This is another in an ongoing series of diaries on the policy positions of Democratic Senator Barack Obama, whom I support for President.
Previous diaries were on Health Care, Foreign Policy, Technology and the 50 State Strategy.
Tonight I'd like to catch you up on Senator Obama's policy positions on immigration and discuss Senator Obama's relationship with Latino voters.
In previous essays I've noted a trend in Barack Obama's political positions.
- Senator Obama's positions are innovative
- Senator Obama's positions are common sense
- Senator Obama's positions can be communicated in a no BS manner
What that means, oftentimes is that Senator Obama doesn't get credit for his courageous stands (and, yes, Senator Kennedy was right to call Obama "courageous" today.) That being said, let me start this essay with a quote regarding Senator Obama's position on the hot-button issue of driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants:
"Sen. Obama has said you get a driver's license if you know how to drive."
-John Trasviña, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
That's it. If you are going to drive in the USA, and you know how to drive, you should obtain a Driver's Licence. That should be eminently understandable. However, this is an issue that is used to beat up on Democrats. Governor Elliot Spitzer of New York just got hammered on it. Senator Clinton, famously, stumbled on it. However, Governor Spitzer advanced the driver's license issue because that policy is the right thing to do. It makes sense; it's sane policy. On that, Obama and Spitzer see eye to eye. That's the kind of policy position that Barack Obama stands for: progressive policy that makes sense to everyone.
Here's another key quote from that piece from the SF Chronicle:
Obama's intention is to draw distinctions between himself and Clinton on what are otherwise indistinguishable positions on immigration. Both have adopted the standard Democratic approach of favoring tougher enforcement along with earned legalization. The Illinois senator is differentiating himself in three key areas: driver's licenses, a promise to take up immigration reform his first year in office, and his background as the son of an immigrant (his father was Kenyan) and a community organizer in Chicago.
Obama made the promise to Latino leaders to take up immigration reform in his first year after Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., chairman of the Democratic caucus, said his party might not raise the divisive issue again until the next president's second term, assuming a Democrat wins. Latino leaders felt betrayed. For them, an immigration overhaul is a top priority in light of state and local crackdowns on illegal immigrants and federal raids in workplaces across the country.
Clinton has not made such a promise, saying only that she would make her best efforts."Those issues are huge," said Obama supporter and state Sen. Gilbert Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, vice chairman of the California Latino Legislative Caucus.
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One other theme that has emerged from these policy diaries is how Barack Obama has drawn the support of principled, innovative leaders that all of us can respect. The more we get to know the people around Barack, the more we see what kind of candidate he is and what his presidency will be like.
California State Senator Gilbert Cedillo, quoted in that article above, might not be familiar to all Kossacks here. He's most well known for being the author of the California Dream Act, guaranteeing in-state tuition for undocumented California students with a high school degree seeking to go to college. That's another innovative and gutsy program that took courage to pass, but we did it. And, yes, Gilbert Cedillo supports Barack Obama (Watch this video through, you won't regret it.):
(Senator Cedillo does have a connection to us here, however. I know Senator Cedillo because when I was organizing the Chicago Voices program his office was instrumental in helping introduce me to "Jose" and was crucial in helping fundraise for Jose's trip to join us at Yearlykos Chicago.)
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I promised not to sugar coat policy positions in this diary series and I won't tonight. Both Barack Obama and Senator Clinton are for roughly the same mix of "border enforcement," earned legalization and a path to citizenship that Senator Kennedy made his best effort to pass last year.
The key policy difference is that Barack Obama has pledged to take up and pass comprehensive immigration reform in his first year in office. As a part of that Barack Obama will put sanity into our nation's policies regarding driver's licenses. You could say that as the son of an immigrant and former representative of a district on Chicago's South Side that Senator Obama's standing on immigration issues should be given some weight. But that's not the core of it.
The core of it is that Barack Obama expresses himself directly and in common sense terms on policy issues including immigration. You can read what he says on immigration at OntheIssues.org, at his own website and in his own words on the floor of the Senate:
The American people are a welcoming and generous people. But those who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. And because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of the immigration laws.
The bill the Judiciary Committee has passed would clearly strengthen enforcement. I will repeat that, because those arguing against the Judiciary Committee bill contrast that bill with a strong enforcement bill. The bill the Judiciary Committee passed clearly strengthens enforcement.
To begin with, the agencies charged with border security would receive new technology, new facilities, and more people to stop, process, and deport illegal immigrants.
But while security might start at our borders, it doesn't end there. Millions of undocumented immigrants live and work here without our knowing their identity or their background. We need to strike a workable bargain with them. They have to acknowledge that breaking our immigration laws was wrong. They must pay a penalty, and abide by all of our laws going forward. They must earn the right to stay over a 6-year period, and then they must wait another 5 years as legal permanent residents before they become citizens.
But in exchange for accepting those penalties, we must allow undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows and step on a path toward full participation in our society. In fact, I will not support any bill that does not provide this earned path to citizenship for the undocumented population--not just for humanitarian reasons; not just because these people, having broken the law, did so for the best of motives, to try and provide a better life for their children and their grandchildren; but also because this is the only practical way we can get a handle on the population that is within our borders right now.
