Thoughts on American Politics and Immigration

U Dub PhD student analyzing domestic policy and political debate with an emphasis on immigration reform and political science research. TYLERRENY.COM

[tylerreny-blog]

"These Men Never Stood in Unmovable Lines"

by Tyler Reny

This morning, in a breath-taking and historic wielding of power, the Supreme Court, voting 5-to-4, struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) as unconstitutional.  Section 5, the “heart” and “hammer” of the 1965 law, the provision that has for more than 50 years allowed the Justice Department to pre-emptively block changes to electoral practices and laws in certain states and municipalities that have a history of discriminatory behavior towards minority voters remains intact.  But without Section 4, which outlines the coverage formula for Section 5, Section 5 is toothless.  Today’s ruling will have tragic ramifications for everything from the placement of polls to voter ID laws to redistricting.  Most importantly, in a direct blow to the mission of the New American Leaders Project, it would diminish the ability of minority groups to elect their favored candidates.

When the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, a century worth of Jim Crow laws and practices were outlawed with the sweep of President Johnson’s pen.  The results have been extraordinary.  In Mississippi, the number of African Americans who were registered to vote skyrocketed from just 7% in 1965 to 74% by 1988.  The number of majority-minority districts in the U.S. grew from just 35 in 1982 to 106 by 2012.  Similarly, majority-minority and single-member districts both opened the door for the election of legislators of color at every level of government.  Before the VRA was passed, Atlanta’s city council had no members of color.  Today, 13 of 16 are black.  The story is the same in Congress. The Congressional Black Caucus has 44 members and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus 27. 

Nearly everyone agrees that Section 5 has played a critical role in vastly expanding the franchise to minority voters. Justice Ginsburg, in her dissent today, even wrote that “The Voting Rights Act became one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal power in our Nation’s history.” The question is, is Section 5 still needed?

The answer is quite obvious, particularly after the 2012 elections where blatant voter suppression attempts dominated much of the election’s media coverage. Since 2001, as the National Conference for State Legislatures reports, nearly 1,000 voter ID laws were introduced in 46 states, placing burdens on senior citizens, people of color, those with disabilities, poor and lower-income voters, and students.  In 2012, researchers at the University of Chicago and Washington University estimated that the country’s voter ID laws alone could suppress overall turnout to the tune of about 700,000 young people of color.  Section 5 helps prevent laws like these from taking effect.  Just last year, ProPublica reports that Section 5 helped the Justice Department restrict a reduction in voting hours, block voter ID laws in two states, and void newly redistricted maps in another. 

Critics of Section 5 argue that Section 2 of the VRA still provides legal redress for discrimination.  True.  But this “alternative” is troubling for two reasons.  First, the burden falls on the plaintiff in Section 2, meaning that costly litigation must be pursued to block a proposed change and will thus be less likely to be pursued when the changes are small, like moving polling places, cutting voting hours, or leaving a language off of a ballot.  Second, legislators are finding more insidious ways to try and evade detection of discriminatory practices.  In Texas, for example, the redistricting commission “consciously replaced many of the district’s active Hispanic voters with low-turnout Hispanic voters in an effort to strengthen the voting power of CD 23’s Anglo citizens.  In other words, they sought to reduce Hispanic voters’ ability to elect without making it look like anything in CD 23 had changed.”  As long as it is politically expedient to block a group from voting, political actors will try and do so. 

In the past century, Section 5 of the VRA has transformed this country’s political landscape. And in an act of brash judicial activism the Supreme Court has erased decades of progress and erected a hurdle that is guaranteed to make it harder for minorities to vote, easier to dilute voter strength through insidious redistricting, and make it more challenging to elect inspiring Asian American, black, and Hispanic leaders to local, state, and national offices. Our attention must now turn to Congress to rewrite the coverage formula under Section 4.  The strength of our representative democracy depends on it.

*another cross post from the NALP blog.

[tylerreny-blog]

The Future of Higher Ed (or Extremely Premature Job Anxieties)

by Tyler Reny

As I begin planning my transition from a non-profit job in New York City to a full-time PhD student at the University of Washington in Seattle in the fall, I find myself seeking out and voraciously consuming information about the pressures on higher education, what certain colleges and universities are doing to adapt, and how I can stay ahead of the changes as I seek a job in academia in a number of years.

From the student debt bubble (which has now exceeded $1 trillion) to technological advances (read: MOOCs) that threaten the traditional lecture hall style of teaching, to the “great credential race” that has turned higher education into big businesses with less concern for quality education than for a robust management class with high salaries and world-class dorms with climbing walls, higher education is broken.

Jeff Selingo’s book, College (Un)bound, offers, I think, a fairly balanced look at where higher education is headed.  Selingo critically examines the failing records of many second-tier universities and colleges while abstaining from spewing hyperbolic predictions about MOOC domination and the collapse of the romanticized four-year college experience that we know and love.   Instead he sees a future where MOOCs do play a role, but as a complement to class time, not a replacement; where classes and lesson plans are personalized and traditional degree credits no longer rule the day.

Throughout the book, Selingo draws attention to the perverse incentives inherent in the transformation of universities and colleges into big businesses.  Today, I found this eye-opening article from Paul Campos about U. Ohio's outgoing President, E. Gordon Gee, which is a brilliant illustration of how letting the market intervene too much into academia is distorting institutions:

Universities are not businesses, and university presidents are not CEOs. These institutions exist for reasons other than to maximize their revenue and enrich their management class. That it is even necessary to point this out illustrates the extent to which we have allowed the mentality of what investment bankers call “the market” to invade every aspect of American culture.

