Who’s to blame for stalled immigration reform?
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
Congressman Dan Benishek—a first-term Republican who represents Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the upper third of the Lower Peninsula—was basking in the sunny accomplishment of the bipartisan passage of the Sleeping Bear Wilderness Act on May 30 at Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive when a constituent approached him and asked “Dr. Dan” about a more complex issue: immigration reform.
“It’s probably gonna come out this summer,” Benishek predicted. “We know how much you depend on it,” he added, in a nod to the importance of immigrant and migrant farm labor to the Northern Michigan agricultural economy. (Read our in-depth story, “Fruit everywhere, but who will pick it?”.) “I know how important it is for the fruit guys to have temporary workers: to work 3-4 weeks and move on to the next field.”
But a funny thing happened on the way to federal immigration reform. Eleven days after Benishek’s victory lap in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor was trounced in his reelection bid in a primary battle in Virginia by a right-wing member of the Tea Party. Cantor, perceived as the most influential Republican in Congress, was greasing the wheels for the House to pass immigration reform — a step seen as necessary for the Republican Party to have any national leverage with Latino voters. After Cantor’s stunning defeat, Republicans stopped talking about immigration reform almost entirely. The legislation was all but dead — even though the Democratic-controlled Senate had already passed its own immigration reform bill, and President Obama has called for its passage.
“The system is broken,” Benishek admitted in a phone interview last month with the Glen Arbor Sun. “What I’m hearing from farmers is that they just want workers who can come to the fields and work. They want a system where they don’t have to be the enforcement officers who check documents … They are telling me they want to see the border secure. They also want a system that allows for legal immigration.”
Immigration reform would be a job creator for Northern Michigan, Benishek added. “People aren’t planting as much as they could; they don’t have the labor to harvest more. This could be a boon to Northern Michigan … I’m on the (House Committee on Agriculture) because I realized how important “ag” is to Northern Michigan. It’s a big part of our economy.”
But Benishek added that he doesn’t favor what he calls “blanket amnesty” for the approximately 11 million undocumented workers currently in the United States.
Who’s to blame for the stalled immigration reform, the Sun asked Benishek?
“Washington has tried to fix this before. I don’t believe there’s a will to get this fixed right now,” said the Congressman, who said that he doesn’t trust the Senate’s immigration reform bill.
Perhaps in reference to the powerful Tea Party faction within his own party, Benishek said, “some people are completely against any kind of reform. But there needs to be reform. People in Michigan need help. We need to make sure they have access to legal workers.”
But Benishek refused to connect Cantor’s defeat to immigration reform’s stall. “I don’t know that the Tea Party has changed the discussion. These are the same issues we’ve dealt with all along.”
Instead he blamed President Obama, which has become common parlance among contemporary Republicans. The crisis at the U.S.-Mexican border—where tens of thousands of Central American children and teenagers have arrived this year seeking refuge—was created by the Obama administration, and his passage of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, (DACA) — also known as the “Dream Act” — insinuated Benishek. Obama’s 2012 executive order created a path toward legalization for undocumented minors who were brought to the United States by their parents. (Read Kathleen Stocking’s essay, “Unnatural Phenomenon: Children at the border” in our Aug. 28 edition of the Sun.)
Connecting DACA to the current crisis of children at the border, and blaming that for stalled immigration reform legislation, has become a common narrative in some Republican circles. But a thorough study by Tom K. Wong, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, shows that rising violence against children in Central America, not DACA, is behind the surge of unaccompanied children crossing the border.
Meanwhile, immigration reform lies dead in the water, as politicians fight their war of rhetoric. And Northern Michigan farmers pray they’ll have enough hands in the fields.
