Political Genius!

When Congress resumes debate this week of the Defense Authorization Bill, H.R. 1585, they will also debate a new amendment to the bill – the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act was part of the lofty Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR). It appears as though Congress, realizing a comprehensive immigration bill would be nearly impossible to pass, has decided to break up CIR and attach pieces of it to other important legislation likely to win approval. This is a bit of pure genius from a political standpoint. Both parties believe they will need the Hispanic vote in future years but neither party wants to offend immigrants who came to the United States legally, nor do they want to offend American citizens opposed to a perceived amnesty-like path to legalization. Breaking up CIR allows the politician to tell his Hispanic constituents that he supported immigration reform as evidenced by his vote for in favor of H.R. 1585. Likewise, this same politician will declare to those who opposed immigration reform that he did as well and was forced to vote for the DREAM Act because he didn’t want to let our troops down who were serving in harm’s way. Genius!