DREAM Act Dies at Hands of GOP and a Few "Blue Dogs"

While many of has been celebrating the Senate vote yesterday on DADT, another vote that took place gives cause for sadness. The DREAM Act, which would provided a route to citizenship for those in the country not under their own volition, went down to defeat in the Senate at the hands of the GOP and some "conservative" - read bigoted - Democrats. While Congressional Democrats and Obama (to what extent, I don't know) pulled DADT repeal out of the fire at the 11th hour, the same was not true with the DREAM Act. And advocates of the immigration reform bill are blaming Obama for a flawed strategy - as if that's any surprise given the ineptitude Obama displayed with DADT repeal and other LGBT issues that have gone nowhere. While there are many excuses for why the DREAM Act failed, the ultimate reason in my view is unvarnished anti-Hispanic racism. And as too often the case, many of the worse racists are the self-styled "family values" organizations who only support white, heterosexual headed families. These "godly Christians" continue to shock and sicken my by their inability to recognize the common humanity of others. The Act's failure to pass - even though it had 55 votes - also demonstrates how broken the U. S. Senate has become. Here are highlights from the Washington Post:
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Whenever Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and other immigrant-rights advocates asked President Obama how a Democratic administration could preside over the greatest number of deportations in any two-year period in the nation's history, Obama's answer was always the same. . . . . the president told them, . . . stepped-up enforcement was the only way to buy credibility with Republicans and generate bipartisan support for an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws.
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On Saturday, that strategy was in ruins after Senate Democrats could muster only 55 votes in support of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, a measure that would have created a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. Under Senate rules, Democrats needed 60 votes to overcome Republican opposition to the bill. The House of Representatives had passed the measure this month, 216 to 198.
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Virtually no one thinks immigration overhaul is possible in the next two years, given the views of many members of the incoming Republican majority in the House. Now many immigrant-rights supporters are second-guessing Obama's efforts to woo Republicans by ramping up deportations.
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"It is a strategy which has borne no fruits whatsoever," Gutierrez said. "This administration has unilaterally led the march on enforcement, yet the other side has not given one modicum of compromise."
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[T]he Obama administration miscalculated conservative antipathy on the subject of immigration, said a senior Democratic Hill staffer, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the issue. Even as the administration stepped up deportations, conservatives charged Obama with being too soft on the country's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. "Short of marching these people naked over the border at the point of a bayonet, there is no such thing as being tough enough" for those who want to target illegal immigrants, the staffer said.
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Ali Noorani, who heads the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant-rights group, said that Obama faces a dilemma going forward. Republicans would now cry foul if the administration eased up on deportations, he said. But Latinos are losing patience with a strategy that has led to pain without gain for their communities.
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"The administration is in a pickle of epic proportions," Noorani said. "They are going to feel incredible pressure in the House to increase enforcement, and the record shows they will continue to increase enforcement of a broken immigration system. On the other hand, candidate Obama will need those same Latinos, Asians and other immigrant voters to come out for him in record numbers. How do they square that circle?"
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Once again, in his quest to kiss the asses of GOP bigots Obama has failed those who put him in office. It's a pattern that is all to familiar, yet the man never seems to learn.