Immigration reform: The new campaign wave By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Columnist | December 13, 2005 WASHINGTON -- Jim Gilchrist, who started citizens' patrols to catch illegal immigrants along the Mexican border, struck an even bigger blow last week for his cause: Running for an open California seat in Congress on an anti-illegal immigrant platform, he picked up 25 percent of the vote as an independent, in a normally Republican district. Gilchrist's big protest vote grabbed the attention of almost every politician in Washington, thereby guaranteeing that curbing illegal immigration will be a refrain in next year's congressional races. Republican and Democratic officeholders in border states tend to agree that it's a complex issue, requiring numerous different strategies. Among them: increasing the numbers of border agents; building more holding cells; enacting a guest-worker program to give agents a better chance of identifying drug dealers and terrorists; expanding an innovative plan to return illegal immigrants to their homes in the interior of Mexico, thereby discouraging them from immediately crossing over again. Ultimately, finding ways to expand economic opportunities in border areas of Mexico would slow the flow enough to allow a greater crackdown on illegals entering the country. President Bush, as a former governor of Texas, shares the sense that the best solution lies in some combination of the measures being discussed. Unfortunately, illegal immigration also creates a mother lode of opportunities for demagoguery. These include warlike rhetoric of the type that says, ''We must close every inch of the border and throw every illegal immigrant into prison" -- as if such a thing were possible on a border with Mexico, which is 1,952 miles long -- plus 5,514 miles with Canada. Last year, 500,000 illegals were caught in Arizona alone. Since terrorists might slip in to the United States from Mexico or Canada, the urgency of the rhetoric is justified, if not the simplicity. But by framing a crackdown on illegal immigration as a values test, Gilchrist and others make practical attempts to tackle the problem sound like feckless accommodations: guest-worker plans, flights to central Mexico, and opportunities to obtain green cards all strike the average talk-radio audience as ways of coddling wrongdoers. Gilchrist defined his campaign as a populist show of anger against both parties. Democrats, he argued, were too soft on illegals because of ''political correctness," while Republicans were beholden to business interests eager for cheap illegal-immigrant labor. But his campaign struck more of a chord with grass-roots conservatives, and some Republican advisers are urging the party to adopt a harsher tone on illegal immigration. Thus, William F. Buckley's National Review, whose subscriber base is in the Northeast, has criticized not only such southwestern Republicans as Bush and Arizona Senator John McCain, but right-wing stalwarts such as Texas Senator John Cornyn and Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona for, they say, being insufficiently tough on illegals. Grass-roots conservatives seem to be craving outrage rather than policy proposals of any type. ''This is the kind of thing that the Silent Majority talks about in private but doesn't mention to pollsters," a GOP pollster, Frank Luntz, recently told Time magazine. ''There's a deep-seated anger at the government for not stopping this." Right now, the Senate and the White House seem determined to enact a multifaceted border-security program next year. Bush and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, have called for action, and McCain and Senator Edward M. Kennedy have already produced a bipartisan bill granting temporary work permits for illegals who can pay $2,000, take English lessons, and pass a criminal background check. By allowing guest workers, the flow of illegals would presumably slow down enough that border guards could then concentrate on catching criminals and terrorists trying to slip into the country. But any Senate bill could run into a brick wall in the House, where members worried about reelection might be eager to channel Gilchrist's anger. The last time the Republican party aligned itself with a harsh anti-illegal immgrant program -- in California in the early 1990s -- it eventually produced a backlash that contributed to a string of statewide Democratic victories. So the Republican National Committee chairman, Ken Mehlman, has warned candidates to avoid being seen as anti-immigrant. Still, border security looms as a major political focus of 2006, connecting fears of terrorism, anger over job losses, and concerns about the decline of Anglo-American heritage. Gilchrist will, of course, be leading the way: He has vowed to keep on running until he wins. Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond. --------------------------------------------------- Immigration rate soaring, report says 7.9 million said to move to US in the last 5 years By Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press | December 13, 2005 WASHINGTON -- Immigration -- both legal and illegal -- has accelerated, pushing the percentage of the US population born in other countries to the highest point in nearly a century. There are 35.2 million foreign-born people living in the United States -- about 12.1 percent of the population, according to a report yesterday by the Center for Immigration Studies. The report comes as the House prepares to take up a bill to curb illegal immigration by boosting border security and requiring workplace enforcement of immigration laws. About 7.9 million people moved to the United States in the past five years, the highest five-year period of immigration on record, according to the report, which is based on the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey from March. If the trend continues, immigrants will soon make up an even larger portion of the population than they did during the last immigration boom, at the beginning of the 20th century, the report said. ''The 35.2 million immigrants living in the country in March 2005 is the highest number ever recorded -- 2 1/2 times the 13.5 million during the peak of the last great immigration wave in 1910," said the report by Steven Camarota, the center's research director. The center advocates tougher policies on illegal immigration and favors attracting immigrants with needed job skills. The report estimates there are about 9.7 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. Other estimates range from 9 million to 13 million. The report's estimate of the overall number of immigrants living in the United States is consistent with other analyses. But specialists warn that it is difficult to accurately measure the number of people entering the country each year. A recent study by the Pew Hispanic Center found that immigration levels peaked around 2000, then dipped in 2002 and 2003. Nevertheless, Jeffrey Passel, a research associate at the Pew Hispanic Center, said immigration levels remained high, compared with historical levels. Audrey Singer, an immigration fellow at the Brookings Institution, said, ''There's no doubt that we are at a high in immigration to the United States." Singer said immigrants are attracted by economic opportunities and social ties to people already living in the United States. ''Look at places where people come from, these are places with very limited economic opportunities," Singer said. Mexico is the largest source of immigrants to the United States, followed by East Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, according to the report. A divided House Judiciary Committee approved a bill last week that would enlist military support in border surveillance and set new mandatory minimum sentences on smugglers and people convicted of reentry after removal. Illegal presence in the country, now a civil offense, would become a federal crime. The full House is expected to take up the measure this week, before it adjourns for the year. President Bush has proposed a guest worker program that could allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country temporarily to fill jobs unwanted by Americans. The guest worker provision is not part of the House bill. Activists have been arguing for years that America needs to better secure its borders against illegal immigrants, while others argue that the American economy would collapse without the cheap labor provided by undocumented workers. The Center for Immigration Studies says that immigrants, on average, are less educated and more likely to live in poverty than people born in the United States. The Pew Hispanic Center, however, says that education levels are improving among recent immigrants. Camarota said the US should work harder to expel people who are in the United States illegally. But Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, said it would be impossible to deport as many as 11 million illegally immigrants, who make up about 5 percent of the US workforce. ''There isn't fairy dust that is going to make the 11 million people go away," Kelley said.