Sunday, July 2, 2006 | 7:40 a.m.
The national debate over illegal immigration is about to get loud again, spurred on by House Republicans who believe the issue will drive conservatives to the polls in the November elections - even as it complicates the prospects of Nevada's most vulnerable incumbent congressman.
The U.S. House is stirring the debate by scheduling public hearings across the country on legislation the chamber approved last year. It calls for tough border controls and new enforcement mechanisms to curtail illegal immigration. With public opinion polls showing that a majority of Americans support those provisions, Republicans hope the hearings will improve their chances to retain control of Congress despite a surge in Democratic popularity among voters.
In Nevada, the Republican strategy carries substantial risk for Republican Rep. Jon Porter, whose district is closely divided between registered Republicans and Democrats and also is home to large numbers of Mexican immigrants. Two months ago, an estimated 40,000 or more people, mostly Hispanics, marched on the Strip to protest the House bill that Porter voted to approve in December. March organizers vowed to convert that discontent into votes on election day.
Similar protests were held around the country, but they largely disappeared through May and June as President Bush and the Senate put forth plans that were not as tough on illegal immigrants. Last week, however, House leaders told Bush they were sidelining his plan.
Emboldened by a conservative Republican's victory in a Southern California congressional race, the House began scheduling hearings that will take debate over its tougher legislation to communities across the country. The first will take place next week in California and Texas. A dozen others will follow. None are scheduled in Nevada, although House leaders have not ruled out holding one in the state.
Professor Jaime Regalado, director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University of Los Angeles, said the spectacle of immigration hearings this summer "cuts both ways" for the party, particularly among moderate Republicans in tight races "who feel the GOP might be barking up the wrong tree as anti-immigrant or anti-Latino."
Paul Adams, chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, acknowledged the risk in an interview this week. Adams said the hearings can show that Republicans are serious about taking control of the border and cracking down on illegal immigrants. The alternative, he said, is to agree to a compromise with the Senate that could disappoint conservatives in the party.
But if the hearings generate comments with racial overtones, the party could suffer in Clark County, Adams said.
"If it's demagoged and put in racist tones, as Republicans, that's going to hurt us," he said.
The House bill would make criminals of immigrants living here illegally and of any U.S. citizen who helps them. It also would install a 700-mile fence on the border.
The Senate offered a broader plan, more in line with the White House's, that includes a guest worker program and path to citizenship for those already here illegally. It also contained border security provisions, including a fence and the use of National Guard troops.
As protests against the House bill gathered strength through the spring, Porter said he never intended for the legislation to become law. Instead, he said, House leaders planned all along to compromise with the Senate.
This week, in response to written questions from the Sun, the congressman said: "There are parts of each bill that I like. I support a piece of legislation that secures our borders. As I've maintained from the beginning of the debate, border security equals homeland security. Should the final version of the bill include the frameworks for a guest worker program, it should only be implemented once our borders are safe."
Porter's political future could hinge on how conservatives and Hispanics respond to that statement - provided either group turns out strongly on election day. Porter's district includes much of suburban Las Vegas and Henderson, as well as a substantial portion of unincorporated Clark County.
Luis Valera, member of the Nevada GOP Hispanic Steering Committee, said the state party has already "dismantled much of the noble effort" local Republican leaders had made to gain inroads in the Hispanic community, thanks to a party platform announced last month that calls for denying citizenship to children born in this country to illegal immigrants.
As for the House leadership's stance on immigration "the impact will be felt," Valera said. "It's sad that three or four Republicans can ruin everything that others - like President Bush - have done for Hispanics."
Porter won a second term in the House two years ago by more than 42,000 votes. His best-financed challenger this fall, Tessa Hafen, a 30-year-old newcomer who has never run for elected office, has an almost identical position on immigration as the one Porter described this week.
Hispanics have never turned out in large numbers in Nevada, and so far this year, Hispanic registration in Clark County seems unremarkable, despite the predictions made two months ago by leaders of the Las Vegas protest march.
County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said that as of Wednesday, just 49 of the 2,700 voter registration cards requested by Hispanic advocacy groups had been completed. The mail-in deadline for the August primary elections is July 15.
Such local groups as Hispanics in Politics and Familias Immigrantes Unides have begun modest voter registration drives, but they said they cannot yet point to tangible results.
This weekend, the We Are America Coalition is launching voter registration drives in 19 states. Its goal in Las Vegas is to register 10,000 to 15,000 new voters for the November general election.
Elsewhere, the Southwest Voter Education Registration project, which takes credit for registering 2.3 million of the nation's 9.3 million Hispanic voters over the past three decades, points to substantial recent gains in Nevada. The number of Hispanics casting ballots has tripled from 14,000 in the 1998 gubernatorial election to 42,000 in 2002 - and is projected to hit 68,000 this fall, according to the William C. Velasquez Institute, a nonprofit public policy organization focused on Hispanic issues.
"Somehow they think by holding these hearings, they're going to be able to bring out the troops and the American public is on their side," said Cristina Lopez, deputy executive director of the Center for Community Change, a Washington group and member of the We Are America coalition.
"I think it'll backfire. The American public falls more along the lines of where President Bush, and the Senate, is on immigration reform."
An early June poll by Rasmussen Reports, a leading national polling organization, found that Americans have a nuanced approach to immigration reform. Most Americans, 57 percent, say that gaining control of the borders is the most important strategy, as House leaders suggest. Just 31 percent of the poll put legalized status for workers as the top priority.
But 61 percent of Americans also want those millions of immigrants living here illegally to be eligible for an earned path to citizenship, paying fines and back taxes, as the Senate and White House have offered.
Nevada's other Republican representative, Jim Gibbons, also voted for the House bill. Gibbons is leaving the House to run for governor. Nevada Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley voted against the legislation.
archive
