Source: guardian
The US Congress is poised to vote this week on a bill that offers more than 2 million young illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, a move that will re-open the toxic debate on the issue ahead of the November mid-term elections.
The vote could come as early as tomorrow.
The bill is being introduced by the Democratic Senate leader, Harry Reid, and is facing widespread opposition from Republicans.
The Democratic party sees it as a no-lose situation. If the Republicans vote against, the Democrats hope this will cement their position as the party of the Latinos.
A Republican senator, John Cornyn, accused the Democrats of being “cynical and transparently political” rather than interested in genuine immigration reform.
The Republicans and Democrats have over the last decade been battling to win over Latinos, the fastest-growing demographic group in the US, one that could provide a decisive electoral advantage this century. President George W Bush courted them but the Republican party over the past few years has adopted a harsher approach to illegal immigration in states such as Arizona and is in danger of alienating the Latino vote.
The bill would allow young illegal immigrants to become citizens if they have completed a university or college education or served two years in the military.
Barack Obama promised during this presidential run that he would introduce legislation to provide the estimated 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants, most of them Latinos, with a route to citizenship but has so far failed to deliver. This measure, even if the chances of passage appear at this stage to be slim, would go part way towards achieving that.
Obama, responding to anger from Latino leaders this month at his failure to deliver on his pledge, urged them to get out and vote in November, and portrayed the Democrats as their friends and the Republicans as their enemies. He told Latinos not to forget “who is standing with you, and who is standing against you”.
The Pentagon, struggling to maintain levels of recruitment in the face of troop demands in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, is among the backers of the bill.
