Anti-immigration credo gains support

By JAMES P. PINKERTON

LONG ISLAND NEWSDAY

It’s now clear who will be nominated for president next year: Eliot Spitzer and Tom Tancredo. OK, I exaggerate a bit. But please hear me out.

Neither New York’s Democratic governor, who is not seeking the presidency, nor Colorado’s Republican congressman, who is, will end up on a major-party 2008 ballot. But their differing ideas on immigration are certain to get a thorough election-year airing.

Indeed, immigration, connected as it is to concerns about national identity and sovereignty, could well be the defining issue. So let’s take a closer look at each man’s views, and what they reveal about their respective parties.

More than anyone else, Tancredo has put immigration on the front burner. In the course of tirelessly stumping across the country — most recently as a no-hope presidential candidate — he has riled up citizens on the need for better border security, English only, federal standards for driver’s-license documents, and preserving and perpetuating the “American identity.” He has been called every name in the book, but he has persevered. Today his ideas are winning, even if he himself has been marginalized.

That’s the fate of many polarizing figures, those who carry an issue from the fringe to the mainstream. In that sense, Tancredo resembles Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Frenchman who campaigned against immigration in France for decades — until finally, in the last few years, after the immigrant riots, Le Pen’s platform became the conventional wisdom.

Now the new president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, elected on a tough law-and-order platform — he famously referred to the mostly Muslim rioters as “scum” — has sought to implement Le Pen’s restrictionist agenda. On Tuesday, for example, the national legislature adopted a bill that would mandate DNA tests to prevent fraudulent “family reunification.”

This measure outraged the left, of course. The International Herald Tribune denounced it as “pseudoscientific bigotry.” But, as cops know, there’s nothing unscientific, or bigoted, about DNA testing.

Politically correct

Meanwhile, here at home, nobody calls Spitzer a racist. He is so politically correct, it kills you — or, more precisely, it will kill him politically. Spitzer has put forth a plan for issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants that is opposed by 72 percent of New Yorkers. Earlier this week, the state Senate, including nearly one-third of its Democrats, voted by a ratio of more than 2-1 to reject the Spitzer plan.

But one might ask: How is Spitzer’s view different from that of most national Democrats? Answer: It’s not.

One key indicator was the immigration bill earlier this year. Supporters — including, bizarrely, George W. Bush — claimed that the bill offered “earned citizenship,” while opponents, singing from Tancredo’s hymnal, derided the bill as “amnesty.” A heated debate ensued, and on June 28, the U.S. Senate voted 53-46 to reject the legislation.

Yet the immigration bill didn’t lose among Democrats. Senate Democrats voted 34-16 in favor; included among the “ayes” were Hillary Rodham Clinton and all the Senate Democrats running for president. So who can blame Spitzer, sitting atop one of the bluest of blue states, for assuming that his plan for illegal immigrants would be popular, at least among Empire State Democrats?

But unfortunately for Spitzer and the bulk of his party, the politics of immigration are changing rapidly, nationwide, in a Tancredo-esque direction. Last week, The Washington Post released a poll showing that three-fourths of Virginians count illegal immigration as an “important” issue, and they don’t mean that in a good way.

Republicans, realizing that Tancredo is pointing them to the political promised land, are now trekking in a winning direction — to the land of milk and high walls.

A case in point is former Sen. Fred Thompson, one of the GOP’s ’08 hopefuls. Once a dove on immigration, he’s now a hawk: He wants to ban federal aid to states and localities that harbor illegals.

And so the battle of ideas is joined. But something tells me that Tancredo is happier about the tide of events than Spitzer.

X Pinkerton is a columnist for Newsday.