The point harks back to another book I read recently by Michael Sandel, the famous Harvard political philosopher and lecturer, whose book, What Money Can't Buy, explores the moral limits of markets.  Though Sandel doesn’t talk specifically about universities, an entire chapter could be devoted to them.

I’m holding out hope that a research and teaching position with a decent salary and benefits will still exist when I graduate even though the slow creep towards a more market-influenced country doesn’t seem to be slowing.  If President Gee’s experience is any indicator, however, there is a limit to market intrusion into higher education.  And that is good news for both my future career prospects and for students.

[tylerreny-blog]

Words Matter

I am particularly fascinated by how framing issues impacts public opinion for certain policies and immigration is no exception.  The Public Religion Research Institute recently conducted a controlled survey experiment asking Democrats, Republicans, and Americans as a whole if they supported immigration reform but phrased the question in three different ways:

Group A was asked if the individual supported: "Allowing a way for immigrants who are currently living in the U.S. illegally to become U.S. citizens?"

Group B was asked if they supported: "Allowing a way for immigrants who are currently living in the U.S. illegally to become U.S. citizens, provided they meet certain requirements?" 

Group C was asked if they supported: "Allowing a way for immigrants who are currently living in the U.S. illegally to become U.S. citizens, provided they meet certain requirements like paying back taxes, learning English, and passing a background check?"

See original (and quite awful) graphic over at the monkey's cage blog.

[tylerreny-blog]

Conservative Elites Bolster Immigration Reform

by Tyler Reny

            Immigration reform may have been swallowed up over the last week by coverage of the sequester and D.C. dysfunction, but it has hardly disappeared.  In fact, the immigration reform bill is marching steadily forward.  Two weeks ago, the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce came to an agreement on managing the entry of low-skilled workers into the U.S., clearing an important roadblock for reform.  Equally as important, Scott Walker, the firebrand conservative Governor of Wisconsin, came out in favor of comprehensive immigration reform.  Walker joined the growing ranks of conservative voices and Tea Party heroes calling for, or amenable towards, a path to citizenship: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Sean Hannity.  This growing chorus of consensus from conservative elites offers the best hope yet for eventual passage of a comprehensive reform bill.

            Political science research shows that the way that elected officials talk about immigrants and immigration matters, elite cues, help set the tone of the debate, are the most common source of news for the mass media, and have the potential to alter public opinion. In other words, the tacit support from “thought leaders” and political elites in the Republican Party has the potential to temper its nativist wing and open some space for wary congress members to vote for a comprehensive bill. 

            Danny Hayes, a political scientist at George Washington University, examined elite cues during the last immigration debate (2005-2007), and found that the chief voices of restrictive legislation were primarily Republican Congress members (amplified many times by certain influential media actors) and the chief sources of “welcoming frames” were immigrants themselves. 

            The 2013 debate has been different.  The Tea Party and conservative thought leaders mentioned above are joined by bi-partisan “gangs” in the Senate and the House, a strong DREAMer movement, and a new coalition of church leaders, law enforcement, and business interests, “Bibles, Badges, and Business,” all loudly trumpeting the positive immigrant and immigration frames.  Indeed, Micah Cohen, writing for FiveThirtyEight, has already found some evidence that opinion towards immigrants from GOP rank and file might be improving.

            This isn’t to say that the anti-immigrant frame has disappeared.  It hasn’t.  Border security and the rule of law are still dominant concerns of most GOP House members and constituents, many who consider a path to citizenship to be just as extreme as mass-deportation.

            And immense political hurdles still remain.  Although Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has promised to prioritize an immigration bill once the “octogang” has completed its work, a comprehensive bill faces major headwind in the GOP controlled House, where a majority of conservative members are from primarily white districts, the chair of the crucial Judiciary Committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), has received an A+ rating from a national leading anti-immigrant group, NumbersUSA, and leadership would be unlikely to bring a bill to the floor without a majority of support from the Republican caucus (though House Speaker Boehner has already violated the “Hastert Rule” several times this session).

            The hurdles for comprehensive immigration reform are numerous but support from some members of the conservative wing of the Republican Party is a promising sign of progress.  As long as Congress can pass a bill before August recess, where immigration reform could become death panels—as Congress members are already starting to see in angry town halls—the chance of reform is real. 

(as per usual, this post is cross promoted from The New American Leaders Project's tumblr)

[tylerreny-blog]

The Obama Immigration Bill Decoy

by Tyler Reny

After spending all last week writing about how Obama’s best strategy surrounding the immigration reform debate is to stay out of it all together, I was quite surprised this weekend when news came out that the administration’s reform plan was “leaked,” and published by USA Today.  The President has made reference, several times, to this plan, most notably in the comically naïve sentence from his Las Vegas immigration speech on January 29th:

“And if Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion, I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist that they vote on it right away.”

If only it were that easy.

But back to the plan.  To nobody’s surprise, many Republican leaders immediately balked at the proposal from the White House.  Rubio called the bill “half-baked and seriously flawed” and, if it were to make it to Congress, it would be “dead on arrival.” Sen. Rand Paul says that the Obama plan shows that he is not “serious” about passing immigration reform.  Rep. Paul Ryan posited that Obama is “looking for a partisan advantage and not a bipartisan solution.”

With all this backlash expected, why would the President’s advisors risk it?  Eugene Robinson, writing in today’s Washington Post, has a very compelling theory: Obama’s immigration plan is a decoy to draw fire from Republicans to provide them cover to support a less “liberal” bi-partisan proposal.  Even one with a path to citizenship in it!

