Immigration fiasco - A thorn in the foot of GOP

[shaxami]

One of the great thing about American Politics is that No one stays on top for long time. Americans tend to favor the underdog, which nowadays are the donkey riders. Since the mid 1990s, when GOP stole the majority from  democrat's, Republicans have enjoyed a decade of pushing their agendas through and keeping the capital hill in their hands. But now the shift is in the air. With sagging numbers of President, gloomy situation in Iraq and disarray on domestic policy; republicans seem to be in a bit of a trouble. Even without the debate over immigration issue, political pundits were debating the shift in the power over capital hill. And then came 500,000 Illegal Immigrants on the street of LA, and everyone is up in their sleeves over immigration issue.

Last week Senate majority leader Senator Frist gave an ultimatum to Senate Judiciary Committee to produce a comprehensive immigration reform bill. He had his own version of boarder security bill that was to be put forward in case of failure from SJC. He may have hoped that SJC would fail to produce anything, but interestingly SJC did come-up with a bill that not only handles the Boarder Security but also the issue of undocumented illegal aliens living in USA. This has put the senate majority leader in a tough position. He tried to twiddle through by proposing that he will put forward both his and SJC bills on the floor.

Now the genie is out of bottle and Senate is faced with a two week long howling debate on immigration. This is a good news for democrats and republicans are faced with tougher days ahead of them.

Question is why would this have a negative impact on GOP?

As mentioned earlier, GOP was already loosing their battle in polls against democrats. Now this immigration reform bill is dividing them more - putting a divide between economic conservatives and cultural conservatives. On one side companies and capitalists want to get more immigrants into United States - as this is good for economy. Very few people can argue that immigration has bad impact on economies. One of the biggest reason behind the growth in US economy is immigration. But, and interestingly there is always a 'but', for cultural and religious conservatives immigrants bring a cultural shift in the American Society. This argument does have a merit, immigrants do bring a diversity in social fabric. The pros and cons of this are beyond the scope of this discussion, so the writer will refrain from putting his views on the issues of cultural impacts of immigration.

Democrats must be very happy with the way things are going. They don't have to do anything and they will most probably win the majority on Capital Hill. Interestingly, for most of the issues democrats do not have any clear message - but does it matter? At least not currently. Republicans are their biggest enemies right now, and unless they unite its going to be difficult for them to sustain the majority in capital hill. And this immigration issue is to hot for them to ignore the differences and come up with a united voice.

As an African proverb goes, "when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers."

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