Republicans play games with homeland security

MIAMI – How far are Republicans willing to go just to stick it to immigrants? The GOP provided a resounding answer last week. The GOP, the party of the super patriots that has reaped rich, political profits by selling itself as the one and only party that can protect the country from terrorism, showed itself ready to risk shutting down the Department of Homeland Security in order to blackmail President Obama into throwing several million immigrants under a bus. Homeland Security is the department created in the wake of 9-11 to protect the nation from terrorism.

The President recently exercised his executive authority to protect from deportation the parents of U.S. citizens or legal residents. Last year, he halted the deportation of unauthorized immigrants who were brought into the country by their parents. More generally, Obama has refocused policy by instructing immigration authorities to target immigrants with criminal records and deemphasize the deportation of law abiding families and individuals.

Republicans have been planning to use the Homeland Security budget to extort the Obama administration on immigration ever since last year when the President issued the executive order halting the deportation of the “Dreamers.” That’s the name that has come to be used to describe children brought by their parents into this country illegally. Now, most of these young people are Americans except for the papers, but that makes a huge difference in their lives when it comes to reaching their American dream by going to college or launching a career.

The Republicans could not abide even this narrow concession to common sense and compassion. Legalization makes a big difference in a person’s ability to contribute to the economy. Sending a young person to a country they may not even remember is cruel. But Republicans in Congress said nay.

So Obama used his own prerogative. Republicans were incensed and determined to roll back Obama’s action. That’s the reason why last year, when the GOP went along with a bill to fund the government, they left out one Department: Homeland Security.

This year, with Republicans in control of both Houses of Congress and Obama opting to protect from deportation an even wider range of undocumented immigrants, Republicans were especially keen to stop the President dead in his tracks. With control of Congress in their hands, they also were confident they could do it by holding Homeland Security hostage.

After all, on some occasions in the past, Republicans have threatened actions (or inactions) on issues of great importance in order to get Obama to yield on an entirely different issue and they succeeded. Now they must have figured the public would blame Obama for any shutdown of Homeland Security and the President would have to cave to prevent it.

But they have gone down this road too many times, and most people could tell who was mixing apples and oranges. This time it didn’t work; at least it hasn’t worked yet. Democrats in Congress stood their ground. Obama is even sounding defiant (at long last!). So, at the last possible moment, Republicans agreed to extend funding for Homeland Security.

They were forced to go along kicking and screaming. That, and that they plan to continue to use Homeland Security as a political football, was shown by the fact they were only willing to grant a one-week funding extension at the cost of embarrassing their own leader in the House who had promised three.

It’s rather amazing the array of risks Republicans are willing to run just to deny a few million immigrants in a country of 320 million people the privilege of continuing to work hard and abide by the law.

To start with, Republicans suffered a loss of credibility. When they won control of Congress last November, they promised they would overcome “Washington gridlock” and stay away from government shutdowns. Now here they were producing gridlock by playing one of the foulest Washington political games. In doing so, they came within a hair’s breadth of shutting down none other than the Department of Homeland Security.

By trying to use funding for Homeland Security as a political card on immigration, they also may have squandered part of the political advantage they have had on the issue of terrorism. Few Americans feel threatened by the immigrants that would benefit from Obama’s immigration policies. Something that degrades the morale of the 200,000 people whose job it is to combat terrorism and that would deny them the resources they need to do it is another matter entirely.

At a time when a new generation of ultra-brutal terrorists are espousing attacks in the United States and have shown their murderous capacity in the heart of Paris, Americans are once again understandably worried about terrorism at home. They are scared and they don’t want their government to lay down its guard for a second. They are much less worried about nannies, gardeners, computer programmers, and software engineers than they are about ISIS.

With regard to electoral politics, Republicans are playing a fool’s game too. Obama won the Latino vote 3 to 1 mostly because of the immigration issue. And, before the nomination, Hillary Clinton was even more popular among Latinos than Obama.

Meanwhile, a huge number of Latinos are becoming eligible to vote all the time just by coming of age. Since Latino population increase is driven more by natural increase (births minus deaths) than immigration, that trend isn’t stopping any time soon. With undocumented immigration down, Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot twice over by trying to punish a diminishing population and thereby alienating a growing one.

What are they thinking? Maybe they are not. Perhaps the best explanation for this self-destructive behavior is the one the scorpion gave the turtle who was giving him a ride across a stream. “Why did you bite me,” the turtle asked. “Now we will both die.”  “I couldn’t help it,” said the scorpion. “It’s in my nature.”

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