Immigration is not a topic you've probably heard much about during this year's presidential election campaign -- at least not from the candidates.
It's not that the candidates lack official positions or that they agree on immigration issues. It's just that, other than Independent candidate Ralph Nader, they'd rather not talk about it.
Jack Martin, special projects director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said the candidates are avoiding the subject because their positions aren't especially popular with the public.
"I'd say that both parties have staked out positions early in the year intended to attract business groups and ethnic advocacy groups that meet their interests in low-cost labor and illegal aliens," he said. In other words, both Democratic and Republican officials support some kind of program that would allow illegal immigrants to continue working in the United States. And such programs are hugely unpopular with most voters.
Thus the silence.
But Colin McCracken, spokesman for the Arizona Republican Party, thinks immigration could sneak into one of the presidential debates, the last of which will be held Oct. 13 at ASU's Gammage Auditorium.
"I think the country's main focus is on the growth of the economy and national security. Those are the issues that people seem to be voting on, and thus [the candidates] have to tailor their messages," he said. "I expect the debates to focus on the war on terror, but [discussion of immigration] is definitely not outside the realm of possibility for this debate."
Jose Cortez, public relations manager for Chicanos Por La Causa in Phoenix, said he thinks it should come up.
"Being so close to the border, we have a lot of individuals who are migrating from Mexico," he said. "So, absolutely, I would say this is an important issue in Arizona and nationally."
Like Cortez, ASU political science freshman Joaquin Rios, believes immigration should be center stage in the presidential election.
Rios calls what's happening along the Arizona-Mexico border, where 164 bodies or remains have been discovered in the past year, a "humanitarian crisis." "It's really tragic, and everyone wants look the other way," he said. "But really, we all have a collective responsibility for every one of those men, women and children who have died along the border."
In January, Bush announced a proposal for a guest worker program that would allow illegal immigrants to work legally in the United States without offering them residency or citizenship.
However, Bush has shied away from mentioning the program on the campaign trail. Neither does his campaign Web site carry any mention of the program -- or any other immigration issues, for that matter.
You have to go to the White House Web site to find a reference to the guest worker plan, which is described there as a program that would "match willing foreign workers with willing U.S. employers when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs."
Conservative Republicans have come out against the proposal, saying it amounts to amnesty. Twenty-three congressmen wrote to Bush in January to warn about a backlash among their constituents if he pursued the idea.
And Democrats don't much like the plan, either.
Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, has called Bush's plan "a warmed-over Bracero program." That program, run by the U.S. Department of Labor from 1942 to 1964, allowed a limited number of immigrants to come to the United States from Mexico to work in agriculture. It was widely criticized for exposing the legal temporary immigrants to abuse and exploitation. Lee G. Williams, the officer in charge of the program, called it "legalized slavery."
Kerry has also proposed a program that would allow temporary workers to come to the United States and be protected under labor laws. But Kerry went further during a speech to the National Council of La Raza in Phoenix in June. He said he would offer an immigration reform bill within 100 days of taking office that would allow undocumented workers who have lived in the United States for five years to become citizens if they pay taxes and aren't security risks.
In addition, the legislation would reduce the backlog of paperwork that keeps legal residents apart from their families in other countries.
According to his campaign Web site, if elected, Kerry would also sign two immigration bills that have some Republican support in Congress. The DREAM Act, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, which President Bush doesn't support, would allow undocumented immigrants who have grown up in this country to go to college legally.
The Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits, and Security Act, sponsored by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and co-sponsored by more than half the Senate, was supported by both the agribusiness industry and United Farm Workers. Commonly called the Ag Jobs Bill, it would allow workers who had been in the United States under a special work program for a few years to eventually obtain citizenship.
Bush's program would not offer citizenship.
Though both bills initially seemed likely to pass, low-key opposition from the White House has stymied their progress. The Washington Post reported on July 21 that the DREAM Act and Ag Jobs Bill had "fallen prey to the Bush administration's reluctance to do anything that might rouse the ire of the nativist right."
Kerry's record on immigration in the Senate was moderately liberal, analysts say. According to the Numbers USA Web site, which analyzes the votes of congressmen on specific issues, Kerry "leans toward higher immigration, population growth [and] foreign labor."
Specifically, he voted repeatedly in favor of easing restrictions on "chain migration," which would have made it easier for people who have come legally to the United States to bring their families here from other countries. He also voted to increase immigration quotas in 1990.
But more recently, in 1998, he voted to require U.S. companies to look for American workers before looking to foreigners to fill positions. And in 2002, he voted to make it more difficult for temporary visa holders to remain illegally past their visa expiration date in the United States.
Both and Bush and Kerry say they will work to make the borders more secure.
Nader, whose name will not likely appear on the Arizona presidential ballot in November but can be written in, is more vocal about immigration issues than either of the other two candidates. Immigration is a major topic on his Web site, and his running mate, Peter Camejo, is Hispanic.
Nader focuses on the underlying causes of both legal and illegal immigration, saying those issues are strongly connected to the United States' dealings with other countries.
"As long as our foreign policy supports dictators and oligarchs south of our borders, there are going to be desperate, oppressed people moving north over our border where people like Tyson Foods illegally employ them at very low wages," Nader says in his policy statement.
He also says that NAFTA has hurt Mexican corn and other industries, causing unemployment that leads to swelling "urban slums" in Mexico and illegal immigration into the United States.
Nader proposes supporting democratic movements, ensuring a living wage in the United States, enforcing laws against sweatshops, amnesty for undocumented workers already in this country and better control of the borders.
Jesse Christopherson is a senior majoring in print journalism. He can be reached at jesse.christopherson@asu.edu.
