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Memo to Rosario Marin: Republicans Killed the Last Immigration Reform

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Yesterday on Univision, Maria Elena Salinas interviewed Republican Rosario Marin, a former US Treasurer, about her thoughts on prospective immigration reform.  Marin was fairly pessimistic, expressing concerns that Obama is using immigration as a political issue rather than really being serious about pushing it through (a favorite argument of Ted Cruz) and worrying that union demands would sink immigration.   Basically, she’s ready to pin the blame on anyone else but her own party in case legislative negotiations go south.  But she wants “with all my heart” to believe that immigration legislation still has a chance.

Here’s the translated interview with her and Salinas:

Salinas: You heard the President, what do you think? What jumped out at you?

Marin: Well look, unfortunately for me, I see that the President—instead of really supporting the senators and congressmen (working on it)—is more concerned with making it look like he’s interested in immigration reform than in actually working for its success.

Salinas: President Obama said he’s optimistic that he’ll have an immigration reform bill at the beginning of April, do you share that optimism?

Marin: Maria Elena, I want to, with all my heart. We have been working on this for such a long time and I’m very worried that appearances will deceive us. I think we need to have something very clear. The reality is that the unions have opposed immigration reform in the past. He [Obama] was with the unions when he has a senator and he was the one to advance some amendments that prevented immigration reform from happening. I’m optimistic, but very cautiously.

Salinas: But right now the unions are in favor of immigration reform.

Marin: Look I was actually reading yesterday and today a few things in the media that say there are several problems within the unions in getting them to back what is called the guest worker program and that’s a very difficult point (of contention), it’s what led to failure last time, and I hope this time – if the President is serious – I think he should work with the unions to achieve that consensus.

Here’s the funny thing—Marin was a member of the Bush administration, which pushed for an immigration reform package in 2005-2007 (though given, that was after Marin’s time as Treasurer).  When that attempt at immigration reform failed, though, guess what—it wasn’t because the President was secretly trying to use it as a wedge issue, or because the unions were demanding too much.  It was because loud, hostile, and anti-immigrant conservatives called into Congress and killed the bill—see here, here, here, here, and here for the pretty much consensus opinion that that is how the last immigration push died.

So really, if Marin wants so badly to believe that immigration reform can pass, she should help make sure that it will—not by worrying about people who have already expressed concrete support for immigration reform—but by working on the people who have a proven track record of derailing the process.

Watch the original full interview with Maria Elena Salinas and Rosario Marin here: