Plan Packs Political Bonuses for President

By Janet Hook
Times Staff Writer

January 8, 2004

WASHINGTON — President Bush's plan to vastly expand the ranks of legal immigrant workers in the United States is a bold initiative that delivers a double political punch, pleasing his longtime business supporters while reaching out to Latino voters, whose political loyalties are up for grabs in 2004 and beyond.

The proposal's focus on low-wage immigrant workers also helps to burnish Bush's credentials as a "compassionate" conservative — a claim that has been eclipsed in the fog of war against Iraq and terrorism.

"Our country is a welcoming society," Bush said in announcing the plan Wednesday. "This system will be more compassionate."

So even though the plan faces an uphill fight in Congress, Bush's supporters hope he will reap a substantial political dividend just by proposing it as one of his first acts of the reelection campaign year.

But for all the political benefits of the plan — which would grant renewable three-year temporary work permits to workers who are currently here illegally — it is not without risks. It pits Bush against some of his most ardent conservative supporters, who oppose the plan because they believe it amounts to granting amnesty to lawbreakers.

It is a measure of Bush's confidence in the support he enjoys among conservatives that he is willing to risk alienating them in an election year in order to reach out to a constituency that could help broaden the base of the GOP for decades to come. As governor of Texas, Bush was a moderate voice on immigration issues, and he was supported by almost half the state's Latino voters in his 1998 reelection campaign.

Democrats said Wednesday that Bush's immigration proposal was too little, too late. Upping the ante in the competition for Latino loyalties, most Democratic presidential candidates called for an even more expansive liberalization of immigration rules.

But both parties may be overestimating the impact of such proposals on Latino voters: Latinos are not a monolithic voting bloc, and not all necessarily identify their interests with the plight of illegal immigrants. On the other hand, some Latino activists are put off by Bush's plan because it does not go as far as they wanted to put immigrants on the path to U.S. citizenship.

"If the president is trying to appeal to the Latino community, we're baffled by this," said Lisa Navarrete, a vice president of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy organization. "This is not what the community needed."

Echoing that view, several contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination attacked the plan as a patently political gesture that does more for employers than for the illegal immigrants they have hired.

"President Bush's decision to raise immigration at this juncture appears to be little more than a cynical gesture in an election year," said former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, the Democratic front-runner.

Said Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.): "Bush's policy rewards business over immigrants by providing them with a permanent pool of disenfranchised temporary workers who could easily be exploited by employers."

Business groups were among the most enthusiastic supporters of Bush's initiative, which a spokesman for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce called "momentous." The National Restaurant Assn. commended Bush for addressing the economic problem faced by its members, who employ significant numbers of immigrants.

A California tomato grower, saying her company has been unable to find enough legal workers, described the plan as "a gift."

"For me, this is like a Christmas present," said Luawanna Hallstrom, head of Harry Singh & Sons in Oceanside.

While it is hardly new for a Republican president to be proposing business-backed initiatives, Bush's support for a sweeping liberalization of immigration rules is a milestone in the evolution of Republican thinking on the issue. As recently as 1996, the Republican Party was so dominated by anti-immigration sentiment that Bob Dole ran for president on a platform that called for a constitutional amendment to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. of illegal immigrants.

Bush is pushing for immigration reform, long sought by the Latino community, at a time when both parties view that voting bloc as pivotal. Latinos constitute the biggest and fastest-growing minority group in the U.S. They are a significant presence in big states important to presidential elections, like Texas and Florida. And while a plurality of Latinos has traditionally identified with the Democrats, they are less entrenched in the party than African Americans.

Bush has made a determined push to make inroads into the Latino community, with some success. He received about one-third of the Latino vote in 2000, compared with Bob Dole's 21% in 1996.

Hoping to build on that support, Bush has named several Latinos to top positions, including Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel, and Mel Martinez, until recently the secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He strongly, but unsuccessfully, supported Senate confirmation of Miguel Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The immigration proposal takes the push for Latino sympathy for the first time into a major targeted policy initiative.

With initiatives like the immigration proposal, "Bush could win half the Hispanic vote nationally in 2004," said Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster. "That would be an enormous accomplishment for the Republican Party."

But in the process of reaching for that prize, Bush is reopening deep divisions within the party over immigration. Many Republicans agree that the party needs to welcome immigrants if it is to build a sustainable majority politically and the country is to thrive economically.

In addition to Latinos, the constituencies pushing immigration reform — from small businesses to farmers to Mexican President Vicente Fox — are extremely important to both Bush and the GOP.

But other Republicans worry that illegal immigrants soak up social services and other resources that should go to U.S. citizens, and that their presence undermines the rule of law.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) denounced Bush's proposal, saying, "It is dangerous to offer additional incentives and rewards for illegal immigration while giving only lip service to border security." Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.) said Bush's guest worker program "cannot work."

Barbara Coe, founder and chairwoman of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, which favors restrictions on immigration, said Bush "has just put out a welcome mat to illegal immigrants, violent criminals, drug smugglers and terrorists."

Unless Bush can persuade such critics — as he tried in his speech Wednesday — that his proposal does not amount to amnesty, there are probably enough Republicans who oppose immigration reform that it would be difficult for him to ram it through Congress as he has other trademark initiatives, such as his tax cuts.

"It's a long road," said a senior House Republican leadership aide. "There is not a lot of time and, frankly, there is going to be some opposition."

One possibility, the aide said, is that Congress could pass a more limited immigration measure this year, such as a bipartisan bill drafted last fall that would allow an estimated 500,000 undocumented farm workers to become legal U.S. residents.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, in Mexico City to meet with Mexican officials, said the issue would be addressed "immediately and with real focus."

"The fact that it's a political year obviously complicates the issue because you typically see partisanship arise in more dramatic ways," he told reporters.

The key question is how hard Bush plans to press a divided congressional GOP to act on the bill before the November elections. A senior House Republican aide said the early message from the White House was that it was important, but not essential, for the president that it be enacted this year.

"It's enough for him to put this out there, " the aide said. "The White House would like to have it, but they don't have to have it" enacted before the election.

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Calculating the Latino influence

The Bush administration's immigration proposal could play a role in shaping the Latino vote in this year's presidential election. Nationally, 1 in 8 Americans is Latino, but Latinos accounted for only 1 in 20 votes in the 2000 election. Listed below are the nine states with the largest number of Latino voters in the 2000 presidential race:

			Percentage of state vote
State	All voters	Latino voters	that was Latino
California	11.5 million	1.6 million	14%
Texas	7 million	1.3 million	18.6%
Florida	6 million	678,000	11.3%
New York	7 million	502,000	7.2%
Arizona	1.6 million	247,000	15%
Illinois	5 million	218,000	4%
New Mexico	647,000	191,000	30%
New Jersey	3.4 million	179,000	5%
Colorado	1.6 million	158,000	10%
Nationwide	110 million	5.9 million	5.4%

Times staff writers John Glionna in San Francisco and Jennifer Mena in Orange County and Richard Boudreaux in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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