Aug 21 2013, 6:00 AM ET
Activists lead a march in favor of immigration reform in
Sacramento, California, last week. (Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press)
Activists opposed to immigration
reform were all set to spend this month putting pressure on lawmakers to kill
the legislation. But it hasn't exactly been a show of force.
Last week, the Tea Party Patriots
and NumbersUSA, two groups opposed to "amnesty" legislation, heavily
publicized a rally in Richmond, Virginia, featuring Steve King, the firebrand
Republican congressman who recently claimed most undocumented youth are physically fit drug
mules. But only a few dozen people showed up -- far short of the
hundreds organizers had planned for.
Journalists posted photos of a lonely-looking King under a
gazebo in a mostly empty public park. A reporter for Breitbart News,
Matthew Boyle, tweeted,
"If grassroots wants to kill #Amnesty they have to show up. #teaparty they
are not here in Richmond."
Activists on both sides of the
immigration debate had put heavy emphasis
on the importance of flexing grassroots muscle during this month of
congressional recess. The idea is to show Republicans in the House of
Representatives, which hasn't settled on a path forward on the issue, where the
most passionate support lies. And as August winds down, the Richmond event
seems indicative of the overall trend. Hundreds of immigrant advocates have
appeared at rallies and town halls across the country. But the other side, the
opponents, have been mostly absent.
Hundreds of reform advocates
recently rallied at the Bakersfield, California, office of Rep. Kevin McCarthy,
the House GOP whip. (A local television station put the number at "more than 1,000";
Breitbart reported it was
about 400, mostly "Mexican in origin," and noted the
presence of "about two dozen counter-demonstrators.") More than 500
pro-reform activists, including the mayor of Springfield, Ohio, and local
clergy, showed up at
Speaker John Boehner's district office. The Washington Times
counted about 60 pro-reform activists calling on Rep.
Frank Wolf in Herndon, Virginia. They marched through the streets of
Asheboro, North
Carolina, and gathered alongside the Catholic diocese in Salt Lake City.
In Corpus Christi, Texas, a Republican congressman, Blake Farenthold, took to
Twitter to beseech opponents to show up and counter the 10,000 pro-reform
petitions that activists delivered to his
office.
Anti-immigration-reform groups were
hard pressed to come up with evidence of similar grassroots fervor for their
side. Indeed, many of the examples they cited seemed to show the opposite. A
NumbersUSA organizer passed along footage from a town hall
where Kansas Rep. Lynn Jenkins was asked repeatedly about immigration; all the
questioners in the clip are pro-reform, but booing rumbles through the crowd as
they speak. At a town hall for Rep.
Karen Bass, the California Democrat is asked about an unrelated
piece of legislation that would deport "illegal alien gang members"
(and explains why she opposes it). In Elkhorn, Nebraska, Republican Lee Terry
is asked, "Will we see a path to citizenship in the immigration
bill?" as DREAM Act activists are shown in a local television
report.
Anti-immigration-reform groups appear to be canceling events
for lack of participation. Rallies have disappeared from the Tea Party
Patriots' online calendar.
Anti-reform groups appear to be
canceling events for lack of participation. The Tea Party Patriots once boasted
of summer rallies in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Dallas; and South Carolina, but
they've disappeared from the calendar on the group's website. Another
anti-immigration-reform group, the Black American Leadership Alliance, had
planned a nine-city "We Are America Tour," but had to drop half the
stops. "Dear friends, it is with deep regret that I must inform you all
that we had to drop several rallies," an organizer wrote on Facebook, in a
post that has since been removed but was spotted and preserved by the
pro-reform group America's Voice. "We were unable to get organizers for
the following: Miami, FL., Chicago, IL., Roanoke, VA., and Wisconsin. The Ohio
rally is still going to happen, but not under the "Tour" title. FAIR
is leading that rally. That leaves us with 4 rallies. Phoenix, AZ. Richmond,
VA. And rallies in Houston, and Dallas, TX. Even the rallies in Houston, and
Richmond, VA, are not completely confirmed at this time."
