Will immigration non-action disappoint Latinos?

Too many political observers are looking at those polls indicating how strongly the Latino voter bloc rejected the Republicans this year and are mistakenly assuming this means love for Barack Obama.

But reading a pair of stories in recent days reinforced my belief that this growing portion of the U.S. population has yet to settle into a political party (and I still think we ultimately will split among the two), and how people who think Latinos are natural-born Democrats are going to be in for a shock.

THE STORIES IN question were a commentary published by the Washington-based America’s Policy Program that sees the selection of Rahm Emanuel to be chief of staff to a President Obama as a sign that serious reform of immigration laws is NOT going to be forthcoming anytime soon – if at all.

The other was a story published Tuesday in the New York Daily News that made it clear many of those Latinos who did cast their ballots for Barack ARE expecting this issue to be a priority, and are going to be pretty disgusted if he does nothing on the issue.

Immigration.

It has become the key issue in that everybody agrees that the current laws are flawed and do not adequately cover the nation’s situation as it exists in the early 21st Century. We, the people of this country, are in need of a massive overhaul of the laws as to who can come to the United States to try to find a new life.

THE PROBLEM IS that we do NOT agree on what constitutes reform.

Much of the “reform” measures considered by Congress in recent years have been put together by people who are convinced that all these foreigners are a massive wave that threatens the character of the United States as a nation.

It is with that in mind that measures creating guest-worker programs were sent down to defeat (even when they had the backing of the one-time conservative darling, President George Bush), and measures concerning the erection of a wall along the U.S./Mexico border were taken seriously.

So seriously that people such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton wound up voting for them while serving in the U.S. Senate, knowing they could not stop the measures from passing and not wanting to cast a negative vote that conservatives would use against them in future electoral campaigns.

“BARACK OBAMA, HE’LL Let the Foreigners Take Your Jobs, Your Land and Your Lives!!!!!!” Actually, that hysteria isn’t that far removed from the campaign rhetoric Obama did endure during his primary and general election campaigns for president.

But that era is over, some of us now want to think. The election of a Democrat who has condemned the hostile rhetoric on immigration, along with the maintenance of Democratic majorities in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives ought to mean that the power of Capitol Hill and the White House is behind people who are inclined to look at the issue more logically.

They realize, we’d like to think, that many of the people who are currently in this country without visas are making a worthwhile contribution to our society (in some cases, more of a contribution than some native-born citizens).

That is not a “given.”

FOR SOME DEMOCRATS are convinced that touching the issue of immigration at all will merely stir up the nativists to the point that the 2010 elections for seats in Congress will become about the political people who want to give away the country to the foreigners.

They fear stirring up the defeated opposition to the point where they give it strength and could cost themselves re-election.

And as Tom Barry, director of the policy program’s TransBorder Project, writes, Emanuel has a record during his time in Congress, both representing Chicago’s Northwest Side and heading up the effort that enabled Democrats to take control of the House of Representatives in 2006, of thinking of immigration as an issue best left alone.

That would mean no serious reform on the issue.

NOW EMANUEL AND other Democrats who take such an attitude would argue that they are doing some good, in that they are preventing the punitive measures designed to segregate newcomers to this country from ever becoming part of the U.S. mainstream from becoming law.

It’s true. Barry concedes that point, noting that the Federation for American Immigration Reform gave Emanuel a “0” ranking – indicating that he consistently voted against their view on every single immigration-related bill that came before Congress.

But if he’s not willing to push for serious reform, we remain with the same stagnant mess that has convoluted the situation to date. Considering that Democrats are now claiming they have to focus on resolving the nation’s economy (a mess they’re quick to blame on Republicans) and that all other issues have to take a back-seat, they already have their “excuse” to do nothing.

Yet if the Daily News is any indication, doing nothing is unacceptable.

THAT 2-1 RATIO of Latino voters supporting the Democrat clearly shows that any gains Bush made for Republicans in 2004 was an aberration. Yet we’re still not settled, and our growing numbers are learning that our votes can be used to punish political people who don’t follow through on what is expected of them.

“Candidate Obama promised to move in the first year and made it quite clear he thought raids are not the best way to enforce immigration law,” America’s Voice director Frank Sharry said. Democrats, “are going to have to deliver on this.”

Yet what happens if the political people on Capitol Hill, with support from the president, decide this issue just doesn’t matter enough, and that we can operate with the mish-mash of existing immigration laws that were created with conflicting goals in mind (assimilation vs. deportation) just a little while longer?

Some have speculated that serious immigration reform could come in the early years of a second term for a President Obama.

ALL I HAVE to say is that if Barack thinks he’s ensured his re-election in 2012 by holding this immigration issue off to the future, he may find himself spending time with the kids back in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.

For the Latino vote that backed him so strongly this time is still in the fickle stage; it could easily shift itself elsewhere next election.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Could we be forced to vote for a second term of Barack Obama as president (http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5656?utm_source=streamsend&utm_medium=email&utm_content=1793961&utm_campaign=Emanuel%27s%20Political%20Pragmatism%20on%20Immigration%20Reform%20%7C%20Tom%20Barry) in order to see him do anything toward serious immigration reform?

Will Latinos turn on Obama if he doesn’t (http://www.nydailynews.com/latino/2008/11/11/2008-11-11_latinos_for_obama_s_se_pudo.html) make the issue a priority?