I hear 200,000 people came to the National Mall in Washington D.C. on Sunday.
But the three top stories on Google News were
Health care vote results: bill passes, Obama to sign it into law.
Day 4 Look Back: MSU, Purdue display plenty of pride in wins
Huffington Post proclaimed "This is what change looks like" and then went on to declare "Wall-to-Wall Health Care."
So what happens when 200,000 people come to the National Mall and no one seems to notice much?
It proves as Marcelo Ballvé says in an interview on New America Now this is not about "a final push for immigration reform." This rally is more about angry activists who still feel they are on the outside despite White House meetings with the likes of Ali Noorani of National Immigration Forum.
It's about national groups feeling the frustration of a congress that seems to be mired in molasses. So America's Voice decides to make public its "internal" poll that shows the Latino swing vote might sit out the 2010 election if immigration reform doesn't come back on the agenda. And it puts the Democratic leadership (never known for great acts of boldness) in a quandary - who can they afford to piss off before the 2010 elections. Immigration reform seems to be the perennial damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don't political hot potato.
But hopefully if it does get back on the agenda (if the Schumer-Graham bipartisan bill is indeed a starting point) immigration advocates and leaders in Congress will have taken some pointers from the health care odyssey.
That bill was supposed to be an issue that broad segments of Americans agreed on - health care costs were spiraling, insurance companies held Americans hostage. The stumbling block was supposed to be the insurance companies and big Pharma. The White House tried to make backroom deals with them so that they wouldn't hold up health care reform and in its smugness the White House failed to communicate with the larger public about what it was doing. The pushback was hard, vicious, fanned by teabaggers and Glenn Becks and it almost derailed health care reform. Finally it limped into being, shielded by arcane procedural rules, its champions exhausted and mumbling promises of 'let's pass now and fix later', a bill so moth-eaten by compromise that I am not quite sure what actually passed.
At this point it was not about health care reform passing in as much as it was about a Democrat president, a Democrat Senate and a Democrat Congress demonstrating that it could actually pass something more than wind.
Which is to say immigration advocates had better beware. The immigration bill (if it really comes to passage) will be battered beyond recognition if its advocates in Congress don't sell it aggressively to the public at large. They had better leave themselves plenty of wiggle room in the bill they start with if they have any hopes of passing a bill they can live with.
If they can't, like health care reform, they may reach the same impasse - a bill so enforcement-heavy and weighed down it will no longer be any real reform and it may lose the very people whose support it hoped to get, cover far fewer people than it intended, and leave the job less than half-done. And in the end be just a symbolic bill that manages to piss off everybody.
And it will certainly piss off the 200,000 in the National Mall. That's just those who made it to D.C. The country seems to be on the march everywhere.
There is the March for California's Future happening right now up San Joaquin Valley in California.
There are the Trail of Dreams marchers - undocumented students going through KKK country from Florida to Washington D.C.
2500 marched in D.C. to protest the seventh anniversary of the Iraq and Afghan War.
And there were the caravans upon caravans that descended on Washington D.C. this weekend to demonstrate that thousands promised change, are getting restless for change. They may not get the coverage a gaggle of Tea Party protests can muster but they are happening.
Washington may not have the guts to deliver that change. It's just a march they will say.
But 80 years ago, there was another march in March. That one was led by Gandhi protesting the unjust salt tax. The Salt March to Dandi helped bring down the mighty British Empire.
Beware the marches of March.
Follow Sandip Roy on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sandip.sf
Residency in the U.S. is not a right; driving is not a right even for Americans.
We had a one time amnesty in 1986 and it has resulted in more illegal aliens.
Poor Americans are hurt the most; why cann't the liberal comfortable class see this?
Was Barbra Jordan a racist/nazi/xenophob for saying: Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.
Every undocumented immigrant steals identities? US citizens and residents dont steal identities?Are you kidding me?
Do you even know what 'amnesty' means? Since you obviously dont own a dictionary let me help you out:
Amnesty: an act of forgiveness for past offenses, esp. to a class of persons as a whole.
How is admitting breaking the law, paying fines and back taxes, going through a SECURITY check, getting deported if you have committed a felony and then getting at the very back of the line amnesty?
If you believe that either party will sanction the deportation of 10-12 million people, you seriously live in a tea party fantasy land.
The ENTIRE system is broken and needs fixing.
If you think it is impossible to deport that number of people, just how will the US do a background check for all those people? Which do you think is more difficult? To simply put people on an airplane, or to do a thorough background check for millions of people who may or may not use their right names? If you are serious about doing such a check, then you must insist that the ONLY forms of ID that will be accepted are passports or Mexican voter ID cards. Those are the ONLY documents that Mexico will accept, and I can see no reason why our standards should be less than theirs. Mexico does NOT accept the Matricular consular since they simply take the word of the applicant, and do no checking.
The Chamber of Commerce Republicans want the status quo so they can have plenty of illegals to exploit for their cheap labor.
On the other hand their base is full of racists that want to round up all the illegals and ship them back to Mexico.
It is the poor black, brown and white lesser educated folks who are being hurt the most by the illegals. They know it and they do NOT like it one bit. It is only their employers who love having the illegals here. THEY are the ones who make all the noise and who give campaign donations to keep them coming.
If Republicans can do that, no other serious legislation will get anywhere. America has proven willing to focus very intently on a single broad issue for a very long time, and there are plenty of ways to keep that conversation going. If Republicans push for a full repeal of the bill, they will lose control of the narrative and Democrats will have a small window of opportunity to pass things before campaign season prevents serious legislative action. If Republicans push for limited repeals of specific provisions of the bill though, there will be plenty of issues to discuss to keep viewers interested, and there will be plenty of conflict to provide for good entertainment, and your televisions will continue to be flooded with talk about the specific points of contention about health care in America.