"The problem is that Republicans have spent years demonizing undocumented immigrants as a way of appealing to xenophobic, jingoistic sentiment. So how can members of Congress switch from “these people are a plague” to “these people are welcome to stay” without facing the ire of the party’s activist base?

Enter the president’s draft proposal, which administration officials described as a “backup” plan that Obama may put forward if Congress is not able to reach agreement.

It’s really not much different from what Rubio’s group is talking about. But Republicans can slam Obama’s plan as some sort of Kenyan-socialist-inspired abdication of sovereignty. They can blast the provisions on border security as laughable. They can describe the absence of a real plan for reforming the legal immigration process as slapdash, or unserious, or whatever they want to call it.

Republicans in the Senate can line up instead behind a bill that Rubio’s Group of Eight eventually produces; even Paul, a tea party favorite, has indicated he could vote for reform as long as he had more than “a promise from President Obama” on border security. And if enough contrast can be drawn between a Senate proposal and Obama’s plan, perhaps even a significant number of House Republicans can be brought along — if not a majority, then enough to convince Speaker John Boehner to allow an up-or-down vote."

(Cross posted from New American Leaders Project)

[tylerreny-blog]

Obama Barely Touched Immigration in His Speech, but That's a Good Thing

Originally published in The Next America

by Tyler Reny

Given that immigration reform is shaping up to be one of the key legislative legacies of President Obama’s second term, many were surprised when the president devoted just five short paragraphs, 210 words (out of more than 6,400, or 3 percent), to the bill in his State of the Union address this week. Many immigration advocates took to Twitter to complain that he didn’t do more to “convince” the public and Congress to support a bill.

The problem with this complaint is twofold. First, the president has almost absolutely no ability to move public opinion. Second, the success of an immigration bill actually depends on the president’s ability to remove himself from the debate and disassociate his name from the bill.

First, let's discuss the bully pulpit. Richard Neustadt, perhaps the preeminent scholar on the presidency, wrote in his 1960 book Presidential Power that “the power of the presidency is the power to persuade.”

Over the last 50 years, Neustadt's words have become conventional wisdom among Americans, reporters, and especially among presidents themselves. Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, tried hard to rally the country behind his policy agenda from his bully pulpit. Bill Clinton made hundreds of appearances during his presidency to move public opinion, particularly on health care. George W. Bush embarked on a 60-day tour, “Conversations on Social Security,” to sell his Social Security privatization plan.

Obama, too, believes in the persuasive power of the presidency. When asked by Charlie Rose what he thought his biggest mistake was of his first term, he said he didn't try hard enough to tell the right story to the American people.

Unfortunately, the conventional wisdom is wrong. In 1993, when George Edwards III, the distinguished political science professor at Texas A&M, began looking into the persuasive powers of the presidency, he found surprising evidence (or lack thereof). Contrary to common wisdom, he found a sitting president can help set an agenda but has very little ability to move public opinion.

Edwards first looked at Reagan (again, remember that Reagan has been compared to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt as one of America’s greatest orators) and concluded that, contrary to widely held beliefs, Reagan was not a persuasive president.

Polling shows that public support for programs that the president opposed (welfare, urban problems, environmental protection, etc.) increased while the president was in office, and those that he supported (defense expenditures, aid to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua) decreased. In other words, "people were less persuaded by Reagan when he left office than they were when he took office."

Reagan, it turns out, was not alone in his inability to move public opinion. After Clinton's barnstorming tour, his popularity tanked, his health care bill died, and his party lost control of the House. Bush's 60-day tour occurred simultaneously with plummeting support for the privatization of Social Security, forcing him to abandon the issue altogether. And the more Obama took to public forums to sell his health care bill, the more its popularity fell.

Tuesday’s State of the Union, considered by many to be the ultimate annual “persuasive” speech of any president’s tenure, was no different. A Gallup study of 30 years of polling data found that State of the Union addresses "rarely affect a president's public standing in a meaningful way."

George Edwards has convincingly shown that the conventional wisdom is wrong. The rhetorical presidency is an appealing and enduring theme in the collective American understanding of politics, but it is more fiction than fact. Immigration activists need not worry that the president didn’t push hard enough for immigration reform in his speech. He wouldn’t have gotten too far.

But the president is avoiding a full push on immigration reform for a more critical reason. With incipient bipartisan support for an immigration bill, the fastest way for the president to kill the bill is to have his name attached to it. As The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein put it, "by staying out, at least for now, the Obama administration is making it easier for Republicans to stay in."

Frances Lee, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, suggests in her book Beyond Ideology “that presidential persuasion might actually have an anti-persuasive effect on the opposing member of Congress.”

This seems to have materialized in Republican obstruction to nearly every one of Obama’s priorities in his first term. But more importantly, in a divided government, the president’s aggressive leadership on a bill increases partisanship and decreases the probability that a bill will pass Congress.

Polling already shows that when Obama’s name is attached to a path to citizenship, support for it drops from 70 percent (when asked in the abstract if the proposal was favored) to 59 percent (when the pollster mentioned that Obama has proposed the measure). As The Post's Chris Cillizza put it, “Republicans don’t mind the idea in theory but loathe it when attached to Obama.”

Obama’s strategy with immigration reform will reflect these political truths. As House Speaker John Boehnerpointed out to reporters, the president getting involved in the bill’s details will only be getting “in the way.”

If this bill becomes Obama’s immigration bill, it will scare off congressional Republicans—and without them, a deal is unlikely to happen.

