MANCHESTER, N.H.--- Immigration is expected to be an issue at the GOP presidential debate Tuesday night. It comes as the Senate this week is wrestling with a series of amendments to a major immigration bill soon to come to a vote.
Last year, critics on the left and the right were not so unhappy that the GOP-controlled Congress ended up doing nothing, since the legislation in play had elements neither side could live with. The climate is different this time around. Democrats now run Congress and are more or less united on the need to legalize the status of the millions of illegal immigrants who live in the U.S.
The issue is tearing the GOP apart. White House hopeful Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a key architect of the immigration bill, jabbed rival former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for not supporting the legislation.
McCain coined a new term, "silent amnesty" in taking aim at critics. It's an apt phrase. Because doing nothing lets the illegal immigrants stay in the country without doing anything to resolve their status. Framing the matter as silent amnesty is a very clever -- even brilliant way -- to defuse the argument used against McCain and others that the immigration bill grants amnesty. Words always matter. Amnesty is a red-meat hot button word and McCain needs to neutralize the vocabulary.
McCain, in a speech Monday said "Pandering for votes on this issue, while offering no solution to the problem, amounts to doing nothing. And doing nothing is silent amnesty."
The immigration bill being worked on in the Senate has thousands of details -- each one could change the life of an individual. And by the way....giving illegal immigrants here a break...is a form of amnesty. But a process to legalize illegal status -- full of hoops to get through -- is a long way from the blanket amnesty that anti-immigration advocates talk about.
Click below for a memo from the Senate Democratic leadership on pending amendments to the immigration bill.
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