As delegates to the GOP national convention prepared for a Monday vote on their platform, Republicans debated an immigration plank that could become as divisive an issue for them as abortion.
Though a fight over abortion language received the most attention at platform committee hearings last week, the party’s official call to deny citizenship to children born in the United States of illegal immigrants has also proved controversial.
When asked recently about the immigration plank, both soon-to-be GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) tried to distance themselves from the platform, saying they had not even read the document.
Party Chairman Haley Barbour has also claimed not to have read the platform. Jack Kemp, Dole’s running mate, will have to mute his high-profile opposition to denying benefits to illegal immigrants.
Meanwhile, there were reports that New York Gov. George Pataki had declined to address the convention because he was asked to speak on immigration, a subject on which he differs with the platform’s hard-line stand.
While Pat Buchanan, who made tightening American borders a cornerstone of his bid for the party’s presidential nomination, applauded the plank, other prominent Republicans, such as Arizona Sen. John McCain, oppose it.
“I just don’t think we should punish children,” McCain said. “In my state there are a lot of immigration problems, but we’ve been able to solve them with our Hispanic friends and neighbors.”
The platform plank aims to discourage illegal immigration by eliminating presumed incentives for illegal entry, including health, welfare, and education benefits, as well as citizenship for children.
The denial of benefits to illegal immigrants and their children was at the heart of California’s deeply controversial Proposition 187 in 1994.
The Republican immigration plank begins: “As a nation of immigrants, we welcome those who follow our laws and come to our land to seek a better life.”
But it adds: “We must set immigration at manageable levels, balance the competing goals of uniting families of our citizens and admitting specially talented persons, and end asylum abuses through expedited exclusion of false claimants.”
The plank also calls for tighter border patrols and more speedy deportation of people in the country illegally.
Hispanic organizations have criticized the platform as xenophobic and racist.
“The immigration debate has reached a point where Republicans are apparently prepared to attack newborns,” said Cecilia Munoz, deputy vice president of the Council of La Raza. “This proposal would create a class of stateless people in the United States.”
And Kevin Middlebrook, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California at San Diego, said: “This reverses 140 years of constitutional law, and strikes at a mainstay of the American tradition. I think it is wrongheaded.”
Immigration reform has been a thorny problem for Republicans in recent years. For months, a bill to tighten laws against illegal immigration has been stalled in Congress over whether to deny public schooling to children of illegal immigrants.
The split is not always predictable. While many California Republicans have endorsed a move to deny illegal immigrants education benefits, other Republicans, including Texas’ two GOP senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison and Phil Gramm, oppose such a move.
Texas Gov. George W. Bush said Sunday he was not sure he could support the platform plank.
“I firmly believe in the American tradition–born on American soil, you’re a U.S. citizen,” Bush said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “But in border states like Texas, it’s being abused. People are coming across the border for a brief period of time just to have a baby born and declared a U.S. citizen, and that’s troubling.
“So I’m withholding judgment until I hear the full extent of the debate.”
Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), who chaired the GOP platform committee and heads the House Judiciary Committee, which writes immigration law, says he has “no problem” with the platform’s call to deny citizenship to children of illegal immigrants.
But Hyde said he is “very conflicted” by the move to deny public education to children who are in the country illegally.
The position is in both the platform and the House-passed version of a long-stalled immigration reform bill.
Rep. Robert Walker (R-Pa.) said the reforms are necessary to keep government costs down.
“Clearly, if we have created an incentive for people to come here simply to have children so they can then collect benefits from the society, that is not something to support long-term good policy,” he said.
Gingrich, speaking at a breakfast with reporters Sunday, said he had not read the platform. But he called illegal immigration “a real problem” for which a compromise must be found.
“Obviously, I don’t want to repeal the 14th Amendment” which guarantees citizenship to people born in the United States, Gingrich said.
The immigration plank is at odds, at least in principle, with positions taken previously by Kemp. In 1994, Kemp caused an uproar in the party when he opposed Proposition 187.
Dole supported the measure, and California voters approved the initiative in November 1994. It is being challenged in the courts.
