Exaggerations, Spin About Immigration at SOTU From Both Sides

By Peggy Sands Orchowski

There were a lot of exaggerations and spin at the State of the Union address last night in the U.S. Capitol.  From all sides. 

The President spoke a message of bipartisanship in front of a very live audience of all of America's most important elected and appointed officials, journalists and the listening public. Republicans stood and cheered after most of his statements. But Democrats reacted consistently with stony faces, sitting on their hands, and outrage and spin of their own afterwards in post-speech interviews. Especially about immigration.

As a Congressional correspondent who has covered immigration in Congress for the past ten years and written two books about how immigration laws have evolved in the United States, I noted with special interest how Republicans and Democrats reacted to the immigration reform sections of President Trump's speech.  They couldn't have been more different.

Democrats were mostly silent except for a few audible groans when President presented his four pillars of immigration reform, what he called "a bipartisan down-the-middle compromise approach".  The four pillars are: a path to citizenship (granting a "green card" Permanent Legal Residency visa) for almost 2 million DREAMERS, a "fully secure" border including a wall and the end of the "catch and release" procedure, a merit-based legal immigration system, and the end of a 1965 "family reunification" priority known as "chain migration".   Republicans in the House and visitor galleries cheered each pillar.

Few Democrats reacted when the President pointed out the parents whose children had been murdered by MS13 gang members and stated passionately "320 million hearts are breaking for you". He also presented ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agent "CJ" Martinez who had tracked down more than 200 MS13 gang members in New Jersey.  The President promised that loop holes will be closed in the Unaccompanied Alien Minors program that enabled many teenage gang members to enter the country.

"Of course gangs do horrible things" said Congressional Hispanic Caucus leader Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) in an interview to this reporter after the speech.  "But you'd think the MS13 was the only gang in America the way the President talked.  He made it sound as if immigrants are violent criminals".

Gutierrez was equally outraged when the President said "a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives." 

"That's just wrong," Gutierrez exploded.  "Family reunification is limited to the nuclear family – the immigrant's brothers and sisters.  Even grammy can't come in.  And it can take up to 40 years".

For the record, Gutierrez is also exaggerating. The "immigrant sponsor" has to be a naturalized citizen – hence no longer an immigrant.  And unlike any country in the world, the U.S. 1965 law allows them to sponsor their adult siblings with their families, not just the minor children and spouses of the initially naturalized citizen which is a basic principal of most immigration laws everywhere.  And yes, some countries (like Mexico, India and China) are so oversubscribed with green card applicants (no country can have more than 7 percent of the total a year) that a waiting list for family members can be up to 40 years long.

The President also described DREAMERS incorrectly repeating misinformation by advocates that has become almost a mantra.  He said DREAMERS were "illegal immigrants brought here by their parents at a young age".    In fact the DACA order and every DREAM Act proposal defines them as individuals who "came in the United States before the age of 16".  They could have come in legally or illegally, alone or trafficked, with a gang or on the top of a train or assaulted a wall.   In fact several of the DREAMERs who were guests of Democratic Senators and Congressmen such as Sen. Dick Durbin (IL) and Representatives Cory Booker (NJ) and John Conyers (MI) came in on legal tourist and foreign student visa and overstayed them.

Spin of course can be expected from advocates, politicians and certainly from media pundits. It's also the MO of business people (such as President Trump) who often start negotiations with a "strong" position from which to negotiate down. 

But spin, exaggerations and misinformation should be noted and called out by the serious news journalists.  They should know the basic facts.  Misinformation hurts Americans and Congress' ability to understand contentious complicated and difficult political issues like immigration and to come to fair bipartisan agreements about them.

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Peggy (Margaret) Sands Orchowski Ph.D.  porchowski@hotmail.com

Credentialed Congressional Correspondent, Washington DC Hispanic Outlook Magazine  

Senior Correspondent,  The Georgetowner  (Peggy Sands)   peggy@georgetowner.com  

Author: October 2015: "The Law That Changed The Face of America: The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965" (Rowman & Littlefield);  September 2008  "Immigration and the American Dream: Battling the Political Hype and Hysteria" (Rowman & Littlefield)