The New York Times takes a look at why the immigration reform bill appears to be stalled to the point of being killed. It pretty much confirms what I have been saying all along. The "comprehensive" approach is widely seen as amnesty. The House is nervous because they understand the voters are not at all happy with this approach. I've been saying all along that a secure the borders first approach would make a lot of other things possible. The monstrosity of a bill passed by the Senate shows how tricky the comprehensive approach can be to pull together.
An account of the administration's push for the initiative, based on interviews with members of Congress and senior White House and Congressional officials, shows that Mr. Bush's immigration measure was derailed by an overly optimistic assessment by the White House of the prospects for building a bipartisan coalition in support of the bill. It was also hurt by a fundamental misreading of the depth of hostility to the measure among House Republicans.
It was undone as well, White House and Congressional leaders acknowledged, by a sharp division over whether to focus on the short term or on the party's long-term political prospects. Mr. Bush's aides saw the House bill, which would make it a felony to live in this country illegally and would close off any chance to win legal status, as a threat to their attempts to broaden the party's appeal to Hispanic voters.
House Republican leaders saw Mr. Bush's approach — calling for tougher enforcement as well as avenues to legalize the illegal workforce and create a possible path to citizenship — as a threat to House Republicans already fearful of losing control of this fall's elections by angering voters who viewed the plan as amnesty.
Mr. Bush's first attempt to advocate for the measure was described even by allies as initially muddled and tentative, permitting opponents to build a case against it before he made his Oval Office address. Republicans' apprehensions were cemented in June, when, in a special election for a vacant Congressional seat in California, Brian P. Bilbray, who ran on a pledge to build a fence along the border with Mexico, was elected after running against the president's position on immigration.
That last paragraph also point to something I have been advocating. The first party to figure out that a get tough on border security approach will appeal to voters will win in November.
