It doesn't matter if you're a xenophobe or a zapatista. Immigration, like Iraq, is something that everyone seems to have an opinion on, even if they didn't a month ago. For people in charge like politicians, complicated, highly-charged issues are what make up so-called "third rail" political issues. Add that to a laundry list of pre-existing national crises, mid-term elections, and weak support for the powers that be, and immigration's potential jolt to the errant politico could have sent Marty McFly back in time. Flux capacitors be damned, our leaders are trying to create a new breed of wedge issue. See if this next part makes sense, anyway.
The classic wedge issue is a clear "with us or against us" mandate that turns people's stomachs and makes voters fear for our future as a nation, without having any national tangible cost or consequence either way. You can't be sort-of against flag burning, or gay marriage. Flags can't be sort-of burned, and, er, gays can't be kind-of married (rhyming epithet omitted). Immigration is clearly different. It does matter. Politicians have to make real choices involving real trade-offs, but since redistricting has made elections into Grecian-Formula-cum-boring-tie-beauty-pageants, most congressional representatives are best off taking a position that galvanizes their already homogenous districts, making the dangerous combination of a wedge issue that... matters. Since politicians have little incentive to compromize on the policies they support, we get the gridlock we know and love, or, if it's an issue that really matters to people, we might get nasty, divisive radicalism.
If we build a wall along the Rio Grande and make illegal presence in the United States a felony, we build a 2000-mile Berlin Wall in the desert that may or may not work, a need to check the papers of every brown-skinned person in acid-washed jeans, and we lose the cheap labor that our economy has been dependent on to keep us afloat in the high seas of the globalized economy ever since at the beginning of the decade. But a lot of people are for this. They work, live, and play with like-minded people, watch news produced expressly for them and their ilk, and are rarely, if ever challenged in their beliefs. To me, they sound like the Hoennickers and Khruschevs of ages past who would build a wall that limits people's economic freedoms to preserve some imaginary status-quo, or to protect us against some vague threat.
If we do nothing or encourage more of the same, we import Mexico and Central America's social problems along with hard-working, mostly decent individuals. Gangs like Mara Salvatrucha, that got their starts on the streets of Managua, Guatemala City and Tegucigalpa, would continue to operate with impunity in St. Louis, Boise and Boston. Universal border problems of smuggling, drugs, prostitution, bootleged DVDs and fake Nikes would creap slowly north. We would codify the creation of a permanant underclass of non-voting laborers with limited legal recourse. Gray and black markets would expand as distribution networks of people and goods snake their way down interstates on Greyhound busses. But for politicians whose constituents uniformly share these fears, doing nothing is not an option.
The best thing that Bush could have done for the Republican congressmen up for reelection in November was to "go soft" on the immigration issue by suggesting a sensible guest worker program, and a policy of normalizing inflows of latin labor. Something's afoot when the most loyalty-obsessed leader in American history allows party apparatchnicks to differ with him on a substantive issue. Just when congressmen started to miss campaign year photo-ops with the president because of "traffic problems," he sets them free to indulge the carnivorous appetites of their voters with a bill that would further criminalize aliens' status, along with a smorgasbord of populist-fascist provisions to deport or imprison anyone with an accent caught in Jordasche jeans without ID. Just when scandals, Iraq and Katrina made it look like Republican voters were losing interest in their party, they are given a new fight, new blood to spill in the road to white, christian victory. To avoid a Democratic reconquista, threaten a Mexican one.
Bringing up immigration on an election year would be nuts if it wasn't self-serving. People are calling this classic Clintonian triangulation. I think I'll call it issue surfing instead. Unlike Clinton circa 1993, Bush is neither popular, nor up for re-election. With nothing to lose except the image of a radical, he is positioning himself to the benefit, and not to the detriment of his congress. Issue surfing looks like this: take a wedge issue, and ride it down the middle while everyone else does the tricks that impress the judges. President gets to look good as a stately, lame duck moderate looking for a legacy, a grizzled veteran of the ebb and flow of politics. Congress gets to look like independent-minded leaders who have nothing to do with the old vet. They can take their voters' values to Washington, provided they don't eat coral on the way.
The only good news for the GOP is that people don't associate their individual representatives with the party's malfeasance. Given that, Issue Surfing is the only unified strategy I can think of that might help those representatives get reelected. Meanwhile, Bush can do whatever he wants, and for most candidates these days, the more his plans differ from their own, the better.
The loose end in this gameplan that is everyone in the middle, or outside the GOP's direct influence. Immigrants' rights groups and everyone else who isn't white and/or fearful remain a political wildcard. Nevertheless, in a gerrymandered, 50-50 nation, at least your 50 will show up at the polls in November. I think this is really more of the same from Karl Rove. Bring out the base through fear and outrage, don't worry about the middle so much. Only this time it's for the benefit of a desperate congress. This makes even Bill Frist look fiery. Genius strategy for handling a nasty political situation. Shame it's an issue that could spark a race war.
The good news: Even though the incentives behind these two presidents' actions are different, I see no reaon why this administration's strategy won't work for this congress as well as Clinton's did in '94.
End result of triangulation or issue surfing: president looks good and moderate, congress looks bad and crazy. Or so goes the theory.