So, no, the president didn’t spend much time discussing immigration reform, but for good reason. His involvement in the process would scare Republicans away. And he wouldn’t be able to move public opinion anyway. Immigration activists shouldn’t fret about his approach; it’s the best hope we have.

Tyler Reny has studied and lived in Barcelona, Spain, and Buenos Aires, Argentina; interned for Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, in Washington; researched state welfare policy for the Rockefeller Institute in Albany; and now manages research and evaluation and crafts the social media presence for the New American Leaders Project. He graduated summa cum laude from Skidmore College and plans on pursuing a Ph.D. in political science.

(From:  http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/immigration/opinion-obama-barely-touched-immigration-in-his-speech-but-that-s-a-good-thing-20130214)

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Daily Link Roundup House Judiciary Immigration Hearing Edition 2-6-13

By Tyler Reny

Yesterday was the first of several judicial committee hearings on immigration reform in the U.S. House and the questioning from members was very revealing of what to expect in the next few months. 

First, it is clear that Republicans agree on two areas: more visas for high-tech immigrants and stronger enforcement provisions.  Republicans are trying hard not to repeat the policy mistakes made in the 1986 (IRCA) law passed by President Reagan that led to nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. today.

Second, the “path to citizenship” is going to be a very contentious issue in the Republican led House.  Both Bob Goodlatte, the Republican from Virginia and Chairman of the House Judiciary (which will deal with whatever legislation comes out of the House), and immigration and border security subcommittee chairman, Trey Gowdy, the Republican from South Carolina, are not sold on “amnesty.”  Both receive strong ratings from NumbersUSA, are both hawkish on immigration, and have both vocally opposed “amnesty” in all forms.  Several lawmakers, including Mr. Goodlatte and Mr. Gowdy, inquired about a middle ground between citizenship and deportation, signaling that the best we can hope for out of the House, is likely a path to temporary legalization, not citizenship.  It is not clear that the President or Senate Democrats would sign a bill that doesn’t include a full pathway to citizenship.  As some commentators have pointed out, Republicans may be looking to pacify APIA and Latino voters without creating 11 million new Democratic voters.

At the same time as the House Judiciary hearings on immigration reform, Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, gave a talk to the AEI where he spoke in favor of a path to legalization for DREAMers but stopped short of calling for a full path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants.  Keep in mind that any bill coming out of the House will need the support of the leadership: Reps. Cantor, Boehner, and McCarthy.

We look forward to following future hearings as the House Judiciary and other committees address wider ranging aspects of the bill.

IN OTHER NEWS

New poll: President Obama’s ratings on his handling of immigration are up to nearly 50% after hitting a low point of under 35% in 2010. 

Opinion: John Feehery argues that Republicans are doing themselves a serious disservice by explaining their support for a comprehensive reform in terms of politics (ie. “We are getting killed with the Hispanic Vote,”) rather than in terms of what is best for constituents or the country at large.

Labor Unions:  Unions throw their full political muscle and support behind immigration reform with hopes that new citizens could help grow their shrinking numbers.

History of Immigration Law in America: Check out this great WSJ interactive graphic on the history of immigration reform starting in 1882 and ending in 2012 with President Obama’s deferred action for childhood arrivals.

(cross posted from my work blog).

[tylerreny-blog]

U.S. Immigration Politics - House Edition

by Tyler Reny

The news cycle on immigration reform has slowed but will pick up later today as the House Judiciary Committee holds its first public hearing on immigration reform (it is live now on C-Span 3, you can watch it live here). So far, there has been a significant amount of criticism as much about who will be testifying as who will not be testifying. So far, it looks like the hearings will focus on well known GOP priorities of enforcement and HB-1 visas.

Let's take this opportunity to focus in on the politics of immigration reform in the House.  It is widely expected that the U.S. House, controlled by the Republican Party, will be the biggest hurdle to passage of a bill that the President and Democrats support, for two, inter-related reasons:

1) While the prospects for immigration reform have improved after the 2012 elections (particularly because of Mitt Romney's poor showing with Asian Americans and Latinos) these pressures for reform are only true for politicians seeking statewide or national offices.  The electoral incentives in the U.S. House, where members represent their distinct and varying district constituencies, are very different.

2) Why are these incentives important? Well, not only do most Republican House members come from very conservative districts but the also come from districts that are overwhelmingly (and increasingly) white.

Micah Cohen, over at FiveThirtyEight, did a great analysis of the situation.

In the 232 Congressional districts represented by Republicans, the average Hispanic share of each district is 11 percent (the 200 Congressional districts held by Democrats are, on average, 23 percent Hispanic). Just 40 of the 232 Republicans in the House come from districts that are more than 20 percent Hispanic, and just 16 from districts that are at least one-third Hispanic. At the other end of the spectrum, 142 districts represented by Republicans are less than 10 percent Hispanic.

In all, 84 percent of House Republicans represent districts that are 20 percent or less Hispanic.

The electoral incentives for reform, absent strong outside pressure from the "Badges, Bibles, and Business" coalition, are just not present in the overwhelming majority of Republican House districts.

This leaves passage of a bill in a tricky spot.  If a "comprehensive" bill is to be passed it might need to be done with widespread Democratic support and without the support of the majority party in the chamber and the House leadership (Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Cantor, and Whip McCarthy) will need to be on board (this is not unheard of, but it is rare).

Perhaps the House hearings (occurring as I write this) will shed some light on the situation.  I urge you all to tune in.

