There are many other people who have similar opinions on what the new president will try to do about adding 10 million legal workers to the U.S. workforce. Not to mention their dependents be added to U.S. welfare rolls.

Immigration Reform Unlikely with Obama
www.realclearpolitics.com
Written by Ruben Navarrette
Posted on 2008-11-12

We thank Gerardo E. (Jerry) Gonzalez at GALEO and his bossman Sam Zamarripa for posting this one.

November 12, 2008

By Ruben Navarrette

SAN DIEGO — In July, during an address to the annual meeting of the National Council of La Raza, Barack Obama promised to make comprehensive immigration reform “a top priority in my first year as president.”

Don’t hold your breath.

Just a few days before the election, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Obama to rank in order of priority five issues — tax cuts, health care, energy, education and immigration. Obama made up his own list, appropriately adding the economy as his No. 1 priority and dropping immigration altogether.

For Latinos who assume that helping to elect Obama president guarantees them another shot at comprehensive immigration reform, his selection of Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff is not a good sign. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s enforcer in the Democratic-controlled House, Emanuel was — in the last two years — a major stumbling block to achieving an immigration package. Capitol Hill newspapers reported shouting matches between Emanuel and members of the Democratic-controlled Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who tried unsuccessfully to pressure the leaders of their party to tackle the issue.

It’s not that Emanuel has anything against immigrants or immigration reform. It’s just politics. According to The Washington Post and other newspapers, Emanuel decided that the issue was a loser for Democrats and that it belonged on the back burner. He was protecting the Democratic majority in the House by covering members who might be vulnerable to ouster if they were seen in their home districts as going along with “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. Once in the White House, I suspect Emanuel will channel those instincts toward protecting President Obama from a sticky debate.

The conventional thinking is that the issue has very little benefit for Democrats beyond scoring points with Latino voters, who will probably stay in their camp anyway. And it has a significant downside in that it makes some powerful enemies. Contrary to what you hear from the pundits, the Democrats’ major concern is not the nativists on the far right. Those who call into talk radio shows to complain about taco trucks or having to press “1 for English” never had much power to begin with. And they have even less now that their mean-spirited worldview has been repudiated by an election where much of the narrative was about embracing cultural diversity.

As has always been the case with the immigration issue, what Democrats worry about most is antagonizing their sponsors in organized labor. Bringing back the debate over comprehensive immigration reform means restarting the discussion of a new guest-worker plan — which John Sweeney at the AFL-CIO considers “a bad idea (that) harms all workers.”

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