The South Wing

A series of steps have been taken that suggest that aggressive action by the White House on immigration reform may come soon.

For Democratic strategists, immigration reform, that would certainly include a path to legalize most if not all of the twelve million illegal immigrants currently in the country as well as easing the process of acquiring H1-B visas for highly qualified immigrant workers and adding guest worker passes, is a silver bullet that could add support amongst liberals and the crucial Latino population, as well as possibly making Wall Street Democratic.

Since the Civil War, Northern business interests have been solidly Republican, and the party has generally kept in line with their interests. Particularly since Ronald Reagan’s administration, this has meant strong support for lower taxes, as well as being generally conservative on matters of social and defense policy. Since Bill Clinton took office, however, the differences in economic policies between Democrats and Republicans have narrowed. Though George Bush Jr.’s proposal for massive tax cuts reversed this trend, those gains proved to be short-lived, as virtually no major political figure backs major reductions in taxes. Meanwhile, social policies have proven to be a push to the left, as major companies in the Fortune 500 now support affirmative action and civil unions for gays.

But immigration has proven to be the major dividing issue between Republicans and big business. The campaign of conservatives in Congress against immigration has gone against Wall Street’s traditional support for a large labor pool to keep wages low, but because of the concern that limiting particularly the highly educated would be a severe blow to tech companies in Silicon Valley and to Wall Street corporations themselves. In the last few days alone, the New York Times has reported on the damage of current immigration policies on Google, and Goldman Sachs has strongly criticized the limitations set on its hiring policies of immigrations as a serious detriment to its business, and there is a suggestion

that this was one of many reasons that it exited itself from the TARP program. Support for immigration reform within the business community extends beyond Wall Street to the Chamber of Commerce, which represents tens of thousands of smaller and larger businesses around the country.

After the significant gains that Democrats made in the business community during the Clinton years, Barack Obama has made some enemies with his strident criticism of banks over the past few months. These individuals are less important as voters than they are as donors to political candidates and parties. In the last few days, the White House has taken some steps to begin to rebuild those bridges. Obama has generally evaded the calls of some for protectionism. More recently download hunky dory , he has reduced restrictions on Americans visiting family members in Cuba, and reduced the American embargo on the country for communications devices like cell phones and computers, suggesting he may eventually reduce still further or even remove the American embargo on Cuba. The Wall Street Journal also reported a few days ago that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, formerly a relatively conservative voice on immigration, has begun

to push hard on the issue.

The major blocking force on Democratic action on this issue is labor. Unions are historically wary of any effort to add to the labor pool, believing that it might reduce salaries. Recently however, some labor unions including the Service Employees Industrial Union (SEIU), arguably the single most politically important union, have taken the immigration stances of their heavily Latino membership. Meanwhile, other labor unions have begun to believe that instead of fighting the entrance of newer workers, the better strategy is to legalize them and allow them to join unions, and therefore limit the amount of workers who take very low wages to work in unsafe environments. In 2007, the AFL-CIO, representing more traditional labor unions, and Change to Win, an organization in which the SEIU plays a major role, made a general agreement to back immigration reform, but broke on the specifics. Today, the New York Times is reporting that they have made a solid agreement to support immigration reform.
Ironically, this progress would come as some indications suggest that immigration is slowing down with the economy. Applications for H-1B visas are down, and a combination of harsher enforcement and a weakening job market has limited illegal immigration as well. But the combination of ideas and political gain appears ready to finally make some crucial progress.