(cross posted from The New American Leaders Tumblr)

(update: House Speaker Boehner declines to endorse a pathway to citizenship…this is clearly politicking but we must keep in mind that Boehner and the House leadership are key to the final bill)

[tylerreny-blog]

Daily Immigration Link Roundup 2-4-13

We hope you had a nice Superbowl weekend.  We’re here one again to help summarize the weekend’s immigration news and highlight what to expect for the coming week.  Until the House plan or Senate legislative language is released, there isn’t much new to report.

  THE POLITICS

  The Senate

  Whether he is just playing politics or not, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid predicts that Congress will pass and send to the President legislation to overhaul the broken U.S. immigration system.  While I think it is safe to say that legislation could make it through the Senate, passage through the House of a bill that the President would sign is far less assured, particularly if a pathway to citizenship provision in the bill rests on meeting an “amorphous standard like ‘operational control,’” before going into effect.

  Ledyard King, writing for USA today, looks more closely at Sen. Marco Rubio and the “gamble” he is taking on immigration reform.

  The House

  The New York Times published yesterday a piece written by Albert R. Hunt for Bloomberg News that offers, in my opinion, the most comprehensive list of challenges that an immigration bill would face in Congress.  Take particular note of section 3 that highlights the House Republican leadership.  Not only would House Speaker Boehner need to pass the bill without the majority support of his party (which is likely what would need to happen), but he will need both Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Whip Kevin McCarthy to sign on.

  On a more positive note, Ashley Parker looks at the bi-partisan House group that has been working behind the scenes to offer legislative language of their own for a bill.

  The Tea Party

  Cameron Joseph looks at how immigration reform could be driving a wedge through the Tea Party and splitting legislators on the issue, focusing specifically on Tea Party heroes and pro-immigration reform Congress members like Sens. Rubio and Flake and Reps.  Paul Ryan and Raul Labrador and contrasting them with nativist Reps. Lamar Smith and Steve King.

  Opinion

  Krugman, speaking on ABC’s “This Week” points out one of the largest difficulties of immigration reform, namely that the GOP’s “base is only white people.”

  THE ECONOMICS

  As pro-immigration groups rev up their PR machines, expect to see many studies and columns, like this one about Wisconsin and this one about the entire U.S., showing why immigrants are good for the economy.

  PHILOSOPHY

  Harry Bingswanger, a contributor to Forbes, asks some difficult questions about the principles of individual rights and open immigration but drawing a distinct line between entry, residency, and citizenship.

(Cross posted from New American Leaders Project's blog)

[tylerreny-blog]

Establishment vs. Tea Party

There is a really interesting article in the NYTimes this morning about a new SuperPAC being set up by Karl Rove & Co. with the purpose of carefully vetting and backing more traditional "establishment" Republicans in Senate races in the next few election cycles.  

The group, the Conservative Victory Project, is intended to counter other organizations that have helped defeat establishment Republican candidates over the last two election cycles. It is the most robust attempt yet by Republicans to impose a new sense of discipline on the party, particularly in primary races.

It has been fascinating to watch the GOP embrace the energy behind the rise of the Tea Party in 2010 and celebrate their truly sweeping victories in the House and in state legislatures and then watch in horror in 2012 as Tea-Party backed conservative Republicans like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock suffer fiery political deaths.

This battle in the Republican Party between ideological purity and the necessity of compromise and moderation in a divided government with  an increasingly diverse electorate will play out in full daylight during this upcoming immigration debate.  There, too, establishment Republicans, who are well aware of the damage to future Presidential prospects if they continue to alienate Hispanic and APIA electorate, have set up a SuperPAC, Republicans for Immigration Reform, to protect skittish Republicans from primary challenges from the right if they vote on a bill.  It is interesting to watch which forces are emerging to offer checks and balances against the decades long right-ward push that is increasingly harming the party at the national level.  

[tylerreny-blog]

While the 113th Congress is the "most diverse" in history, it has a long ways to go before it starts to look like the population in the United States.  But how we do ensure that more individuals from Arab American, Asian America, Caribbean and Latino communities win elections and lend a unique voice and shared experience to the debate in Congress (particularly when measures like immigration reform, which disproportionately affects communities of color, are being debated)?  You do it by building the pipeline at the state and local level.  Above is a chart I put together after looking at previous offices  held by the 52 Congress members currently serving in the 113th Congress from these four communities.  Not surprisingly (and I am sure this is true of other members of Congress, though maybe not to this extent), most (nearly 80%) got their start in state or local elected or appointed positions.  While the media loves to focus on diversity in Congress (and yes, it is important), and we cheer and celebrate the election of immigrant and minority candidates to higher office, it is equally important, if not more important, to focus resources and energy on grooming young, energetic, and values-based candidates at the state and local level to build up a pipeline of quality candidates for when opportunities for higher office arise.  It is not the flashy, sexy, media-filled, or expedient route, but this is how you truly change the face of Congress.

[tylerreny-blog]

Daily Link Roundup 2-1-13

by Tyler Reny

Happy February 1st everyone.  The immigration debate continues in Washington and in the media with attention starting to shift away from the pro-immigration reform supporters to the anti-immigrant camp as they rev up their PR machine and grassroots supporters. 

POLITICS

David Drucker and Kyle Trygstad outline why Marco Rubio, with his conservative star power, political credibility, and stunning communication skills, will be absolutely key in ensuring a healthy amount of support from House Republicans for any immigration reform package in Rubio Must Sell Immigration Changes to GOP, Grass Roots.

