Immigration Politics Has Gotten So, Cliché
By Victor Landa, NewsTaco
I heard a drum roll in my head when I read that President Obama was planning to make an announcement about immigration at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) gala Thursday night.
Then I read that he might promise a date for executive action. That’s when my brain blared the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. How cliché, right?
That’s what’s happened with the President’s promises to the Latino community; they’ve become cliché. Not only that, they’ve become a source of irritation within the Latino community, much like a pesky rash. Here’s a test you can do that proves my point: mention President Obama and his promises about immigration in conversation, or on your social media network, then sit back and listen. Backers and detractors will draw a line and engage in a full-throttle debate that’s been going on so long it’s beginning to sound like blather.
But that’s the point, isn’t it? To keep talking about it instead of doing something about it. John Boehner and the Republican parade he leads in the House of Representatives are as much to blame for the blather as is the President. It’s gotten so cliché that the images they conjure are comical, like a bad TV drama: Boehner says the House will likely pass immigration reform, when the border is secure … but … they don’t trust the President to secure the border – cut to a close-up of Boehner’s frowny-face and hold that shot for dramatic effect, with strings in a minor key, until you go to commercial.
The President promises, again … and again … that he’ll move on immigration – fade to a wide-shot of the White House, ominous clouds overhead, lightning for effect.
Meanwhile Latino organizations are jousting about whether boycotting the mid-term election is sending a message, or surrender. Pundits are pundit-ing about the impact of the Latino vote in an off-presidential election year. And everyone, everyone, on social media has an opinion about the matter – town folk with pitchforks and torches storming the castle.
I do mean to make light of the situation, because it’s ridiculous.
You can list the clichés with which immigration action has been described: kicking cans down the road, drawing lines in the sand, playing chicken, planning moves on a chessboard. I’ll be the first to point a finger at myself for doing that. But it’s not out of laziness, it’s out of a need to lighten the redundancy.
How long have we been talking about this?
How many elections have been on the balance of an immigration reform that doesn’t come? How many political campaigns are made robust, over and over, by waving an immigration issue flag?
The fact is that the immigration cliché is of more political utility the longer it goes unresolved. So it’s not about immigrants, it’s about the next election. And it’ll be that way until the fuel runs out and the partisans realize that they’re part of a political platitude. At that point (excuse me while I dig in to my stash of Texan maxims) the immigration dog won’t hunt.
But we’re not there yet. The President is going to try to get more mileage out of it when he speaks to the crowd at the CHCI. And the next day, the loyal opposition will retort.
And this has also become commonplace – every day more than 800 people are deported.
{Photo courtesy of Fox Broadcasting Company]