Failure of Immigration Bill Could Lead to Racist Ordinances

Eugenia Chien monitors Chinese media for New America Media.

Immigration advocates blamed racist talk radio rhetoric for the failure of the immigration reform bill in the Senate, which they say could lead to anti-immigrant local enforcement measures. However they also admitted that the various enforcement measures added onto the bill to win Republican votes had also left many immigrant organizations with less than whole-hearted support for the bill.

The failure in the Senate last Thursday to move the bill forward means that there will be no immigration reform in the current Congressional term, which ends in December, 2008.

“This was the last chance for this bill,” says Angela Kelley, deputy director of Washington’s National Immigration Forum, which supported the bill. “The Senate has effectively left the dance floor,” she says.

Kelley says that anti-immigration sentiments ran high in conservative radio talk shows, which generated unprecedented number of phone calls and emails to the U.S. Senate. The calls “shut down the phone system in the Senate,” she says, and senators caved to the political pressure from the bill’s opponents.

During the NAM Access Washington teleconference for ethnic media, Kelley and other advocates explored the aftermath of the failed bill and grassroots strategies to respond to the enforcement-heavy local ordinances that might result from the absence of federal immigration reform.

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