Bashing Immigrants Comes With a Price
By Ruben Navarrette
Rep. Lamar Smiths pet cause is immigration enforcement. Now as the chairman-elect of the House Judiciary Committee attempts to convince fellow Republicans to join his posse he has also taken an interest in Latino voting patterns.
Too bad he has such a limited understanding of both.
The San Antonio congressman cant match candlepower with Republicans such as Karl Rove Jeb Bush and Newt Gingrich. They are also thinking about Latino voting and they worry that the GOP is -- through the immigration debate -- alienating an otherwise conservative audience with incendiary rhetoric and bumper sticker slogans.
According to the polling firm Latino Decisions 71 of the votes cast by Latinos in the midterm elections went to Democratic candidates. And with recent census data showing that Hispanics drive population growth in Arizona Nevada Texas Florida and other states the Republican Party could be capsized by a demographic tidal wave.
Yet instead of making peace
Smith is making up tall tales.
In an op-ed for The Washington Post he made the rosy claim that GOP-Hispanic relations were very bright in spite of warnings that a pro-rule-of-law stand would undercut Hispanic support for Republicans.
Smith wants to reassure Republicans in Congress that they can act with impunity if they bash immigrants -- of all kinds.
Not simply an opponent of illegal immigration he also supports limiting legal immigration. And he wants to change the 14th Amendment and deny citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.
Hard-liners like Smith get tangled in contradictions. To avoid charges of being anti-foreigner they insist theyre only concerned with illegal immigration and have no problem with legal immigrants -- whom they also want to keep out. And they
brag about being pro-rule-of-law right up to the point where they try to change laws they dont agree with.
There is good news. Unlike demagogues such as Tom Tancredo -- the former Colorado congressman who managed to enrage Cuban-Americans a loyal GOP constituency by calling Miami a third-world country -- Smith hasnt been foolish enough to say outright racist things. Nor does he compare illegal immigrants to insects as did Rep. Ted Poe R-Texas who insists that authorities should be able to apprehend more illegal immigrants because the government can capture illegal grasshoppers from Brazil.
We heard something similar from Rep. Steve King R-Iowa who said that he wants to build a concrete border fence that no one or nothing could get across not even a cockroach.
The problem with Smith is that he doesnt
approach the immigration issue with honesty nuance or sophistication. As when he says that the Obama administration is making it easier for illegal immigrants to keep jobs that rightly belong to U.S. citizens and legal immigrant workers.
This sounds like something youd hear from a Democrat pandering to union workers in a Rust Belt state. Does a supposedly pro-business Republican really need to be reminded that U.S. jobs dont rightly belong to anyone but rather are earned by those who are willing to do them?
Smith doesnt grasp that the immigration issue is about economics and the need to replenish the U.S. labor supply because young people are raised to think of themselves as entitled to avoid stoop labor. He thinks the whole problem can be solved by enforcement alone even though the professionals who do that work daily -- whether its Border Patrol agents or the brass at Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- disagree and insist that there isnt a wall high enough to deter mothers and fathers who are desperate to feed their children.
Smith is tougher on some offenders than he is on others. He sounds like Dirty Harry when it comes to deporting illegal immigrants who cant vote and dont contribute to political campaigns but he wimps out and becomes Barney Fife when he has the chance to stiffen penalties on employers who do.
The co-author of the
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 which focused on enforcement somehow forgot to include a new round of employer sanctions in the mix.
He didnt forget. I interviewed Smith a couple of years after the law was passed and I asked him why he hadnt come down harder on employers. He candidly acknowledged that it would have been a tough sell to fellow Republicans.
Now Lamar Smith is on another sales trip peddling the snake oil that Republicans can
do their worst and not pay a price with Latino voters.
Buyer beware. Tidal wave approaching.
Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group a CNN.com contributor and a commentator for National Public Radio.
