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Immigration See other Immigration Articles Title: Immigration (Spin) Control "Used with permission from http://OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc." Let's hope Republicans in Congress aren't gulled by the fast and furious spinning of the anti-immigration lobby this week. The restrictionists lost a special Congressional election in California that they'd been promoting for weeks, yet they're still hailing it as a great political victory. Tuesday's Orange County contest to fill the House seat vacated when Chris Cox moved to the Securities and Exchange Commission featured Republican State Senator John Campbell and Jim Gilchrist, a third-party candidate backed by anti-immigrant conservatives. The race was supposed to demonstrate the effectiveness of immigration as a political issue. Instead, it showed that border restrictionists are a vocal minority unable to mobilize enough people to turn an election--even in one of the most conservative GOP districts. Mr. Campbell, who ran on traditional conservative themes of lower federal spending, tax reform and national security, won the five-man contest in a walk with 45%. Mr. Gilchrist is a co-founder of the Minutemen citizens' border patrol promoted relentlessly by CNN's Lou Dobbs and his Fox running mate, Bill O'Reilly. Mr. Gilchrist made militarizing the Mexican border the centerpiece of his campaign, raising some $600,000 and getting extraordinary media attention. Yet he still came in third with 25%, trailing a Democrat who won 28% despite spending only one-fourth as much money. The Minuteman did succeed in panicking Mr. Campbell, who retreated on his support for President Bush's guest-worker proposal. Mr. Campbell now says he'll support such a plan only after he votes for tougher border security measures. But this merely showed--in addition to Mr. Campbell's pliability--that immigration is one of many, and hardly the most important of, voter concerns. Anti-immigration candidates have tried in the recent past to defeat GOP incumbents in Utah and Arizona, to no avail. And just last month in Virginia, Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore focused on illegal aliens and the death penalty instead of fiscal policy, and lost handily. If restrictionists now can't come close to prevailing in an open seat, and in a Southern California district located less than two hours from the Mexico border, where can they win? The conceit of the restrictionists is that somehow Republican "elites" are "out of touch" with the conservative rank-and-file on immigration. But according to a recent survey by Ed Goeas of the Tarrance Group, 72% of likely Republican voters favor immigration reform that both enhances border security and creates a system where illegal aliens could come forward, pay a fine, receive a temporary work permit, and get on a "multiyear path to citizenship if they meet certain requirements like living crime-free, learning English and paying taxes." And 71% said they "would be more likely to support their Member of Congress or a candidate for Congress who supported this reform plan." Meanwhile, only 21% favor tougher enforcement while opposing a guest-worker program. The real political danger for Republicans comes from the vocal restrictionist minority who want to drive GOP candidates back into the demographic box canyon they've walked into so often in the past. If they become the overtly anti-immigration party, Republicans run the risk of permanently alienating another fast-growing ethnic constituency, in this case Hispanic Americans. The GOP did this with the Irish and Italians in the 1920s, with Asians in Hawaii after World War II, and with Hispanics in California with Proposition 187 in the 1990s. A Republican in California will soon be able to win 70% of the white vote and still lose statewide if he can't pick up more Hispanic votes. Republicans also run the risk of doing tangible harm to their own business supporters, as well as to the broader economy. A recent story in the Sacramento Bee led with this: "A growing labor shortage in California's agricultural industry has local farmers bracing for a tough--and expensive--winter harvest." Among the causes: "increased border enforcement that is reducing the number of illegal immigrants entering the country," competition for workers from other industries, and "the lack of a guest-worker program to allow undocumented immigrants to work legally." We get the same message from nearly every business executive who comes through our offices: Without immigrants, they couldn't possibly find enough willing workers to do the available work, no matter what the available wages. Yet Republicans seem intent not merely on increasing border patrols but also on further harassing law-abiding businesses that happen to hire illegals, as if anyone can tell the difference between real and fake immigration documents. Only Republicans would think it's smart politics to punish their supporters for hiring willing workers. The real lesson for Republicans from Tuesday's election is that voters are smart enough to distinguish between immigration pandering and an actual immigration policy. Mr. Gilchrist lost by offering the former. President Bush is proposing the latter, and Republicans in Congress would solve their own immigration problem if they helped him to pass it.
Poster Comment: If the GOP supports an amnesty bill, they are toast. I normally don't consider the WSJ to be a bot when it comes to supporting the administration, but this is pure spin. They are taking the side of big business and are supporting big business and cheap labor. This is a slap in the face to those of us that believe in the sovereignty of this great nation.
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