By Mark Fischenich
Free Press Staff Writer
July 28, 2008 12:33 am
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The state of the political debate over immigration might have been demonstrated fairly concisely when John McCain was speaking at a town hall meeting June 19 in St. Paul.
A participant asked the likely Republican nominee for president about the issue, noting that many Minnesota industries depend on the labor of immigrants, both legal and illegal, but that there were also problems with immigrants who “don’t know our laws, don’t read our language.”
The audience was quiet while McCain explained some of the details of his immigration proposal. Then he said this: “We must secure our borders. We must secure our borders, and that is a federal responsibility.”
At which point he stopped speaking, letting the applause that filled the Landmark Center die down.
But there was something else he wanted to tell the Minnesotans on hand.
“People who are here illegally are also God’s children,” McCain said. “And we have to address this issue in a humane and compassionate fashion.”
The crowd was silent.
Divided on the issue
Illegal immigration matters to many Minnesotans and to voters across the country, and Republican-leaning voters, at least, seem to want a hard line.
But in Washington, the hard-liners and those on the opposite side have reached a stalemate, and it appears other topics have overtaken immigration in the 2008 election.
That McCain was standing there as the presumptive Republican nominee was a piece of evidence. The Arizona senator had attempted to broker a compromise on immigration that would have allowed some illegal immigrants to remain in America and eventually become citizens.
Mitt Romney and others seeking the Republican nomination attacked McCain’s immigration stance, to no avail.
“It’s an important issue, but Republicans can’t speak with one clear voice on this,” said Joe Kunkel, a political science professor at Minnesota State University. “There’s kind of a nativist part and then there’s kind of a business-realities part of it.”
And after GOP candidates hit the issue hard in 2006, and suffered one of their worst elections in decades, many are ready to try other topics in 2008.
“In some ways, the illegal immigration issue may have passed its peak in the last election as Republicans tried to highlight that,” Kunkel said. “It doesn’t seem to have worked that much, and Republicans are divided on the issue.”
Down the list
In 2006, then-Congressman Gil Gutknecht, a Republican seeking his seventh term in the U.S. House, sought to portray Democratic challenger Tim Walz as a pro-amnesty liberal in television ads than flooded the 1st District airwaves in the final weeks of the campaign. Walz, who said the ads blatantly distorted his stance, won.
But earlier this year, Walz traveled to Arizona for a border tour weeks after a Republican opponent — state Sen. Dick Day of Owatonna — had made a trip there and talked to anti-immigration activists. It appeared that 2008 was going to be Round 2 of the 1st District immigration battle.
That’s changed.
“I think it’s fallen down the list,” said Brian Davis, a Rochester physician who won the GOP endorsement to run against Walz. “... Clearly, the biggest issue right now is what people are paying at the gas pump. It affects everybody.”
Day, who is challenging Davis in the Republican primary election Sept. 9, has said the same.
Walz agrees the price of gas is the foremost concern of people. Like the Republicans, however, he said he’s still concerned about illegal immigration, wants the borders secured and supports a system that would allow businesses to verify that job applicants are in the country legally.
A needed workforce
State Rep. Bob Gunther, a Fairmont Republican who has represented Watonwan County and its large population of Latino immigrants for years, offers middle-ground attitudes about immigration.
Gunther is as forceful as other politicians in saying that the federal government needs to address its porous borders and that illegal immigrants should be deported when caught.
But the former member of the state Chicano-Latino Affairs Council said he also recognizes the economic realities of the situation.
“The Latinos are perfect workers,” Gunther said. “They’re a needed workforce.”
He disagrees with those who say the workers, with their low-paying jobs, are a drain on government welfare programs. The vast majority of Latinos in his district are legal and pay taxes and payroll deductions.
“The biggest cost of Medicaid — which is welfare — is senior citizens in nursing homes, and I don’t hear anybody complaining about them,” Gunther said.
“To me, there’s not a whole lot of difference between the Germans, Norwegians and Swedes of 100 years ago and the Latinos now,” he said.
A defining issue
Gunther has averaged nearly 70 percent of the vote in his numerous elections, so he probably doesn’t need to worry about upsetting those people in his district that would like to hear harsher words about immigrants.
Other candidates, however, should pay attention to people who are upset about illegal immigration, said Ruthie Hendrycks, a rural Hanska resident and president of Minnesotans Seeking Immigration Reform.
“It’s going to have an impact,” Hendrycks said. “... There are people who are going to vote in the upcoming election, whether it’s dog catcher or president, where this will be the No. 1 defining issue. And I know many of them.”
Hendrycks also knows firsthand they aren’t a majority. She ran for the state House in the district just north of Gunther’s and finished third at the Republican endorsing convention.
Even in her own organization, not everyone votes exclusively on a candidate’s position on immigration, said Hendrycks, who expects to vote for a third-party candidate for president.
“I’d say 75 to 80 percent of our members, illegal immigration will be the deciding factor,” she said. “It will be for me.”
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