Jeb Bush’s nay to citizenship

By Max J. Castro

MIAMI – A curious thing happened to Jeb Bush as he rode first out of the gate in the horse race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. He got caught behind the curve, was overtaken by events.

The former Republican governor of Florida, the son of a former president and the brother of another has just published a book – “Immigration Wars” – which he obviously thought would position him as the Republican capable of reversing Latinos’ deep anger at the GOP and the disastrous electoral consequences that that produced for Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.

But the carefully crafted schemes of men and mice often go awry, and Bush’s did. Instead of coming across as immigrants’ best friend in the GOP, Jeb managed to define himself as more of a hardliner on immigration than the four Republican members of the bipartisan “group of eight” that for some time have been working to develop a comprehensive immigration reform plan.

The group’s plan includes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, a position Jeb Bush had long-supported. Reversing his position – and revealing a gross inability to read the changing zeitgeist within his own party caused by the shock of 2012 –Bush, in “Immigration Wars,” uses unequivocal language to declare his firm opposition to a path to citizenship.

“A grant of citizenship is an undeserving reward for conduct that we cannot afford to encourage,” Bush wrote in the book he co-authored with Clint Bolick, who Bush describes as his friend and the Washington Post identifies as “an activist conservative lawyer.”

Jeb’s sudden switch caused Senator Lindsey Graham, who along with Marco Rubio has led the Republican faction within the group of eight, to accuse Bush of undermining the group’s work.

More importantly, Bush’s flip-flop produced dismay and anger in the Latino community and undermined his credibility among the very constituency he sought to woo. It’s a constituency, moreover, that doesn’t take kindly to, and has a long memory about, what is bound to be seen as a betrayal.

And Bush’s nay to citizenship is not the only aspect of the book that will irritate Latinos.
Here is book reviewer Manuel Roig-Franzia, writing in the Washington Post:

“While extolling immigration’s virtues, Bush also embraces a punitive approach. He wants the estimated 11 million undocumented people in the United States to plead guilty and pay a fine in return for a chance at legal residency – but not citizenship.

“He takes pains to denounce the notion of spurring “self-deportation” by shutting off work opportunities for undocumented immigrants, an idea that so undermined Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But the process Bush prescribes sounds remarkably similar.

“‘Anyone who does not come forward under this process will be subject to automatic deportation, unless they choose to return voluntarily to their native countries,’” he writes.
“Earth to Jeb: When an illegal immigrant voluntarily leaves the country for fear of deportation, that’s a form of self-deportation.

“He also wields the threat of deportation in another, potentially significant way. Citing Pew research, Bush writes that nearly half of America’s illegal immigrants entered the country legally but are now in violation of the law for overstaying their visas.

‘“We need to swiftly deport individuals who overstay their visas rather than allowing them to stay indefinitely or to pursue multiple appeals,’” Bush writes. He leaves unclear whether he’s advocating rounding up somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 million people who’ve overstayed visas or simply cracking down on new violators. Either way, the number of deportations could be staggering.”

What was Jeb Bush thinking when he set out in print not only his novel nay to citizenship but also this series of offensive proposals?

Pundits speculate that he was thinking of the many hard-core anti-immigrant voters he would have to face during the Republican primaries. There is probably some truth to that, and it spells bad news for the party. Herein lays a possibly irresolvable dilemma for the GOP. Anyone who could win the Republican primaries might be unable to get a large enough slice of the Latino vote to win the presidency.

Timing was likely at least an equally important factor in Jeb’s misstep. Bush finished his book shortly after last year’s presidential election. At the time he was writing the book, which probably took several months to pen, the mood about immigration among Republicans in Congress, among the contestants in the GOP primaries, and among the party’s most faithful supporters was beyond nasty.

Romney’s self-deportation wasn’t even the ugliest proposal. That honor belongs to Herman Cain, who wanted an electrified fence on the border. In Congress, Republicans opposed the Dream Act, meaning they weren’t willing to grant legal status to the most sympathetic class of immigrants much less provide legal status or a path to citizenship to potentially eleven million undocumented immigrants.

Bush’s stance in “Immigration Wars” sounds benign compared to such ferocious policies as electrifying the border fence. For instance, he favors granting legal status to a significant portion of undocumented immigrants although no road to citizenship. He must have figured that this proposal (which at that time was more progressive than anything offered on immigration by the GOP for a long time) along with his previous solid pro-immigrant track record would make him the party’s best hope of peeling off from the Democrats enough Latino votes to get the White House back.

But there was a serious flaw in this analysis. Bush underestimated the terror that Obama’s 71 to 29 percent trouncing of Romney among the Latino electorate set off in the party. So while Bush was taking a step back from his almost uniquely moderate position within the GOP, others in the party, including Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who until recently had a substantially more hardline outlook than Bush, were flip-flopping almost 180 degrees in the opposite direction. They realized half-measures wouldn’t cut it when compared with the path to citizenship offered by Obama and the Democrats.

In effect, then, Bush found himself fighting last year’s immigration war. And all his subsequent attempts to dance away from his own words on paper – and even his recently stated willingness to once again reverse his stand on citizenship – have been pathetic.

As Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush proved as reactionary as they come, eliminating taxes on the rich and programs for the poor and middle class. He was even more right-wing and ideologically dogmatic than his brother. Once, at the state capital, in a state of the state address, he fantasized about the day all the government buildings arrayed around him would have vanished into thin air. Literally, the withering away of the state.

The one shining exception was immigration. In fact, among other things, Bush even favored giving driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, anathema to an overwhelming percentage of Republicans.

Now Bush, in a single stroke, has jettisoned the one thing Latinos, the vast majority of whom favor even more progressive socioeconomic policies than the average Democrat, might have found attractive in his candidacy. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy or one with a meaner political philosophy.