Playing Both Sides of the Fence

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The President is expected to equate border security with national security, connecting the issue to that part of his image that until recently had been robust. He will also be setting up a potentially favorable issue for Republicans in '06. "This is the kind of issue that the Silent Majority talks about in private but doesn't mention to pollsters," says Frank Luntz, the political strategist who is advising G.O.P. lawmakers on immigration. "It has the same kind of feel that affirmative action had in the late '60s and early '70s. There is a deep-seated anger toward the government for not stopping this."

But since "the government" in this case is run by the Republican Party, the immigration issue also holds some peril for Bush. If his big effort on immigration ends in a stalemate--which is quite possible, since House Republicans lean more conservative on this issue and Senate Republicans, more liberal--Bush would yet again look weak. So far, he has not been able to bridge his party's business leaders, who need a steady supply of workers willing to do hard labor, and its cultural conservatives, who fear that something essential about the American character is vanishing under the crosscurrents of multilingualism and demographic change and ethnic pluralism.

And then, of course, there are the Democrats, who--as with Iraq--have so far been unable to capitalize on the immigration issue because of their inability to articulate a coherent alternative philosophy. Reached on Cape Cod, Mass., the day after Thanksgiving, Kennedy sounded not so different from pro-business Republicans. "We have found out that just more fences, more border guards--you know, chasing after gardeners out there" doesn't work, he said. "We've increased [border enforcement] by $20 billion in the last 10 years, and the problem is worse today." But the Democrats have had no more success than the Republicans at divining a policy that will reassure both Latino voters and those who worry that illegal immigrants are unfairly taking jobs and social services. Democrats want a guest-worker program, but Kennedy's bill would still require that workers who want legal status, in addition to passing background checks and taking English and civics lessons, pay a $2,000 fine plus back taxes, punitive measures opposed by some immigrant advocates on the left.

For their part, several Republican strategists said they are desperate to avoid irritating Latinos, many of whom are socially conservative and thus natural Republicans. Fighting for re-election in 1994, California Governor Pete Wilson, a Republican, ran an ad keening that illegal immigrants "just keep coming." Wilson won, but Republicans in California say the damage to the party's standing among Hispanics persists to this day. Bush is already giving up some symbolic territory. When he announced his guest-worker plan in 2004, he did so before an audience of 200 Latinos. By contrast, his speech this week on "border security and immigration reform" was scheduled for an Air Force base in Arizona. He planned to meet with border patrollers in Texas the next day.