On Friday, Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed into law sweeping new powers to limit illegal immigration. The new restrictions, the most stringent of any state in the US, make it a crime not to carry immigration documents, and give Arizona police the power to detain anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally. Critics say the changes will mean daily harassment for the state’s Hispanic population. President Obama has taken the rare step of criticising the state’s actions explicitly, saying that they threaten to “undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans”.
It all increases the likelihood that immigration will be Obama’s next big political battle after healthcare. During the campaign, he wooed Hispanic voters with the promise of immigration reform in his first year. With 2010 elections approaching, advocates are becoming impatient, and Democrats are keen to avoid the sour taste of broken promises.
If it happens on the scale of healthcare, it will be a fascinating debate to watch. Immigration is one of those issues in which politics, more than policy, defines what is possible, and so a different political context makes all the difference. Take amnesties, for example. In the UK, both Labour and the Tories reject the idea of a path to legal status for long-term illegal residents. Yet, as the Guardian points out, amnesties – under other names – have long been a tool of UK immigration policy. In that light, the Lib Dem pledge to naturalise illegal residents after ten years, doesn’t go far beyond existing policy.
Here in the US, the sheer size of the illegal immigrant population – believed to be in the region of 12 million – means that amnesties would be at the centre of any reform debate. In the campaign, Obama said that those who have been living in the US for years without papers “have to have some mechanism over time to get out of the shadows.” If he chooses immigration as his next big battle, he’ll have to make that case up and down the country, as he tried to do with healthcare.
Of course, as this nice graphic by Ben Parizek shows, the scale of immigration in the US necessitates different policy solutions. But it will be interesting to see if the Obama glow, along with the rise of the Lib Dems, opens a window of opportunity for immigration reform in the UK.
Finally, in case you haven’t already seen it, here’s a link to the Daily Show’s coverage of the UK election debates. Sadly, ITV’s production values don’t fare well, but the good old swingometer does us proud.