http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/25/ED8419DGO2.DTLImmigration uproar will upstage health care debate
"A few months ago, I was talking to a group of political strategists who insisted that - given the Obama administration's desire to pursue both immigration reform and health care reform - immigration should go first. Otherwise, they said, health care would fail because of public fears that illegal immigrants would get free medical services. Make those immigrants legal, they said, and it would defuse the issue.""
"The point is moot since the administration decided to roll the dice on health care first. But the strategists were right that the immigration debate would find a way to infiltrate the health care debate and damage it. Already, in cities such as Houston with large immigrant populations, protesters who showed up at town halls ostensibly to demonstrate against health care wound up complaining about immigration. This includes the woman who phoned into conservative talk radio host Michael Smerconish's show last week to ask its special guest - President Obama - if he believed that illegal immigrants should benefit from health care reform."
"In fact, as divisive and shrill the health care discussion has been at times, the soon-to-be resurrected immigration debate could be much worse. The issue, expected to be on Congress' fall agenda, will provide its share of theatrics.
If Obama wants to get an immigration reform package through Congress, he will again need help from conservative Blue Dog Democrats. Just like with health care. And if Obama panders to the Blue Dogs too much, he could alienate more liberal Democrats. Just like with health care."
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20090823_Editorial__A_path_to_citizenship.html"President Obama should have tackled immigration reform first. His drop in the polls probably wouldn't have been any worse than the dip he's received in attempting comprehensive health-care reform. Plus, after spending the better part of two years trying to hammer out an immigration compromise, Congress was closer to overhauling that law than it is, after six months of debate, to changing the way the nation buys and receives its medical care."
"That doesn't mean immigration reform would be easy. But considering the greater likelihood of success with it - which, like health-care reform, has been a defining goal of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) - Obama should have seen it as the better vehicle to forge bipartisan support. That might have even helped smooth the way for health-care reform."
"Now, immigration reform may become a collateral victim in the health-care war, which has Republicans walking in lockstep with so-called Blue Dog Democrats, whose opposition to reform really has more to do with their personal reelection chances than what's good for America."
"Of course, any new immigration legislation will bring back howls that it grants unearned "amnesty" to lawbreakers. And screaming the loudest will be the same dissimulating crowd that now yells about "death panels" in the debate over health-care reform. In many cases, they are egged on by people whose primary goal is to keep lowering Obama's poll numbers."
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I don't believe that putting immigration reform first would have significantly helped pass health care reform for a couple of reasons.
1) Even if immigration reform somehow diffused the "illegal immigrants will get free health care" meme, RW scaremongers would merely focus more on charges of "socialism" and "liberal politicians" who just rammed immigration reform down your throats now going after health care reform.
2) While the progressive wing of our party believes in health care reform (though we differ on whether we prefer a British style, Canadian style or a public option), there is not the same unity within our wing on immigration reform.