Ron Brownstein, in the National Journal’s On Immigration, What Obama Can Learn From Bush’s Failed Efforts, advances one of the best arguments for why the political tides are different for immigration reform this time around – specifically that Republican leaders are fully aware of the necessity of reform for future national electoral success and that President Obama is not going to be as deferential towards Speaker Boehner if he decides to bury a bill as President Bush was towards then Speaker Hastert when he refused to bring the immigration bill to the floor without support from a majority of the majority in 2006.

Adam Serwer writing for Mother Jones in Hardliners Killed Bush’s Immigration Reform.  Can They Stop Obama’s? asks the million-dollar question about immigration reform: will nativists be as powerful today as they were in 2006 and 2007? Pro-immigrant groups appear to be anticipating this and at least one SuperPAC is raising money to help protect on-the-fence Republicans from primary challenges should they throw their support behind the bill.

Fox Legal Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano offers the libertarian’s take on immigration in Reason magazine’s Immigration Is A Natural Right: Nativism is the arch-enemy of the freedom to travel, arguing that the right to travel is an individual person human right, long recognized under natural law as immune from governmental interference.

More bad news out of Arizona as State Rep. Steve Smith (R-Maricopa) introduces a bill that would require hospital staff to report patients that cannot provide proof that they are authorized to be in the country, writes Emily Deruy of ABC News in Arizona Bill Asks Hospitals To Check Immigration Status..  There are too many reasons to list why this is such a horrendous idea.

THE MEDIA

Howard Kurtz writing for CNN in Be a little skeptical on immigration reform examines the media’s role in the immigration debate, arguing that the enthusiasm for reform is causing media organization to overestimate the prospects of reform being passed.

THE SPECIFICS

Suzy Khimm writing for Wonkblog examines the length of the so-called “line” to get into the US in “How long is the immigration ‘line’? As long as 24 years.” When politicians say that immigrants who are here without documentation need to just “get in the back of the line,” they are being extremely misleading as there is no one line to get into the U.S. and wait times can vary from 0 to 24 years.

INTERNATIONAL EFFECTS

Olga Khazan and Nick Miroff turn their eyes south of the border in their Washington Post column Three Ways U.S. Immigration Reform Might Impact Mexico and find that immigration reform in the US could increase remittances to Mexico, could decrease the number of illegal border crossing attempts, and improve the flow of migrant labor.

OTHER

Nathan Heffel examines some cutting edge programs aimed to help close the Latino educational achievement gap in “Starting Early: Combating the Rising Latino Achievement Gap.” The trick: start early!

(cross posted from The New American Leaders Project’s Tumblr) 

[tylerreny-blog]

SuperPACs, the GOP, and Immigration Reform

by Tyler Reny

In my post yesterday I said that I thought it would be hard to get House Republicans, many of whom have largely white constituencies, to vote for CIR because there are few outside pressures in their districts that could counteract possible primary challenges, nativist interest groups, and angry constituents.  But it looks like pro-immigration Republican groups are working to fix this, as Adam Serwer points out in this Mother Jones piece:

There's money behind the GOP pro-reform effort, too. Charles Spies, a Republican operative who cofounded the Mitt Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future and helped raise millions for Romney's campaign, started a new super-PAC last November with Gutierrez to support skittish Republicans worried about primary challenges from the right on immigration.

"In the past all [Republican candidates] had to consider politically was an attack from their right flank," Spies says. "Now they know they have an organization that can come in and support them if they're attacked." Republicans for Immigration Reform has only just begun raising money, though, and Spies says that for now he expects it won't start spending its cash until the 2014 election season.

It will be interesting to see if the PAC can sway on-the-fence Republican members to throw their support behind a bill.

(Update: Victoria DeFrancesca Soto, a political scientist at the LBJ School at UT Austin, points out two more potential roadblocks that will need to be overcome 1) the language of the Senate bill that says a pathway to citizenship will not be implemented until the border is secure, a "stop gap" measure that could be delayed indefinitely by anti-immigrant forces.  Soto argues that Obama would be unlikely to sign a bill without a strong pathway to citizenship (though I feel slightly different, I think he would support a path to legalization as a compromise measure and the ultimate bargaining chip for a comprehensive bill) and 2) The ticking time bomb effect.  Soto points out that legislators will want to avoid the crazy summer town halls that almost killed the health care bill.  The bill, she says, will need to be passed before the end of July.)

[tylerreny-blog]

Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) and the U.S. House

There seems to be an awful lot of chatter in the pundit and political classes over the last week (as well as from the Senate "octogang") about how immigration reform in 2013 will be different than the previous attempts of 2006 and 2007.  The idea is that the dearth of support that Mitt Romney received in the 2012 election from rapidly growing Asian American and Latino electorates will figure in to politicians' decisions on a bill because, theoretically, they would like to make it easier for a Republican president to win a national election with stronger support from immigrants. 

I wouldn't be so sure that national party success figures in too strongly to most individual house members' decisions on roll call votes. In 1974, political scientist David Mayhew wrote in Congress: The Electoral Connection that politicians are single-minded seekers of re-election.  If you look at the composition of House Republicans, 131 of 233 (56%) members reside in districts that are more than 80% white -- meaning that any minority voters in their districts have little political sway.  My guess is that these members, absent any outside pressure for reform (of which I can only think of agriculture/business interests which have been shut out over the last decade by the louder nativist voices) that the easiest path to re-election would be a "no" vote on CIR.  I find it hard to believe that many members would abandon their own conservative ideology, ignore the wishes of their constituents, and lend a "yes" vote in hopes of increasing the chance that their party might win a national election in 2016.

