<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/davelawrence8/6791949310/sizes/m/in/photostream/" target="_blank">Flickr/davelawrence8</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


When it comes to immigration policy, Mitt Romney has decided that discretion is the better part of valor. In his speech before Latino business leaders at the Chamber of Commerce Wednesday, Romney decided to avoid the whole immigration issue altogether, HuffPo’s Elise Foley reports:

Romney’s 20-minute speech mentioned higher education, District of Columbia schools and teachers’ unions. Even though the address at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was specifically for members of the Latino Coalition, he barely discussed Hispanic-specific education issues — other than a quick mention of former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush’s efforts to raise reading scores of Hispanic students — and entirely skipped undocumented students, whom a majority of Latino voters believe should get U.S. help in gaining legal status.

So what happened? Romney, after trashing his primary opponents from the right on immigration, and endorsing an immigration policy of “attrition through enforcement,” attempted an awkward pivot to the center once the primary was over. Romney promised to “study” a plan offered by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) that would grant legal status to undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children. That didn’t go over well with the anti-immigrant wing of the Republican Party, most notably Romney adviser Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who helped write many of the nation’s harshest state immigration laws. As the Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent reported, Kobach called the Rubio plan “amnesty,” even though it wouldn’t actually grant citizenship to anyone.

“I’d absolutely reject any proposal that would give a path to legal status for illegal aliens en masse,” Kobach said. “That is what amnesty is. I do not expect [Romney] to propose or embrace amnesty.”

Romney spent an awkward few days trying to distance himself from Kobach, demoting him from adviser to “supporter.” Kobach nonchalantly told Think Progress that yes, he was still advising Romney on immigration, regardless of what the campaign itself was saying.

Although I’m sure immigration will come up again, the whole saga illustrates that the anti-immigrant wing of the Republican Party has Romney over a barrel. Romney can’t move to the center because he simply cannot defy them, they won’t let him.

Although Rubio, who spoke after Romney, mentioned his “DREAMless” Act in his speech Wednesday, an actual legislative proposal has been elusive. Romney’s retreat on this issue really opens up an opportunity for the Obama administration, which is reportedly skittish about Rubio’s plan. There’s really no reason for Obama not to endorse it if and when it comes out. Not only will it make it impossible for Romney to take the opportunity Rubio is offering him, but there’s little chance the legislation will pass because the GOP’s anti-immigrant base wants to deport every single undocumented immigrant in America, making the Rubio plan a non-starter. Politically, the worst case scenario for the administration is that the proposal passes, and a group of undocumented immigrants who are American in all but name and are here through no fault of their own avoid being kicked out of the country. So it’s not just politically smart—it’s the right thing to do.

Better yet for the administration, the people who voted for Obama expecting comprehensive immigration reform rather than more than a million deportations would have an actual reason to vote for Obama other than fear of a Republican president. Obama has a large lead over Romney among Latinos, but the ratio of the Latino vote that Obama gets is less important than the number of Latinos who would have voted Obama but stay home out of disappointment with the administration.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate