The Politics of Permanent Immigration

How pro-immigration forces triumphed--and why they're likely to keep doing so.

John J. Miller from the October 1998 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

Swartz became so accomplished at orchestrating odd-bedfellow alliances on immigration that he started trying to do the same on other issues, though with less success. In the early 1990s, he reached from right to left on the issue of the flat tax, trying to convince liberal ethnic organ-izations that their members could benefit from tax reform. He made some headway, but the flat tax issue fizzled. Immigration remained his bread-and-butter cause, as well as the one he cared about most deeply.

Swartz formally quit the forum in 1989 but continued to maintain a strong presence as an independent operator. His greatest moment came in 1996, when just about everybody was starting to think that the politics of Washington had turned sharply against immigration supporters. Two politicians in particular, Sen. Simpson and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), sensed an opportunity to curtail both legal and illegal immigration.

Following the Republican victories of 1994, Simpson and Smith took over the
immigration subcommittees in their respective chambers. Working together, they crafted a broad legislative package to combat illegal immigration that also would have lowered legal immigration by roughly one-third due to numerical reductions and regulatory restrictions. The pair figured that the unpopularity of illegal immigration and the perceived need to pass a bill--any bill--against it during an election year would encourage lawmakers to vote for the accompanying restrictions on legal immigrants. By the spring of 1996, it looked
like Simpson and Smith had the votes to win. The White House signaled its willingness to sign the bill into law.

But Simpson and Smith ultimately failed, thanks to Swartz and his allies, among them Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, an influential conservative with strong grassroots connections and a direct line to the Republican House leadership. The bill's opponents successfully urged Congress to split the legislation in half and deal separately with legal and illegal immigration. This tactical move allowed worried lawmakers to pass an anti-illegal alien bill that included, among other things, an expansion of the Border Patrol. At the same time, it prevented cuts in legal immigration because there was much less political will to tackle that subject.

"We nailed them," boasts Swartz, who worked strenuously to keep his business and ethnic-group coalition together. He convinced each side that neither was served by selling out the other in a deal with Simpson and Smith. Although no clear party lines developed in Congress, most Democrats came out of the debate looking like supporters of legal immigration and most Republicans, fatefully, emerged as apparent detractors.

Pro-immigration forces never have had a stronger lobby in Washington than right now. An increasingly influential and sophisticated coalition of ethnic groups work in sync with a business community that is more supportive of immigration today than it has been at any time since the first part of the century. What's more, the Republican Party, which lately has been the political vehicle for immigration restriction, is eager to make amends with Hispanics who have abandoned the GOP in droves in recent election cycles.

The business link has proved vital. Immigrants typically gain admission to the United States because they have relatives living here or because they have special skills to offer. The ethnic organizations generally favor the former category, while business supports the latter. Whenever the immigration debate heats up, the two sides talk to each other but privately worry they'll be sold out. The National Council of La Raza fears that the National Association of Manufacturers will agree to support restrictions on family immigration in order to preserve or expand business immigration. The converse is true as well. The pro-immigration victories in 1990 and 1996 would not have been possible without support from business groups. Both sides have stuck together, and it's proven to be a mutually beneficial strategy.

One of the newest partners in the pro-immigration alliance is high-tech industry. The story of Silicon Valley's political awakening has been told before: Five or six years ago, computer companies and the federal government seemed content to ignore each other. Today, the Justice Department's antitrust actions against Microsoft and Intel are front-page news around the country. In between, a series of issues has made high-tech companies concern themselves with politics. In 1995, they fought off federal securities legislation. In 1996, they helped defeat California's Proposition 211, which would have made shareholder suits easier to file. Encryption and Internet taxation are perennial concerns.

A key issue for Silicon Valley mirrors the Chamber of Commerce's labor shortage worry: There aren't enough highly skilled workers in the United States to fill all the jobs cutting-edge firms routinely create. According to the chamber, 58 percent of companies face a skilled worker shortage today, compared to 28 percent three years ago. Since 1990, American companies have been allowed to recruit foreign-born brainpower through the H1-B Visa Program, which permits 65,000 talented immigrants to enter the United States annually. In 1997, for the first time, all 65,000 were used before the year was over. This year, they were gone by May 7.

This summer, the Senate had agreed to a bill to raise this limit to 85,000 for the rest of this year, then to 95,000 in 1999, 105,000 in 2000, and 115,000 in 2001 and 2002, before returning to 65,000 in 2003. The Clinton administration threatened a veto in July because of protests from labor unions. A vote may occur in the fall but even if it doesn't, a similar piece of legislation appears inevitable next year. The pro-immigration ethnic groups basically have sat on the sidelines during the debate.

A final factor in the transformation of immigration politics involves the Republican Party's changing attitudes. Although there remains plenty of diversity within the ranks of the GOP, Republicans have shifted from a soft anti-immigrant stance in the early 1990s under the tutelage of Simpson and Smith to a striking reluctance today even to raise the subject. They essentially have returned to the old Reagan approach of praising legal immigrants and criticizing illegal aliens, even though this masks growing opposition to immigration among movement conservatives who didn't feel strongly about it during the 1980s.

The party's troubles began with the 1994 vote on California's Proposition 187, a ballot initiative aimed at denying a range of services, including public education and nonemergency medical care, to illegal aliens. That year, Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who has a knack for attaching himself to popular issues, wedded his uncertain re-election to the initiative. The referendum's great popularity--it passed with about 60 percent support--grew out of an understandable irritation at the fact that the federal government forced states and localities to pick up virtually all of the social service costs associated with illegal immigration. Many Californians did not think they should have to pay for expenses like schooling illegal immigrant children when the federal government, which is responsible for keeping illegal aliens out of the country in the first place, wasn't doing its job. In their minds, this was a huge unfunded mandate imposed from afar on California taxpayers.

Supporters of Prop. 187 weren't careful about distinguishing between legal and illegal immigrants--a point many Democrats exploited. One TV ad promoting Wilson's re-election featured a grainy black-and-white image of Mexicans pouring across the border, with the voice-over: "They keep coming." Wilson won in November with 55 percent of the vote, but his victory came with a price: plummeting support for Republicans among Hispanics. Only 23 percent of Latinos cast ballots for Wilson--about the same as his draw among self-described Democrats, according to the Los Angeles Times exit poll.

Other GOPers fared much better among Hispanics in 1994. Texas Gov. George W. Bush, winning office for the first time, captured as much as 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in his state. But Wilson seemed the rule, Bush the exception. (This is also one of the reasons Bush is the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2000--he's perceived as better able to cut into the Democrats' base of Hispanic support than any other Republican.)

Many Republicans nevertheless believed that adopting Wilson's political themes would serve them well. Wilson, after all, did win re-election. Then came the disastrous Simpson-Smith legislation, which failed to achieve much of anything apart from painting the GOP as unfriendly to the foreign-born. That same summer, the immigration debate popped up again in the context of welfare reform. Congress passed a law that contained provisions denying noncitizens access to food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, and federal cash support for the poor, elderly, and disabled. State governments also were given the authority to limit cash welfare, Medi-caid, and other forms of public assistance. Even though many Democrats opposed the bill, President Clinton signed it. At the signing ceremony, however, he promised to repeal many of the sections affecting immi- grants. Clinton thereby got credit both for achieving welfare reform and for defending immigrant rights shortly before his re-election. Congress, on the other hand, got credit for welfare reform and also blame for being anti-immigrant.