As Ron Brownstein and Scott Bland put it in It's Not Just Partisanship that Divides Congress:

Four-fifths of the House Republicans in the new Congress represent districts in which the white share of the voting-age population exceeds the national average, according to a new National Journal analysis. In a near-mirror image, almost two-thirds of House Democrats represent districts in which the minority share of the voting-age population exceeds the national average, the analysis found.

For each party, these stark patterns bring opportunities and challenges. The GOP’s strength in these preponderantly white districts helped sustain its House majority in a year when overwhelming minority support powered President Obama to a comfortable reelection. But the party’s disproportionate reliance on whites also means that few House Republicans have much experience in courting nonwhite voters—or much electoral incentive to do so.

Sure, the bill can pass the house with substantial Democratic support and a few Republicans but that would mean that House Speaker Boehner would have to bring the bill to the floor without majority support from the majority Republican Party and that seems unlikely (although certainly not unheard of). 

While I personally remain hopeful for a package, it is an uphill battle from here.  One possible point of compromise could be the downgrading from a path to citizenship to a more wishy-washy path to legalization (much like those who qualified for Obama's deferred action) that allows them to stay in the US but denies them citizenship.  Though, with this, I wonder how effective politicians would be at communicating the difference between the two with their constituents (who would likely conflate both with the dreaded "amnesty").

Does anyone know any research that speaks to House members' voting pattern on issues that injure the national party?

I am also looking to post about the struggle between nativist interests and the traditionally strong business/ag interests around immigration.  Any research tips would be welcomed.

[tylerreny-blog]

Daily Immigration Link Roundup 1-31-13

by Tyler Reny

Below are some more top immigration articles of the day and a great quote from a letter that Walt Whitman wrote to celebrate the 333rd anniversary of the founding of Santa Fe.  Like much of what Whitman wrote, his words ring true even today, more than 100 years later.

The Good Gray Poet’s View of our Population and our Future

“We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents and sort them, to unify them.  They will be found ampler than has been supposed, and in widely different sources.  Thus far, impressed by New-England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States have been fashioned from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only—which is a very great mistake.” – Walt Whitman, 1883

1)      THE POLITICS The President is confident that public support and enough political pressure is behind Republicans to pass an immigration bill. | Richard Stevenson explains in the New York Times’ Caucus blog that the pressures that drove immigration from Mexico to the United States in the past, mainly a weak economy south of the border and a booming economy here in the United States, have shifted, decreasing flow north and potentially creating an opening for immigration reform. | Senate Majority Leaders Harry Reid is throwing his full support behind immigration reform (but support for gun control legislation is far more tepid). “On immigration, he says he is “personally committed” to the cause and will work “tirelessly” to make passage a reality.” | Along the same lines, Obama said yesterday that he plans on having legislation move quickly through Congress and hopes to sign the bill within the next six months

2)      WONK  Dylan Matthews had a great piece in Wonkblog yesterday examining the complications of an E-Verify system which suffers from massive flaws.  There are no easy solutions.  The most comprehensive would be to establish a more reliable identification system including biometric information (fingerprints and DNA) but establishing such a system would be costly and more than a few Republican Leaders and Americans would be uneasy with the federal  government having access to such a database | It looks like battle lines are being established over the immigration law and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) with Senators like Marco Rubio saying that including any new citizens as beneficiaries for subsidized health care would be far too costly.

3)      ECONOMICS One of the common criticisms of immigration reform is that immigrants drive down American wages and “steal” American jobs.  Evidence shows that immigrants might actually make most American workers a bit richer in the long run (in the short-term, the data is a bit less optimistic).  The only people that lose from more immigration to the US, appears to be immigrants themselves.

4)      IMMIGRATION IN THE STATES It looks like the Colorado State Assembly’s push for in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants may gain some Republican support and is almost guaranteed to pass.

[tylerreny-blog]

Daily Link Roundup: Immigration Reform Edition 1-30-13

by Tyler Reny

With Obama’s speech in Las Vegas yesterday following closely on the coattails of the Senate’s “Gang of 8” unveiling of their “bi-partisan” immigration proposal, the media and pundit class have turned their attention fully towards immigration reform and immigration politics.  There are dozens of great articles published every day highlighting the pros and cons of reform proposals, analyzing the tricky politics of the topic, and suggesting ways it could be done better or “should” be done.  Here I break down and summarize the day’s top articles so you don’t have to.

1)      POLITICS:

a.       The National Journal leads the pack with five top articles.  Niraj Chokshi argues in “Why Now is the Right Time for Immigration Reform,” that this time indeed is different than the failed reform attemps of the past decade, particularly because 1) the borders have been strengthened 2) the proposed bills already have some very important support from important Senators (ie conservative rising-star Rubio of Florida) 3) “terrorism fatigue” has set in and support for letting undocumented immigrants stay in the U.S. has risen 4) the Latino and Asian American votes are strong and growing 5) reform will help the economy recover.  Along the same lines, Fawn Johnson  explains in “Taming the Tea Party on Immigration,” that the most conservative wing of the Republican party is holding their fire on immigration reform, at least for now, and could come around to some sort of compromise.  Rebecca Kaplan, Chris Frates, Scott Bland, and Michael Catalini all argue that passage may not be so easy, specifically in the House, where it is unlikely that Boehner can bring a bill to the floor that doesn’t have support from the majority of the majority (Republican Party establishment) particularly when 131 of 233 House Republicans represent districts that are more than 80% white and where there are no natural outside pressures on those congressmen to pass reform (aside from the more abstract preservation of the party’s national prospects). 

