Winning Progressive

Last week, President Obama and Multiple Choice Mitt Romney both gave speeches to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (“NALEO”) in which they addressed economic and immigration issues.  In his speech, President Obama outlined the economic issues at stake in this election, explained the importance of his new DREAMers immigration policy, reiterated his call for Congress to pass the DREAM Act, and explained why we need immigration reform and a Congress that will stop obstructing such reform.

Multiple Choice Mitt, meanwhile, was in full-bore Etch-a-Sketch mode.  Romney did reiterate some of his anti-undocumented immigrant policies, saying that he would:

re-double our efforts to secure the borders – that means both preventing illegal border crossings and making it harder to illegally overstay a visa.  We should field enough border patrol agents, complete a high-tech fence, and implement and improve exit verification system.

But gone was much of the anti-immigration rhetoric that Romney spewed during the GOP primaries.  In its place was praise for legal immigration and a softer tone on undocumented immigrants.   Romney also promised a “long term solution” for DREAMers but, outside of a promise to provide a “path to legal status” for anyone who serves in the military, he offered no details as to what that “solution” would purportedly involve.

What Multiple Choice Mitt did not address in his speech is whether he still supports the reactionary anti-immigration positions that he has long espoused, or whether he is willing to support sensible and humane policies to address the status of the approximately 11.5 million undocumented immigrants who are hard-working, taxpaying residents of the US.  So, in this edition of Questions for Mitt Romney, we ask:

* Does Romney support President Obama’s DREAMers policy?  It has been more than a week since that policy was announced, and Romney still refuses to give a straight answer as to whether he supports it, though a campaign adviser says he thinks Romney would repeal it.

* Does Romney still believe that the DREAM Act should be vetoed because it is a “magnet for illegal immigration”

* At a time of limited budgetary resources, does Romney believe it is good policy for the US government to be spending an average of $23,148 of taxpayer money to deport each DREAMer?

* Does Romney support the decision of the office of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Romney’s 2008 Arizona campaign chairman to arrest a six-year-old girl on suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant?

* Does Romney still support the strategy of “self-deportation,” which seeks to make life in the US so hard for undocumented immigrants that they “voluntarily” choose to leave the country?

* Does Romney still believe that Arizona’s harsh anti-immigration law is a “model” for the nation.

* Is Kris Kobach, the virulently anti-immigrant Attorney General of Kansas who crafted the self-deportation strategy, still an adviser to the Romney campaign on immigration issues?  What role would Mr. Kobach play in a Romney Administration?

The simple reality is that Mitt Romney has a long track record of taking extreme reactionary positions on immigration issues, and during the GOP primary Romney espoused views that led blogger Steve Benen to justifiably declare Romney “the the most right-wing candidate on immigration of any competitive presidential hopeful in generations.”  Nothing about Romney’s speech to NALEO last week changes the reality that, when it comes to immigration, a Romney Presidency would be marked by extreme anti-immigration policies of self-deportation, not the sensible and humane policies demonstrated by the DREAM Act.

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Earlier editions of this series include Questions for Mitt Romney on health care reform, the NRA and guns, Jerry Falwell and Liberty University, Robert Bork, and Ann Coulter.

President Obama took a bold step this past Friday when he announced that his Administration would no longer seek to deport “Dreamers” – young, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children by their parents, have been in the US for at least five years, and are law abiding and willing to attend college or serve in the military. The decision has triggered wholly predictable outrage from nativist conservatives, combined with a politically motivated effort by a handful of Republicans to suggest that President Obama’s action would somehow prevent Congress from addressing this issue. The reality is that President Obama’s decision was the right one and that Republicans have stopped Congress from helping Dreamers for years.

President Obama’s new immigration policy will lift the threat of deportation from nearly 1 million Dreamers and is an important step towards making our immigration system fairer, more efficient, and more just.  Therefore, it is critical that we all express our support for this step, and share the word about what the new policy is and why it is the right one.  Here are some of the details.

