Peter Siavelis, director of Wake Forest University’s Latin American and Latino Studies program, is an expert on Latino immigration to the United States. Siavelis, co-editor of Getting Immigration Right: What Every American Needs to Know, is available to comment on the immigration debate and the likelihood Congress will pass new immigration legislation.
Siavelis says:
“I am less optimistic than most about comprehensive immigration reform during this Congress. Reform will fare well in the Senate, but not in the House. Senators tend to have a wider political base and Republican Senators have gotten the message from the last election that they face demographic suicide if they don't respond to the demands of Latinos.
House Representatives in swing districts without significant Latino populations are much more worried about a primary challenge from the right that can unseat them than the possibility that Latinos will turn out in large numbers for Democratic challengers. They will come out swinging hard against reform and could either derail it, or cause it to be watered down to such an extent that it fails to satisfy anyone.”
Will the Boston Marathon bombings affect immigration reform? “If this is a Timothy McVeigh-type of thing, a homegrown attack, then immigration reform will probably not be affected at all,” Siavelis says. “But if it does turn out to be a foreigner and the immigration status of the foreigner is somehow questioned, this could throw a wrench in the entire thing and bring back some of the xenophobia that derailed the process in 2001, when we were closer than ever to a comprehensive reform.”
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