To keep from having to go through this difficult process again in the future, we must also replace the flow of undocumented immigrants coming to work here with a new flow of guestworkers. Illegal immigration is bad for illegal immigrants and bad for the workers against whom they compete.
Replacing the flood of illegals with a regulated stream of legal immigrants who enter the United States after background checks and who are provided labor rights would enhance our security, raise wages, and improve working conditions for all Americans.
That may not be exactly how I would have put it (...illegals?...) or exactly what I would have proposed, but the above quote contains the essence of Senator Obama's approach to policy: common sense, pragmatism, fearlessness about taking big issues head on and a commitment to explaining his positions in clear terms so that, even if you disagree, you understand where the Senator is coming from.
It think that's a quality we might like in our next President.
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Finally, I want to address something on the eve of the Florida primary and a week in advance of Tsunami Tuesday. There's been alot of ink spilled about Barack Obama and Latinos. Including some assertions that I think need to be addressed about what inspires the perception and rationale behind why Latinos seem to poll so well for Senator Clinton.
First, from I think the Chronicle article puts it well about the state of California:
Both camps discount speculation of simmering racial hostility that might make some Latinos reluctant to vote for a black man.
"The familiarity with President Clinton has given her a very, very big lead from the beginning," said Maria Elena Durazo, secretary-treasurer for the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor who is campaigning for Obama.
If there were racial animosity, "obviously we would have to address that very directly," Durazo said. But mostly the response Durazo gets when she asks Latinos about Obama is, "Who is he? I don't know who he is," whereas with Clinton, the answer comes back, "We know Presidente Bill Clinton."
Maria Echaveste, a UC Berkeley law lecturer advising the Clinton campaign, agreed. "Everyone is so quick to jump on" the racial angle, she said. "But, frankly, I think the explanation is a much greater number of people know her and love Bill Clinton."
This mirrors exactly my anecdotal experience here in California. Latino voters in California know the Clintons. These same voters are just now getting to know Senator Obama. I can say that my experience here in Oakland tells me that young people of all backgrounds are most likely to both be familiar with Barack Obama and also to support him. But, yes, the reality is that Bill Clinton was President of the United States for eight years and many Latino voters here in California know and love him. That drives a fair amount of support for Senator Clinton. That support is real and 100% valid, period.
That being said, Gregrogy Rodriguez at the Los Angeles Times added some much needed clarity to the discussion of the Latino vote in the Democratic primary in an op/ed today. Here's what he said:
A few weeks ago, Sergio Bendixen, a Clinton pollster and Latino expert, publicly articulated what campaign officials appear to have been whispering for months. In an interview with Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker, Bendixen explained that "the Hispanic voter -- and I want to say this very carefully -- has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates."
The spin worked. For the last several weeks, it's been on the airwaves (Tucker Carlson, "Hardball," NPR), generally tossed off as if it were conventional wisdom. And it has shown up in sources as far afield as Agence France-Presse and the London Daily Telegraph, which wrote about a "voting bloc traditionally reluctant to support black candidates."
The spin also helped shape the analysis of the Jan. 19 Nevada caucus, in which Clinton won the support of Latino voters by a margin of better than 2 to 1. Forget the possibility that Nevada's Latino voters may have actually preferred Clinton or, at the very least, had a fondness for her husband; pundits embraced the idea that Latino voters simply didn't like the fact that her opponent was black.
But was Bendixen's blanket statement true? Far from it.
You can read the rest of Gregory Rodriguez's piece here. And pick up his further analysis and prediction for the CA primary at TNR here.
I've tried to refrain from over-editorializing in these pieces because, as an Obama supporter, I think Senator Obama's policy positions, his endorsers and policy advisors and, above all, his method of communicating policy stand head and shoulders above the competition. However, I've also got to be intellectually honest.
Gregory Rodriguez has a point. Everywhere you go on the web you can read assertions that "the Latino vote" is a "lock" for Senator Clinton, nudge-nudge, wink-wink. However, that should not be surprising; as we read above, Latino voters, a diverse group in and of itself, have real reasons to respect and support Senator Clinton and if Barack Obama is going to persuade those voters to his side he will need to have the help of friends all over the USA like Linda Sanchez, Gilbert Cedillo and Maria Elena Durazo here in CA who can help him make his case in clear terms on a short timeline. But the point is, as Rodriguez points up, the Clinton team just consistently gilds the lily. Senator Clinton has strong support among many Latino voters already, so why did Bendixen give that quote to Ryan Lizza? Why is someone who talks like that working for the Clinton campaign?
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Barack Obama's positions on immigration reform are clear and a matter of the public record. He will take up and pass immigration reform in his first year in office and, as a part of that, he will make sure that if you want to drive in the United States and can pass the test, that you will be required and allowed to have a license. The two efforts will go hand in hand.
That's makes sense. That's common sense. And, as we are coming to know, that's Barack Obama. And, yes...
¡Sí se puede!