What The New Policy Is

The new Dreamers policy is set forth in a memorandum from Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano that calls on immigration officials to use their prosecutorial discretion and not spend limited resources attempting to deport individuals who:

• came to the United States under the age of sixteen;
• have continuously resided in the United States for a least five years preceding the date of this memorandum and are present in the United States on the date of this memorandum;
• are currently in school, have graduated from high school, have obtained a general education development certificate, or are an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States;
• have not been convicted of a felony offense, a significant misdemeanor offense, multiple misdemeanor offenses, or otherwise poses a threat to national security or public safety; and
• are not above the age of thirty.

Instead of facing the threat of deportation, the approximately one million people who qualify under this new policy will instead be able to apply for a two-year work visa that can be renewed at the end of the two years.

Why The New Policy Is the Right One

The new immigration policy is a matter of basic fairness, and also furthers the interests of our country as a whole.  The Dreamers who are covered by this policy are in the US without proper documentation through no fault of their own and are law-abiding people who are contributing to society through obtaining an education, working, and/or serving in the military.  There is simply no moral or rational justification for deporting such people.

The policy would also be economically beneficial, as the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that keeping the Dreamers in the US would generate $1.7 billion in additional federal revenue and reduce the deficit by $2.2 billion over 10 years.  And by reducing the number of people in the US whose undocumented status enables employers to underpay, the policy could help to place some upward pressure on wages for all Americans.

Why The New Policy Is Legal

Republicans have responded to the Obama Administration announcement by claiming that the policy is somehow illegal and an abuse of Executive authority by the President.  For an especially ironic presentation of this argument, see this essay by John Yoo, who infamously found while he was serving in the George W. Bush Administration that the President had the authority to authorize torture of enemy combatants.  But the claims by Yoo and other conservatives that President Obama somehow abused his authority ignores the import of the well-establish doctrine of prosecutorial discretion, which provides that the Executive has considerable discretion in deciding exactly how and against whom criminal laws should be enforced.  As explained in a letter to the White House from nearly 100 law professors, the law plainly allows this sort of exercise of prosecutorial discretion and Presidents have exercised that discretion in similar situations in the past.   Given that it costs the federal government $23,148 to deport each individual, it is perfectly rational for the Administration to decide to focus limited resources on pursuing serious lawbreakers, rather than blameless and law-abiding undocumented immigrants.

The GOP Was Not Going to Act to Help Dreamers

Perhaps the most disingenuous objection from conservatives has been that President Obama should have waited for Congress to act. But the DREAM Act, which would provide Dreamers with permanent residency status, has been floating around Congress for more than a decade and has received majority support in both Houses of Congress on numerous occasions. Unfortunately, it has never become law because Republicans in the Senate have filibustered the legislation a number of times, most recently in December 2010 when it was halted by 41 Republican Senators.  The fact that the GOP has been preventing the majority in Congress from passing the DREAM Act for years now completely undermines their argument that President Obama should have waited for Congress to act.

Conservatives also claim that President Obama’s action was not needed because Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) was purportedly going to propose a watered-down version of the DREAM Act.  But Rubio has been all talk and no action on this issue for months, and still has never submitted an actual legislative proposal.

What is Mitt Romney’s Position on This Issue?

Perhaps realizing the political peril that this issue puts him in, Mitt Romney responded with a vague statement that legislative action should be taken to deal with the Dreamers issue, but not explaining what such action should involve.  Previously, however, Romney vowed to veto the DREAM Act, which he called a “magnet for illegal immigration,” and announced his support for an approach to undocumented immigrants of “self-deportation,” which involves making life so difficult for immigrants that they will “voluntarily” decide to leave the US.  And Romney’s “informal advisor” on immigration issues, the virulently anti-immigration Kris Kobach, has made clear that he would not support even the watered-down version of the DREAM Act that Senator Rubio has discussed.  While Romney may try to Etch-a-Sketch his way out of his previous statements about the DREAM Act, his behavior during the Republican primaries makes clear that were Romney to become President, he would be answering to the anti-immigration advocates in his party, not seeking to find ways to help the Dreamers.