Of course, I don't have a source in Congress or the White House to tell me this. I deduce it from a phone call I got tonight. I'll tell you about it over the jump.
As my sister-with-the-crisis-filled-relationship calls me every night around this time to fill me in on the latest, I very nearly answered with "Hello,(name)." But it wasn't. It was a lady from the Campaign To Reform Immigration in America. She wanted me to call my senator (specifically, Lugar) and urge him to make sure that any bill on immigration reform included a path to citizenship. I asked her who was financing it, and while she didn't know exactly what the name of the foundation was who was funding the calls, she did readily give me the organization's name and their web address, which is http://reformimmigrationforamerica.org/ . Looking at who supports them and their message statement, this seems to be a genuine grassroots movement.
I suppose in some ways I profile as something other than I am. My town's population was cut in half in the nineties by GM's offshoring, and it's still suffering. Driving past the empty patch of ground where the factories used to stand is painful. Lots of my family made good livings there, and the drying up of jobs has led to a lot of societal stress both in my household and family and in the community at large. Currently a quarter of our paycheck or so goes back in the gas tank so my husband can commute a hundred miles a day to work. My father made twenty dollars an hour with full benefits when he retired, and drove ten minutes to work. My husband makes $12.50, and we can't afford to buy into the insurance program at work. Not with that commute.
It's easy for people in the working class here to blame more recent immigrants for these problems, and a lot of them do. When it feels like there's enough to go round, it will be easier for them to let someone else sit down at the table. The Democrats are going to have to find something as short and as valid-sounding as "They took our jobs!" when immigration reform comes onto the table.
Me,I look at history. Once, no Irish needed apply, and people worried about the immigration of poor Eastern Europeans and what it would do to the fabric of the nation. I'm all for weaving more and varied threads into our tapestry, but I hear too the fear of the people around me, and understand it. This is why we need a whole host of actions from Congress to reverse offshoring and outsourcing. A lot of people will be a lot more willing to entertain notions that there's a place for immigrants in America when they themselves aren't experiencing "food insecurity" and can afford to go get checked out when they get sick, and know retirement isn't possible.
These are my thoughts now; I'm going to start looking at immigration issues, starting with the website above, because it really looks to me that that's the next big issue.