FAIR stands for the Federation for
American Immigration Reform, a Washington-based group that opposes legal and
illegal immigration. In a Washington Post article last week,
the group's communications director acknowledged being outgunned by activists
for the other side. "It's a staggering, well-financed hard push by the
left and the right," Bob Dane told the Post.
A Black American Leadership Alliance
representative was unavailable for comment. The Tea Party Patriots' national
coordinator, Jenny Beth Martin, told me the disappearing rallies were not
"set in stone," so their listings were removed until they could be
finalized. Martin also told ABC News that Tea Party activists are more focused
on the push to defund Obamacare than on defeating immigration reform. Roy Beck,
the executive director of NumbersUSA, which claims to be the largest grassroots
group against citizenship for undocumented immigrants, previously told me
his group was gearing up for a major August mobilization, but in an interview
Monday he denied that was ever the goal. "We did not try to organize
anything massive," he said.
NumbersUSA has alerted its members
to 181 past events, with 70 more scheduled for this week and 142 still to come,
involving more than 100 Republican members of Congress. Members have reported
back to the group that they felt they were in the majority at 90 percent of the
events, Beck told me, based on the way the audience rumbled and booed.
As for the poorly attended Richmond
rally, Beck acknowledged it was disappointing, but blamed the lack of turnout
on a bad location choice. "We picked a spot that, it turns out, has the
highest homicide rate in the city, and apparently a lot of people were afraid
to come," he said. Beck seemed to associate this danger with the African-American
population: "We wanted to be there at a place where we could talk about
the huge population of descendants of slavery who have never yet been part of
the American Dream," he said. "But sometimes passion and principles
get in the way of practicality."
"Our job is to hold people where they are. We're just
feeling that the line has been held."
Beck admitted that his side is not
as galvanized as activists were in May of 2007, when an outpouring of
grassroots anger -- directed by NumbersUSA -- helped derail
the last immigration-reform push. But that's because reform has less chance of
passing this time, so activists are less concerned, he said. "This year,
it's very much like there's a wildfire out there coming for your town, but
everybody knows there's a reservoir between the fire and your town, and that's
the House of Representatives," he said. "Everybody has been told by
the media the bill is dead on arrival in the House."
In any case, Beck said, all the
rallies in the world won't do reform advocates any good if Republican members
of Congress aren't taking positions in favor of reform, and that's not
happening in a major way. McCarthy said he was for
a piecemeal approach, with border security coming first. Tennessee Rep. Scott
DesJarlais, confronted by an 11-year-old girl whose father faces deportation, told her
it was brave of her to speak, but "we have laws, and we need to follow
those laws," to applause from the audience. Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte,
who as chairman of the Judiciary Committee is something of a gatekeeper for
immigration policy, reiterated that he
does not believe the undocumented should get a "special pathway
to citizenship" not available to would-be legal immigrants.
"August is so much more
important to the pro-[comprehensive immigration reform] side than to us,"
Beck said. "They really had to change a lot of minds. Our job is to hold
people where they are .... We're just feeling that the line has been
held."
Advocates of immigration reform say
Beck is moving the goalposts. They count 23
Republican members of Congress who have come out in support of a path to
citizenship, including many for the first time this month.
"I knew we were going to do
really well [mobilizing people]; I just didn't think the other side wouldn't
show up," said Frank Sharry, the longtime immigration-reform advocate who
heads America's Voice. "In 2007, they were formidable. You could argue
they kicked our ass. They generated a huge volume of opposition to the bill,
and it was a big factor in our defeat."
To Sharry, the rapidly forming
takeaway from this August's political-organizing battle is that opponents of
immigration reform are a paper tiger.
Before the recess, "there was a
sense that immigration reform was going to be a hot topic, and Republicans
would come back telling leadership we want no part of it," Sharry said.
"If anything, you have more and more members saying, 'We've got to do
this.' That's a surprising and welcome development."
Sharry agreed with Beck that
attendance at town halls is not the same as votes in Congress. But, he said,
"I think it shows that at this point, the forces for reform -- left,
right, and center -- are much stronger than the forces opposing reform. I think
we're more likely to come into September with momentum than they are, and
that's not what many would have predicted just a few short weeks ago."
You can
view the entire story at: http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/immigration-reformers-are-winning-august/278873/
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