b.      Matt Canham outlines the bill that would offer visas to high-skilled immigrants that Republicans are pushing as a “fall-back” bill in “Hatch wants more visas for skilled immigrants,” likely a core element  of any comprehensive package that the President would sign.  In a similar article “As Obama Speaks, Tech Industry Praises Immigration Reform Proposal,” Liz Gannes analyzes the dire need of high-skilled visa reform.

c.       The Hill’s Elisa Viebeck and Sam Baker dig a bit deeper into the President’s immigration package plans in “Obama plan nixes health benefits for immigrants in the pipeline,” highlighting the fact that the devil is in the details with a bill of this magnitude but that including health care coverage for newly legalized citizens would be a non-starter for many Republican elected officials.

d.      Aliyah Frumin’s “Rush says immigrants believe ‘government is the source of prosperity’ highlights the huge role that conservative media plays in public opinion for many Americans and outlines the subsequent challenges that face passage of a comprehensive bill.

e.      Libertarian oriented Reason magazine shows how conservative Hispanic groups are reaching out to conservative politicians to try and change the language of immigration by saying “undocumented” rather than “illegal” or “alien” and to avoid using the term “amnesty” to describe the plan, but suggests attacking President Obama for not pushing a plan earlier in his Presidency.

f.        Greg Sargent, writing in his liberal blog The Plum Line for the Washington Post, argues that liberal advocates for immigration reform should be quite happy with the reform proposal laid out yesterday by the President.

g.       The Daily Kos, in their decidedly liberal tone, encourages political viewers to keep an eye on three different groups in this debate (the reformers, the fake reformers, and the xenophobes) that are likely to play an outsized role in the passage or destruction of a comprehensive reform proposal in the post “The Contours of the Immigration Debate.”

2)      CHARACTER STUDIES: Pamela Constable, in “Hispanic immigrants in Washington area welcome Obama’s reform efforts”  presents a great character study of the immigrant activist and organizers who have been working behind the scenes in the Washington DC area to push for reform and will play a crucial role in coming months.  Dana Ford and Catherine Shoichet lend in their CNN piece, “Immigrants’ days filled with fear, uncertainty, separation,” a human face to the struggle both documented and undocumented immigrants in the US face.  Jim Dwyer continues on the theme in the New York Times in “Searching for a Way Out of Limbo,” highlighting the complexity of families with mixed statuses where one parent or both, as well as one or more children, are undocumented.  The issue is far from black and white.

3)      DEMOGRAPHICS: So just who are the 51 million immigrants in the US?  Pew Hispanic Research has released a nice primer of demographic data on the nation’s 40 million documented and 11 million undocumented immigrants in “A Nation of Immigrants”

4)      POLLING: Harry Enten, a wonderful statistician that covers polling data for The Guardian (much in the same way that Nate Silver does for NYT) argues in “Five Reasons Republicans Won’t Win Latino Voters with Immigration Reform,” that polling data shows little hope for gains in Latino support for the Republican Party if they vote on immigration reform now.  Latino voters, he shows, will support democrats over republicans, at least in the short term, because of 1) the economy 2) Latinos are liberal 3) “Latino-friendly” GOP politicians haven’t done all that well in the past 4) Demographics don’t “swing” elections and 5) Most Latino voters don’t live in swing states (aside from CO, FL, and NV).

5)      OTHER: And finally, in this fluff piece from New York Magazine, Dan Amira tallies which immigrants Obama is fond of calling out in his immigration speeches (hint: he has a particular fondness for Google’s Sergey Brin)

(cross posted from New American Leaders Project blog)

[tylerreny-blog]

Legislative Shirking and Immigration Reform

When it became apparent that the post November 2012 election lame duck Congress (with ~ 90 members defeated or retiring) would have to deal with the fiscal cliff, I began wondering if outgoing Republicans might buck base, party, and interest group pressures (Norquist's anti-tax pledge) and let taxes increase on the top percent of earners.  Much of this was, of course, based on my liberal bias that Republican lawmakers, particularly of the Tea-Party variety, couldn't really be so conservative and ideologically pure, but that their views were being pushed right by a variety of outside factors (see Hacker and Pierson's Off Center, for example).  

Then, responding to a tweet I saw last week about whether Sen. Saxby Chambliss's pending 2014 retirement would politically free him up to vote for a comprehensive immigration reform package prompted me to review the poli sci literature on lame duck Congress members and ideological purity. My question was: do members' roll call voting patterns shift once they plan on retiring? More specifically, would somebody like Saxby Chambliss vote on a comprehensive immigration reform package?  Theoretically, members could hold personal views different from policy positions they have taken in the past, and once they are free of electoral constraints, they could vote their "conscience."  

There is no shortage of literature on legislative shirking.  A review of existing literature in 1996 by Bender and Lott found lots of contradictory evidence but two strong central themes.  The first is that outgoing congress members reduce their effort level (participatory shirking) but Bender and Lott concluded that there was little evidence of ideological shirking:

"The overwhelming majority of regressions indicate that...politicians continue to vote in the same way that they have previously"

Rothenberg and Sanders (2000), finding problems with existing literature on the subject, set up their own study and found strong evidence for participatory shirking and statistically significant evidence of ideological shirking on at least some roll call vote, "more if [the members] are centrists.  More specifically, shirking changes some 5-7% of votes of moderate members and 1-2% of votes of all other more partisan members.

My guess is, with Chambliss' record on immigration and fairly strong positive score from NumbersUSA, that he is not likely to vote for any sort of package that has a path to citizenship in it.  

But, hey, if Rubio can bring the polemical and angry Mark Levin around to a more moderate position, maybe Chambliss could be convinced, too.