Stance on
Immigration May Hurt Perry Early On
Published: September 23, 2011 - New York Times
With a single phrase implying his opponents are heartless, Gov. Rick
Perry of Texas plumbed a profound divide between his views on illegal immigration
and those of many grass-roots conservatives, who up to now have been the core of
his support for the Republican nomination.
Mr. Perry summoned the phrase in a debate on Thursday night to justify a
Texas law that lets some children of illegal immigrants pay in-state tuition at
public colleges. If you oppose it, he said, “I don’t think you have a heart.”
His remarks were instantly seized upon by rivals, none more so than Mitt
Romney, who vetoed a similar bill as Massachusetts governor.
“I think if you’re opposed to illegal immigration, it doesn’t mean that you
don’t have a heart,” he said Friday to a group of conservative activists. “It
means that you have a heart and a brain.”
And so the deeply visceral issue of illegal immigration has shown that
geography sometimes trumps ideology in politics: as governor of a border state
with a large Hispanic population and entwined cultural identities, Mr. Perry has
a more moderate, nuanced position than his rivals.
The governor shepherded, with bipartisan support, the 2001 legislation in
Texas letting the undocumented children of illegal immigrants pay in-state
tuition for higher education, and he has been opposed to a fence the length of
the Texas-Mexico border.
But these issues are potentially treacherous for Mr. Perry in
early-nominating states — Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — where the
populations are largely non-Hispanic but keenly aware of a growing number of
immigrants.
“We just looked so much like each other for so long, some people see new
faces and it scares them,” said Eric Woolson, the communications director in
Iowa for Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who called for a fence
“on every mile, on every yard, on every foot” of the border during Thursday
night’s debate.
Illegal immigration scarcely registers as a top concern in polls of
Republican voters, and candidates rarely bring it up in their stump speeches.
But at nearly every campaign rally an audience member or two, grumbling about
“anchor babies,” asks what a candidate plans to do. What many are looking for is
to be thrown a side of beef: fence the border, check workers’ identifications,
deport the law-breakers.
In this context, Mr. Perry, who on almost all other issues has strong Tea
Party credentials, is a Lone Star anomaly.
He has called building a 1,200-mile fence the length of the border “idiocy”
and opposes requiring businesses to use the federal E-Verify program to check an
employee’s immigration status.
The legislation making Texas the first state to allow high school graduates
who are not here legally to attend public colleges on in-state tuition was
passed with the endorsement of business groups.
“The future of the business community is having a well-educated work force,”
said Charles C. Foster, chairman of immigration issues for the Greater Houston
Partnership, a business coalition that supports the law. “We realize the
trajectory of Texas is no longer going to be an industrial, steel-age state.
It’s going to be based on brain power.”
The law inspired other states to imitate it, including California and New
York. In Texas about 22,700 students benefited from the tuition discount through
2010, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
“Any governor of a border state always sees things differently,” said Lionel
Sosa, who was a consultant on Hispanic media to the campaigns of two earlier
Republican presidential candidates, George W. Bush and John McCain, each
border-state moderates on these issues.
“Somebody like Perry already has a record with immigration, and it’s hurting
him now,” he said. “If he happens to make it all the way to the end, it’ll help
him with the Latino vote” in the general election.
In the meantime, though, he is being flayed by rivals. Mr. Romney calls the
tuition discount a “subsidy” worth as much as $100,000 to a four-year student
and a “magnet” to illegal residents.
Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, called Mr. Perry “soft
on illegal immigration” during the debate, in Orlando, Fla., and framed the
issue as a burden to taxpayers. “Why should they be given preferential treatment
as an illegal in this country?” he said to cheers from the audience.
The issue is clearly hurting Mr. Perry, said Larry Sabato, director of the
Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “He was sold as the
conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. Now Romney has gotten an immigration
baton to use on Perry’s head. It’s manna from heaven for Romney. He’s hitting
him from the right.”
Political analysts in Texas noted that in the last couple of years, as the Republican
Party nationally has marched rightward on immigration, Mr. Perry has also.
This year he tried to have the Legislature prohibit “sanctuary cities” that
restrain the police from asking detainees about immigration status, but the
measure failed after Republican business leaders opposed it.
Although Mr. Perry’s opponents are vying to define themselves as hard-liners
on illegal immigration, there is danger for an eventual nominee who has
alienated Hispanic voters in the process.
They are a crucial voting bloc in an increasing number of swing states, from
Florida to Colorado to New Mexico. If Republicans cannot attract around 40
percent of the Hispanic vote, they will be in trouble, Mr. Sabato said.
“Like most Americans, the No. 1 issue to Latinos is jobs and the economy,”
said Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for
Conservative Principles in Washington.
“If you say something that antagonizes Latino voters during the primary and
become the nominee, you’re going to have a hard time. Latinos are not going to
forget.”