CIR is heating up quickly. For a wide array of reasons, the Senate leadership has said that they have decided to bring this issue up for consideration very soon. There are reports that Senator Reid, the majority leader, gave Senators Schumer and Graham three weeks to introduce legislation or he would introduce his own bill. That was a week ago. Subsequently, Senator Graham dropped out of the negotiations and on Thursday, April 29th, six Senate Democrats released a draft outline for comprehensive immigration reform.
The Republican members of Congress are pushing back very hard and doing everything possible to prevent the Democrats from forcing them to take a position on CIR. They have threatened any number of retaliatory measures if the Democrats proceed with CIR. The problem is that those threats have little weight because the Republicans have already done just about everything possible to prevent the Democrats from bringing legislation to the floor of the Senate. The new threats are pretty empty in that they don't include anything that hasn't already been done on a regular basis.
The Republicans don't want to have to deal with CIR at all. If they oppose it, then they will definitely alienate Latino voters for a very long time. Remember, it won't just be elected Republican officials who speak out against it. You can count of Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, and Sean Hannity to oppose CIR by using highly inflammatory rhetoric and language that most Latinos will find grossly offensive. Add to this the likely reaction of the Tea Party people.
The likely fallout from Republican opposition to CIR will be energized Latino voters turning out in much higher numbers in November, as well as Latino voters writing off the Republican party as an option for the next few decades. This will be a long term catastrophe for Republicans. Latinos are generally socially conservative and have found the Republican party quite comfortable in past years. That will come to an abrupt end when the Republicans are forced for formally oppose CIR.
In the alternative, if Republicans agree to pass it, then the Tea Party people will become enraged and take out their wrath on Republican candidates. The most likely result of Republican support for CIR will be that a substantial portion of their base will either stay home in November, or vote for third party candidates. Republican support for CIR would also remove it as an election issue for vulnerable Democrats.
The one path that the Republicans could follow that would turn the table on the Democrats would be to not filibuster the bill in the Senate and force the Democrats to pass it with only Democrat votes in the Senate and House. That would allow the Republicans to avoid blocking the legislation, and thus angering Latinos, but at the same time not affirmatively voting in favor of it, and thus avoid angering the Tea Party members. It would also force the Democrats to take an affirmative position on CIR. If they vote to pass it, vulnerable Democrats would have to deal with this issue in November. If they fail to pass it, Latino voters would be angry with the Democrats for failing to live up to their promise.
My own feeling is that the temptation to filibuster is just too ingrained and the Party of No will reflexively fall into the trap the Democrats appear to have set for them.
Now, this is not to say that if CIR fails all of the blame will fall on the Republicans. The Democrats have given in to a demand by their Congressional Hispanic Caucus that the Democratic party leadership not allow any immigration legislation to be considered unless it contains an amnesty component. Without an amnesty provision, immigration reform would have passed easily last year or the year before. Now that the Republicans have turned into the Party of No, I doubt that it possible to get legislation through supporting motherhood and apple pie, if the Democrats propose it. Still, the Democrats have been in control of Congress for four years and could have passed legal immigration reform easily in that time, had they not insisted upon including amnesty. There is plenty of blame to go around.
If CIR fails, and that is the most likely outcome of this posturing, it will depend on how it fails as to what happens next. If the Republicans are simply allowed to threaten a filibuster and the Democrats give up and pull the legislation, then CIR will likely remain an option for next year. If, on the other hand, Republicans thunder about amnesty and whip up enough controversy and opposition to it, then it may be that amnesty will die as an issue and it will then be possible to pass the rest of the bill, either as a big omnibus bill or as separate, smaller bills.
The good news is that this should all be over in the next few weeks - one way or another.
