Immigrants Hold Climate Change Hostage In US Senate

Posted on 26. Apr, 2010 by Ross in Government Policy, North America

Just when the road seemed clear for America to finally hop on board the global clean energy agenda, domestic xenophobic politics has created a new crisis for climate change’s lethargic legislationary laggards.

10 months after the US Congress passed the Clean Energy and Security Act, the tri-partisan Senate coalition of Democrat John Kerry, Republican Lindsey Graham and independent Joseph Lieberman had finally worked their climate change bill into shape and were due to launch it today, only for Graham to pull out over the weekend. So why after investing so much political capital into the bill would the Republican senator suddenly threaten to jump ship?

The climate change bill had already been forced to take a back seat behind Obama’s flagship healthcare reform, with the White House choosing to put little effort into supporting climate change legislation despite both reform areas being a large part of Obama’s election campaign. Now Obama has begun to prioritise something else over climate change in an effort to boost votes ahead of this year’s Senate elections.

That something else is immigration. Arizona raised the stakes on Saturday by passing the strictest and most draconian state immigration laws in the country, requiring everyone to carry identity documents and giving the police the authority to stop and detain anybody suspected of being an illegal immigrant. The new law has caused uproar, with Hispanic communities fearing intimidation and harassment regardless of their citizenship, and Obama weighed in to the debate to declare a forthcoming federal overhaul of immigration laws.

Therein lies the new big hurdle for the climate change bill. Leader of the Senate Harry Reid is soon to be seeking re-election in his Nevada seat where immigration is a hot political topic, and sees fast action on an immigration bill as integral to his own election bid. With the value of Hispanic votes in the forthcoming election crucial, many democrats will be sorely tempted to chase those votes with a national debate on immigration rather than sacrifice votes on a risky climate change bill.

Senator Graham has put the climate change bill on hold at the prospect of it being leap-frogged in the queue by immigration, noting to his bill co-authors:

I want to bring to your attention what appears to be a decision by the Obama Administration and Senate Democratic leadership to move immigration instead of energy. Unless their plan substantially changes this weekend, I will be unable to move forward on energy independence legislation at this time. I will not allow our hard work to be rolled out in a manner that has no chance of success…Moving forward on immigration — in this hurried, panicked manner — is nothing more than a cynical political ploy.

How this plays out is of crucial importance to international climate negotiations. Having played a critical role in the destruction of a meaningful Copenhagen accord as part of their efforts to stall for more time to pass climate change legislation, the US has the power to obliterate progress at further climate negotiations this year if they have deliberately stalled the bill even longer. The process of accepting international commitments to carbon reduction targets which was the original hope of Copenhagen has already started tumbling downwards: further inaction would see international efforts hurtle off a precipice which could take a decade to climb back out of.

Image by laszlo-photo @ Flickr