Immigration Reform Divides Ultraconservatives

Immigration reform has created serious disagreements within the Republican Party, which is split between a reticence to grant “amnesty” to immigrants who have entered the country without permission, whom they see as delinquents, and the need to adapt to a new demographic reality in order to ensure the party’s survival.

At the heart of the debate is a report published by the Heritage Foundation, the all-powerful ultraconservative think tank in Washington, according to which the granting of legal status to 11 million immigrants who have entered the United States illegally would cost American taxpayers $6.3 billion (4.9 billion euros) in terms of social and education expenses over the next 50 years.

Strong Objections

The estimates have been strongly contested by a majority of specialists. Some right-wing figureheads, such as Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform, raised sharp objections. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, claimed that giving legal status to immigrants who had entered the country illegally would not lead to new budgetary expenses and would instead add $1.5 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product over the next decade.

One of the authors of the report, Jason Richwine, stirred up controversy again when the press revealed that, in a doctoral thesis supported by Harvard in 2009, Richwine maintained that the IQ of Hispanic immigrants was on average substantially lower than that of “white” Americans and that the situation would remain such for generations — hence the social costs of legalization. Richwine has since been forced to resign.

Add to this a generational clash among right-wing Republicans: The debate puts former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, a tea party leader who left the Senate in December 2012 in order to lead the Heritage Foundation, against his protégé, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, one of the co-authors of the reform plan.

‘If DeMint Wins, Rubio Loses’

Jim DeMint, who helped bring down a similar plan presented by George W. Bush in 2007, was one of the first to support Marco Rubio’s candidacy in 2010, because he saw in him a worthy heir to his conservative ideas. Today, the two men have become adversaries. “If DeMint wins, Rubio loses,” declared Frank Sharry of the pro-immigrant association America’s Voice to The New York Times, which could “hurt Republican chances of regaining the White House.”

The reform plan is currently being debated within a U.S. Senate committee, which must examine more than 300 amendments. The discussions could last for weeks before the plan reaches the second stage: presentation before the entire Senate, where the Democrats have a fragile majority. The House of Representatives, controlled by the Republicans, will then examine the reform before its final adoption, this summer at the earliest.