Immigration Reform

WASHINGTON -- Hoping to build on their success in Maryland, about 200 immigration advocates rallied in front of the White House on Thursday in support of a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration policy. The effort to revive a national conversation about immigration follows an election in which Latino voters helped pushed Obama to victory in battleground states like Colorado and Nevada. Exit polling shows Hispanics were the only large demographic group to back President Obama with bigger numbers in 2012 than they did in 2008.

The courtship of the Hispanic vote has reached new intensity in the presidential campaign, with both President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney dutifully addressing the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials in the last few days. Mr. Romney, who arrived first, had the larger challenge, having embraced the tough anti-immigration law in Arizona during the Republican primaries. Mr. Obama then came in riding a strong tailwind of past Hispanic support, recently accelerated by his executive order halting the deportation of children of illegal aliens brought to this country.

The U.S. is badly in need of immigration reform, and if the case hadn't been made sufficiently by President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney's dueling views of the matter last week, the nation's highest court has now weighed into the debate, too. In striking down three of four challenged sections of Arizona's anti-illegal immigration law on a 5-3 vote (with Justice Elena Kagan recused), theU.S. Supreme Court has chosen to side with the Obama administration on everything but what many saw as the most controversial aspect of the 2010 law - the provision that allows police officers to check the immigration status of people they stop.

Several Maryland Democrats on Friday backed President Barack Obama's decision to allow certain young illegal immigrants to remain in the country, a policy that advocates say will affect as many as 800,000 people nationwide. "The announcement today recognizes that we should not hold hardworking, innocent children responsible for the actions of their parents," said Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat who is up for reelection this year. "We should focus our immigration enforcement on the most dangerous individuals rather than children who mostly have known no other country than the U.S. " But Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, a Republican who faces a difficult reelection this year, said he felt the decision undermined the Constitution.

If the Obama administration proceeds to electoral doom, blame rests on its surrender to its financiers and campaign organizers: Wall Street and public employee and construction unions. A Democratic administration in control of Congress which for two years left hedge fund managers' "carried interest" untouched while not providing a Civilian Conservation Corps or payroll tax moratorium for young workers to relieve youth unemployment has something wrong with it. Meanwhile, the bizarre Republican schemes for tax relief have in common a determination not to burden "the donor community.

The recent article about the expansion into Baltimore of the Department of Homeland Security's program to crackdown on illegal immigrants ("Immigrants, city fear divide over status checks," Feb. 26) makes clear the need for real immigration reform. Programs such as Secure Communities, regardless of aim, are succeeding in spreading fear and division and in threatening the stability of the family. Moreover, the program is altering the relationship between federal immigration enforcement and local law enforcement.

Blaine Young, president of Frederick County's board of commissioners, has plans to make Frederick "the most unfriendly county in the state of Maryland to illegal aliens. " And while he said some localities might cringe at such a title, "we wear that with a badge of honor. " County officials - motivated by a high-profile murder charge against an alleged illegal immigrant - are attempting to craft sweeping legislation to prohibit undocumented workers from getting jobs and renting homes.

The nation recently received two contradictory signals about the importance of immigration reform. President Barack Obama stood near the Mexican border in El Paso last month and called (again) for immigration reform. The next week, Gallup released a poll showing that a scant 4 percent of Americans consider immigration to be the nation's most important problem. That's down from 11 percent four years ago. What's happened to our national immigration angst? Clearly, the economic slump that began in late 2007 has given us other things to worry about.

The Dream Act debate that has recently arrived in Maryland has provoked such discriminatory xenophobia that you would think the commentary was from indigenous Americans, not from citizens of the nation known as the "melting pot of the world" whose very ancestors were immigrants themselves. "Well, they were legal immigrants," you say. That's because the U.S. had little to no immigration restrictions in those times and our ancestors were lucky enough to get in by the proverbial skin of their teeth.

The state Senate is poised this week to take up a controversial plan to offer discounted tuition at Maryland's public colleges and universities to students who are in the country illegally. The legislation, which cleared the Senate education committee last week, would allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at any of Maryland's public community colleges. After completing two years of study, they could transfer to a four-year institution and continue to pay the in-state rate.