Hoping against hope for the sake of the children that legislation gets passed through Congress before its recess in less than two weeks.
“From a conservative point of view, you can’t have forms of forgiveness without a secure border,” Mr. Paul said. “It doesn’t mean that we can’t bring a lot of those people to our country, that we don’t have room for them,” he added. “I think we frankly do need many of these people for workers. But you can’t have a beacon of hope and you can’t have a forgiveness plan without a secure border.”
-Angela
WASHINGTON
— In 1996, when a surge in illegal immigration collided with the
overheated politics of a presidential election, Republicans demanded a
strict crackdown.
They
passed a measure in the House that would have allowed states to bar
children who were in the country illegally from public schools. Senator
Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas, the party’s nominee for president,
called for limiting social services to immigrants in the country
illegally. Patrick J. Buchanan, one of Mr. Dole’s rivals, had promised
to build an electric fence along the border with Mexico.
When
Mr. Dole lost to Bill Clinton that year, he received just 21 percent of
the Hispanic vote — a record low for a Republican nominee — and the
party has never really recovered, even as the Hispanic vote has come to
represent 10 percent of the presidential electorate, doubling from 1996.
Today,
as a wave of unaccompanied minors fleeing Central America poses a new
crisis for Congress and the White House, Republicans are struggling to
calibrate a response that is both tough and humane, mindful of the need
to reconcile their freighted history with Hispanic voters and the
passions of a conservative base that sees any easing of immigration
rules as heresy.
Some
senior Republicans are warning that the party cannot rebuild its
reputation with Hispanics if it is drawn into another emotional fight
over cracking down on migrants — especially when so many are young
children who are escaping extreme poverty and violence. But pleas for
compassion and even modest proposals for change are dividing the party,
and setting off intense resistance among conservative Republicans who
have resisted a broader overhaul of immigration.
Gestures of sympathy, like a trip to the border by Glenn Beck,
the conservative radio and television personality who has raised more
than $2 million to buy teddy bears, shoes and food for migrant children,
were met with scorn and derision. Some anti-immigrant activists
responded to news that the government was buying new clothing for the
detainees by organizing a campaign to mail them dirty underwear.
“We
can’t elect another Republican president in 2016 who gets 27 percent of
the Hispanic vote,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2
Republican in the Senate, referring to the percentage Mitt Romney won in
2012.
Mr.
Cornyn voted against the broad immigration overhaul last year but
introduced a compromise measure this week with a Texas Democrat from the
House, Representative Henry Cuellar, that would speed the deportation
of some children while allowing those who request asylum to stay as they
await a hearing.
Noting
the demographic shifts in his own state — where he observed, “It’s not
just people that look like me” — Mr. Cornyn added: “This is a challenge
for the country, and we need to solve it. And we have a political
imperative as Republicans to deal with this or else we will find
ourselves in a permanent minority status.”
The
cycle of failing to win over Hispanics can be traced in many respects
to 1994, when Gov. Pete Wilson of California, a Republican, faced a
difficult re-election fight and backed Proposition 187, which prohibited
the state from providing health care, public education or other social
services to immigrants in the country illegally, a measure that so
angered Hispanics it all but delivered the state to Democrats in
presidential elections ever since. In comparison, President Ronald
Reagan won 45 percent of Latino voters in California in 1984.
Looking
toward the next presidential election, other Republicans who once
opposed immigration overhaul are now talking about the need to deal with
the current crisis in a compassionate way. Senator Rand Paul,
Republican of Kentucky, who is considering a run for president and
voted against the immigration bill last year, said this week that he
considered himself “a moderate conservative who’s for immigration
reform” but wants to see border security improved.
“From
a conservative point of view, you can’t have forms of forgiveness
without a secure border,” Mr. Paul said. “It doesn’t mean that we can’t
bring a lot of those people to our country, that we don’t have room for
them,” he added. “I think we frankly do need many of these people for
workers. But you can’t have a beacon of hope and you can’t have a
forgiveness plan without a secure border.”
With
so many Republicans still opposed to sweeping policy changes, the
compromise they are proposing now is more a move to do no further harm
to their image with Hispanics than it is an effort to court votes. And a
split within the Democratic Party
over how to handle deportations poses a threat similar to the
Republican schism. Many liberals are outraged that Republicans are
demanding to scale back a 2008 law that granted more leniency to migrant
children from Central America in an effort to combat human trafficking.
And if enough Democrats refuse to go along with those changes, President Obama’s request for almost $4 billion to address the crisis could fall apart.
A critical question hanging over the Republican Party,
and indeed over any hopes of passing legislation through Congress
before its recess in two weeks, is whether even incremental immigration
changes can advance when many on the right are so opposed.
Mr.
Cornyn’s compromise already has drawn the ire of conservative activists
who want to see deportations accelerated. Some Republicans in Congress,
like his junior colleague from Texas, Senator Ted Cruz,
say the compromise does not go far enough. Mr. Cruz has tried to
persuade Republicans to nullify a directive handed down from Mr. Obama
to halt deportation proceedings against certain unauthorized immigrants
who came to the United States as children.
Other
Republicans have said that while Congress needs to revisit that
directive, doing so would stymie the chances of getting something
meaningful done now. “We need reform,” said Senator Susan Collins,
Republican of Maine. But doing so now, she added, “that’s a difficult
expectation.”
Republicans
have the chance to step in, Ms. Collins added, where the president’s
policies have failed. “It’s frustrating to me that the administration
has been so slow to respond,” she said, noting how apprehensions along
the border first doubled last year. “His answer, which is so often the
case, is more money, more money, more money.”
With
polls showing that large majorities of Americans disapprove of the way
Mr. Obama is handling the border crisis, Republicans say the opportunity
is theirs to squander.
Some
Republicans noted that the one time in the last six presidential
elections when their nominee won the popular vote was 2004, when George
W. Bush carried an estimated 40 percent of the Hispanic vote.
Senator
Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee who ran for president in 1996,
said that if Republicans are to win back the Senate and the White
House, they have to start passing more laws. Immigration overhaul, he
said, would be a start.
“In
order to have a Republican president, we have to demonstrate that we
can govern,” he said, adding that he was pleased to see how conservative
members of his party like Mr. Paul and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida
have been speaking out on immigration overhaul. “Showing that we can fix
the immigration system is an essential part of showing we can govern.”
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