon as possible. I hope we do not have to cross that bridge.
Stephen Colbert nailed the connection between special-interest campaign contributions and results in Congress (in a way only he could).
In the process, he also nailed Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who Colbert accuses of selling out to the Payday Loan industry for a mere $10,000. Gutierrez dramatically watered down his "Payday Loan Reform Act" in a way that will make the Payday industry billions -- at the expense of the little guy.
It was a smart investment for the Payday industry. But it's horrible for our democracy.
Colbert's segment basically made the case for why Congress needs to pass the bipartisan Fair Elections Now Act, which would put in place public funding of congressional elections (while still allowing Obama-style small donations, matching them four to one).
Check out the Colbert video for yourself on the Change Congress website by clicking here. On that page, you can also take action to get Congress to pass this crucial reform bill.
(If you want to help spread the reform message to others, share this post over email, Facebook, or Twitter. #gutierrez #politics #money. Disclosure: I work for Big Reform group Change Congress.)
Once again, just like Iowa and New Hampshire, not much movement at the top, except for Richardson moving up. Oddly enough, even though he is still ahead of Richardson in Nevada, Edwards is cutting back on staff in the state, while Richardson is expanding. This shows that no matter what the national numbers say, he really is a tier above the rest of the field. In the first three states, the campaign is clearly a four-way race between Clinton, Edwards, Obama and Richardson. Also, Romney leads on the Republican side, but to my knowledge they have yet to move up the Nevada caucus to early state status.
Progressive Dem Reverses Retirement Plans
Turns out IL-04 won't be an open seat after all, as Luis Gutierrez has reversed his retirement announcement. My bet, an this is purely conjecture, is that this reversal is some combination of really liking being in the majority, not being too thrilled with his potential replacements, and not finding his retirement possibilities very exciting. No matter the cause, it is fun to see Republican retirements starting to flow-Pryce in OH-15, Hastert in IL-14, and Pickering MS-03 this week alone-while Democrats are moving in the opposite direction. Guitierrez is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
A History Lesson on Drafts
I have to agree with Jonathan Singer when it comes to the perplexing Politico article this morning on Fred Thompson supposedly being "the closest thing to a successful draft of a presidential candidate in more than a half-century." Huh? I was not part of the Draft Clark movement, but I saw it in full-force online back in 2003. Matt, and at least a dozen other people I know, worked on that movement. Further, when Clark dropped out of the race the day after the February 10th primaries, I watched an interview with him the next morning where he specifically stated that he was "obligated" to run because of the draft movement behind him. I'm going out on a limb here and stating that is a little closer to an actual draft movement than Fred Thompson's "campaign."
Giuliani Spent 3% of Average Worker Time At Ground Zero
It turns out Rudy Giuliani only spent 29 hours at ground zero, compared to a median of 962 hours for rescue, recovery and debris removal workers. But hey, whose counting? 29 is about the same as 962, right? I think his campaign might start to need some sort of justification besides 9/11.
National, California Connection In Clinton Polls?
Here is another possible, simpler explanation for Clinton's improvement in national polls: she is opening up a huge lead in California. Recent Survey USA and Field Poll surveys confirm this, showing Clinton hovering around 50% in the Golden State, although a recent ARG poll shows no significant increase. With something crazy like one in every eight national Democrats in California, half of Clinton's 4% national increase could have come entirely from California. I don't know what she is doing out there, but it seems to be working.
Primary Calendar Super Brat Strikes Again
New Hampshire Secretary of State, and primary season super-brat, Bill Gardner is now threatening to screw Iowa too, and hold the New Hampshire caucus on January 8th. This would force Iowa to either hold their cause within just a couple days of New Hampshire, hold it after New Hampshire, or hold it in December. I'm starting to think that every single problem with the calendar rests with Gardner. It would be really funny if Iowa and New Hampshire end up at each others throats. If their alliance breaks down, and Gardner puts New Hampshire on the 8th, then I bet Michigan goes on the 12th, and all hell breaks loose. Two privileged brats who can't figure out how to divide up the spoils because one of them, New Hampshire, is brattier than the other. Hysterical.
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