Through the Opera Glasses of SHAXAMI

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Immigration fiasco - A thorn in the foot of Big elephant

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."

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Legal Immigrants - b/w rock and a hard place

With 500,000 people on the streets of LA and thousands of other voices running through major cities of USA, it seems very obvious that there are a lot of illegal immigrants or supporter who want to fight the House approved Bill. Their intension are not just to raise their voice against the House approved bill that is tougher on illegal immigrants but to send a message across to lawmakers that they are not going to sit idle in shadows and let the Washington decide on their faith.

For good or for bad the issue of immigration is on the fore front, at least for now. There is an atmosphere of anticipation, regret, tension and a mishaps. People on both sides of this issue are trying to be energized and show their support. It looks like the case is setting up to be "Either you are with Illegal Immigrants or against them". And sadly what seems to be happening is that immigration reform is being hijacked by the cases of illegal immigrants. In short the US immigration policy is becoming the Illegal Immigration Policy.

In the mist of all this discussion are people, like me, who came to USA legally and want to go towards the naturalization path through legal ways. What is most ironic in this whole discussion of immigration reforms is that US immigration laws are very complex and people who are trying to get to USA through legal path find it very difficult. And once you have immigration status it is still very difficult to get the immediate family across the land of promise and opportunity.

To handle issues of illegal immigration and broken boarders the lawmakers have to reform the legal immigration not give amnesty to illegal immigrants. Make it easier for people to come here legally and live the American dream. Those of you who are aware of red and green channels for customs would find the similarity very ironic. It looks like the path of legal immigration is red channel and the path for illegal immigration is green channel. Whereas it should have been the other way around.

I am not proposing here to open the boarders, on the contrary - the boarders have to be sealed and we need to know who is coming and why. But don't stop people who are law abiding and want to just live their lives legally.