Another Bush, Another Push for Immigration Reform

Sometime around 6 a.m. Wednesday, the apologetic emails went out to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) – Jeb Bush's plane had broken down and he was stuck in Maine. For want of two wings, the former Republican governor of Florida was unable to fly to Washington to give lift and luster to the release of a report calling for comprehensive immigration reform.

It is no surprise that the CFR (an invitation-only membership organization filled with foreign policy mandarins) put together an immigration task force that ended up ratifying the establishment position on the issue. This is the grand legislative bargain that combines the liberal dream of a path to citizenship for those here illegally with the conservative approach of more effective border enforcement. In fact, the news that the council calls for immigration reform brings to mind an old New Republic contest to find the most boring newspaper headline ever, with the winner's garland going to "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative."

What added drama was that presidential brother (and son) Jeb Bush was willing to serve as co-chairman of the CFR task force along with former Bill Clinton chief of staff Mack McLarty. At a time when few Republicans are willing to risk antagonizing the party's conservative base on immigration (paging John McCain), here was the most popular Bush in politics volunteering to stick his neck out. "Jeb Bush is such an important, vocal, leading Republican," says Tamar Jacoby, the president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a national federation of employers championing immigration reform. "He's a very significant figure to come forward on this."

The former Florida governor's physical absence Wednesday morning meant the loss of TV footage about the CFR report, but it did not diminish the political reality that Jeb Bush had endorsed this conclusion: "The Task Force recommends that a new effort to pass a comprehensive immigration bill be a first-tier priority for the Obama administration and Congress."

Last month Obama, after holding a twice-delayed White House meeting on immigration reform, candidly admitted, "We all know that comprehensive immigration reform is difficult. We know it's a sensitive and politically volatile issue." Over the next few months, the White House will decide whether there are enough likely GOP votes in Congress to risk making a major push for immigration reform before the midterm elections. "It's like an operation that Obama knows he has to have before he runs for reelection in 2012," said Jacoby. "And the president is asking himself when the least bad time is. And right now he doesn't know."

Immigration is that rare major issue on which the Bush family has always been on the liberal edge of the Republican Party. George W. Bush's failed efforts to pass immigration reform in his second term were a mixture of sincerity and political savvy. But most GOP conservatives opposed the president by denouncing any effort to legalize the status of illegal immigrants (even if it involved monetary fines and more than a decade's wait for possible citizenship) as "amnesty."

The result: Obama carried the Latino vote in 2008 by a lopsided two-to-one margin. As Jeb Bush put it in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson for Esquire, "The swing voters are Hispanic voters in most of the swing states. And the Republicans have done a poor job, sending signals that Hispanics aren't wanted in our party. Which is bizarre." The same attitudes appear to have carried over to Jeb Bush's meetings with the task force. When asked about Bush, task force director Edward Alden said, "He's dismayed that elements of his party have taken such a strong anti-immigrant stand."

Regardless of the partisan politics, there is a near-universal recognition that immigration reform is impossible as long as most Americans believe that the borders (and the gateway airports) are more Open Sesame than secure. In a recent interview with me, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledged that the voters need to know "that we have operational control of the borders." The CFR report argues that this challenging goal is well on its way to being achieved: "The United States has made impressive strides in the past several years in strengthening its border enforcement measures." The number of Border Patrol agents, for example, has almost doubled since the last years of the Clinton administration. And as Alden, a senior fellow at the CFR, pointed out, "What we know anecdotally is that the fees that smugglers – coyotes – charge are way up."

In politics, of course, perceptions are reality -- regardless of reality. And if the dominant perception – spread by TV pundits and talk-radio hosts – is that America's security and economy are being ravaged by "out-of-control borders," then immigration reform is as likely as making Esperanto the national language. So as the congressional debate on immigration heats up in the fall, it will be intriguing to see how often Jeb Bush's plane touches down in Washington and how visible the former Florida governor is on Capitol Hill.