Suman Raghunathan

Romney Wants to Play Mushy Hardball on Immigration

The New York Times reported Monday that Mitt Romney, who nearly broke Iowa’s banks in his big-spending effort to ace last week’s primary with his clearly not-so-effective McKinsey/Bain consulting method, is now trying mightily to spin his second-place finish in Iowa into a victory. But the Romney spin machine doesn't stop with the candidate crowing over not landing in third or fourth place.

In testy exchanges with both McCain and Huckabee during Saturday’s Republican Presidential debate, Romney continues to try to unleash a one-two-three punch of Massachusetts political invective against immigration, ‘amnesty’, and his rivals’ track records on the issue.

Accuracy aside (in McCain’s previous political life he supported earned legalization, not ‘amnesty’ for undocumented immigrants who would acknowledge they broke the rules, pay a hefty fine, demonstrate English proficiency, and then get in line with everyone else – but all that’s out the window now with Senator McCain, who currently waxes poetic about strengthening the border wall and not much else), I have a newsflash for Mitt: breaking out the anti-immigrant rhetoric didn’t work in Iowa. It isn’t going to work in New Hampshire. And it ain’t going to work in the rest of the nation, which (surprise, surprise!) plays host to a much more diverse electorate than these two fine bastions of small-town Americana.

I know, I know, I’ve said before that immigrant-bashing doesn’t help candidates hit political pay dirt. But at least I’m consistent – something our friend Romney hasn’t always been in the past.

After cautiously supporting earned legalization (what he would now call an ‘amnesty’, yikes!) for the undocumented early in his political career, Romney shifted political gears as his Republican star rose to appear tougher on immigration policy. As Governor of Massachusetts, he vetoed a state bill to extend state resident college tuition rates and some state college scholarships to a small number of ace undocumented immigrant high school graduates. This cheap shot was carefully timed to occur just before Romney was to leave office, as the Romney camp didn’t want to take any political flak from Massachusetts voters. And, of course, this was all occurring at the same time that the supposedly tough-on-illegal-immigrants-and-their-employers-Governor was conveniently employing undocumented workers to plow the plush lawns of his palatial pad.

Ok, enough alliteration. My 7th grade grammar teacher would not be pleased.

Back to politics. Oops, another p-word.

A University of Iowa poll found 57 percent of Iowa voters favored earned citizenship (which our friend Mitt would probably inaccurately brand an ‘amnesty’) and only 23 percent ok’ed deporting undocumented immigrants. Americans’ practical take on immigration policy (the economy depends on immigrants; they bring diversity and entrepreneurial energy to our nation; they give more to the economy and nation than they take) is echoed in national polling on immigration, where I defer to a recent Chicago Tribune op-ed :

“In 20 of 22 separate public opinion polls conducted between March and December, somewhere between 55 percent and 83 percent of the respondents favored some form of earned legal status. In the remaining two polls, the majority favored this option.”

Meanwhile, in Romney’s *clearly* well-developed analysis of immigration policy (click here for DMI’s take on his immigration platform, which hasn’t changed much from last spring) on the campaign trail, the most incisive thing the former management consultant has to say about the legendarily inefficient and inept US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS, the new incarnation of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service) is, “I wish we had a lemon law so we could get our money back.”

Hmm. Seems like the height of political nuance on a complicated issue to me.

Perhaps Romney should start reading those poll results again.

Suman Raghunathan: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 12:02 PM, Jan 08, 2008 in Immigration
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