Is Mitt Romney trying to Etch-a-Sketch his way past the immigration issue? Michael Smerconish talks to Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez and Democratic strategist Bob Shrum.
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President Obama puts Mitt Romney in a box on immigration. Chris talks politics with John Heilemann and David Corn.
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President Obama makes a play for the Latino vote with a new policy on immigration. Michael Smerconish talk to Howard Fineman and Maria Teresa Kumar about what it means for the election.
Watch Hardball at 7 p.m. ET.
Let me finish tonight with the 14th Amendment to the constitution.
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."
Some senators now say they don't like this provision. They don't like all the Hispanics who have come here illegally and have had children here. They want this provision of the 14th Amendment changed.
Is this want "we" want to do: say that the children of immigrants, no matter how they got here, are not Americans?
Is this what we want to do: tell young people growing up in America to know they are not one of us, that they belong somewhere else, back in the old country of their parents? Is this a way to assimilate people into our American culture and values; telling them to go back to where their parents came from?
What about the "children" of the children of illegal immigrants? Do we tell them that, even though their parents were born here, they are "still" not American, they still need to go "home," and that their home is back in the country of their grandparents?
And how on earth do you enforce this new cauterized 14th Amendment?
My grandmother came from Northern Ireland, my grandfather from England. I assume they came here legally but I really don't know how it came about. I certainly couldn't take an oath that they did - again, because I don't know.
Would I fall under the scythe Senators Graham and Kyl and the rest are now preparing to wield? Would I be declared a foreigner once the 14th Amendment is not what it was?
I am not big on this long list of constitutional amendments people are forever sporting about. They've got them on abortion, prayer in public school, marriage, you name it.
The weirdest thing is that they're always being promoted and ballyhooed by the same folks who strut their fealty to the constitution as written. Isn't it odd that it's these "strict constructionists" who now can't wait to tear down the very structure that has guarded our freedoms all these years?
They remind me of the spouse who gets married saying she loves the other person, then immediately starts saying, "there's this thing about you I'd like to change. In fact, there are a number of things!"
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Let me finish tonight with this federal injunction against the new Arizona immigration law.
First of all, it is a "killer" issue politically for the Democrats this fall and a huge windfall for the right. It will anger even those people who believe the Arizona law went too far. It will dramatize the main case raised by the Tea Party people: that the federal government in Washington has become too powerful, that the rights of the states have been terribly abridged.
That is the political consequence and it will be felt mightily this November.
I say this realizing a critical problem with the Arizona law. The policeman who stops a suspected illegal immigrant would, under the new Arizona law, be required to check out that person's immigration status. Standing next to that stopped car, he would be at a horribly unfair disadvantage. He might "suspect" the person of being in the country illegally. The illegal immigrant would certainly "know" it and might well decide to fight it out rather than face deportation and separation from his or her family.
It's not hard to imagine the desperate moral calculation this would trigger. But the plain fact, and most Americans recognize it to their distress, is that the federal government has not been serious about enforcing the immigration laws. Arizona, whatever you may think of its law, is at least attempting to deal with the situation. That, too, is a fact, cruel as it might come across.
I wish Americans were fair-minded about immigration. I wish the politicians were honest about it. The right panders by suggesting it would throw the millions of illegal immigrants out of the country - knowing full well that would be a catastrophe. The liberals refuse to get serious about enforcement.
This is one case where government in this country has simply failed and that means the politicians have failed.
The deal is there to be struck. Find a way for people who have made lives here to become full, assimilated Americans like every other immigrant over our history. Find a way to stop the illegal hiring of people who have no right to be in this country. Do both or get out of the way because only by doing both will there be a deal and without a deal this problem will grow and grow. The divide in the country will cut deeper and the only winners will be the exploiters – those interests who love this issue because the more heat it raises on illegal immigrants the more it cheapens their labor and delivers the vote – and that, too, is a fact.
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Let me finish tonight with those classic "two kinds of people."
There's "two kinds of people" in this country right now: the ones who want things to get better. They want BP to plug that oil spill at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico; want the American economy to take off and start producing jobs; want Congress and the president to get it done on immigration, stop the illegal entry into the country, "really" stop it, while letting people who've been here work their way to citizenship.
Then, there are the people who want it all to go bad. They may not be willing to admit, even to themselves, they like this destruction of the Gulf but they love the horror of it, the chaos, the anger it's causing; they love the civil discord. Same with unemployment. They may not admit they love the shame and sadness of the hard-up families but they love the anger, the grief. And, going to today's headlines, they love the failure of this government to get its act together and stop the illegal immigration because it's driving up opposition to this administration and to government itself.
So which side are you on? It's easy to tell what side some people on this program are on. You can see their giggles at the bad news, the flatness of the economy, the grim fact of that dark petroleum spewing out of that pipe, the sign of illegal immigrants racing across the southern border. Why? Because they know how these realities drive people against this president.
So there is it, and here we are.
From now to November, one question: Do you want things to go well for this country and perhaps in the process benefit the president's party? Or, are you willing to see mayhem in the land we love, horror and certainly pain, in order to have the opposition win another dozen seats in the House of Representatives?
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Let me finish with the dangerous, disgusting, dispiriting thought that we, this self-governing republic, are simply not up to the job.
Let's take immigration, the topic the president addressed today. Let me now talk to people who believe we, as Americans, have a right to say on what terms people get to enter this country.
We all know the basis of any immigration "fix." We need to find some way to stop the flow of illegal immigration. We need to find a way of dealing with the people who made their lives here and became a living part of our country.
I believe the key to finding a comprehensive solution begins and ends with stopping the illegal hiring of people because the search for work is the primary reason people leave their countries and come here.
The president supports creation and issuance of a tamper-proof ID card and I support him. If you don't, I ask you to examine your conscience. You need an ID to get money from the bank, to cash a check, to check into a hotel, board an airplane, get married. You need a passport to leave the country and return. Why should someone who's not here legally not face the same requirement that Americans face every time they cross the border?
I salute the president for getting to the root of the problem. I recommend that every citizen who cares about illegal immigration ask anyone running for office whether he or she actively supports the end to illegal hiring and is not just willing but "eager" to give employers a way to stop it.
If not, I believe it fair to say the politician who goes quiet on this matter, or gives you a lot of blah, blah, blah is just another player gaming the system. They can call themselves "civil libertarians" or "immigrants' rights advocates" or "churchmen" or "concerned businessmen" but you will know them by their refusal to stop illegal hiring. They are gaming the system for cheap, illegal labor, for votes, or they simply have no problem with the flow of illegal immigration. They oppose giving honest business people the one tool they need to stop it – a trustworthy ID card, because the last thing they want to do is stop it.
The president is right on this ID card business. The game players, left, right and center are wrong. Got it?
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