Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on Why Obama Is Not the Man for Immigration Reform
With the health care battle over, advocates are prodding President Obama to move on immigration reform. But as Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia notes in her latest Forbes column, that would be a great mistake. The president is too weakened after the battle over ObamaCare to be able to resist restrictionist ideas and move reform in a genuinely open direction. As Dalmia writes:
Even under the best of circumstances, immigration reform is a rancorous issue that arouses powerful nativist passions. Countering them requires a leader who can appeal to the better angels of Americans and show them how more-open immigration policies are not only consistent with their interests but also their deepest ideals of individual rights and liberties. But few believe that President Obama shares those ideals after his big government takeover of health care. And it is not clear that he even wants to make that case given that he has already strongly endorsed Graham-Schumer—without expressing any reservation about its national ID provision….