In his run-up to being elected America’s 44th president, Barack Obama promised to take up the matter of immigration reform in his first term.

Don’t bet on it.

With economic issues front and center, it’s understandable that the president-elect will immeadiately face what most Americans would consider to be more pressing matters, including a deep recession and the loss of hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs as key industries struggle for viability. The fire and fervor of the great U.S. immigration debate of 2006 seems a bit of a distant memory now that American voters have mostly dispatched the hard right rhetoric from the usual suspects.

The House Republicans whose blood boiled over Mexican immigrants two years ago are still an angry bunch, but they have largely been marginalized over the last two national elections. Democrats have built larger majorities in the House and Senate. It appears that Senate Dems will have 58 seats in getting ever closer to the sort of numbers that can overcome the sort of legislative blockade that sunk immigration reform efforts in 2006.

Bashing Latinos and immigrants is not a winning ticket for the beleaguered Republicans, but don’t expect many of their leaders to get it. They can’t help themselves, it would seem, and even after losing a presidential election in which the Democratic candidate gained nearly 70 percent of the Hispanic vote, right-tilting GOPers will keep at it, clinging to their ideology above all else on issues such as immigration.

This was in evidence again this week after Obama announced that he was nominating Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano to be the nation’s third Homeland Security secretary. Napolitano’s credentials for the job are solid beyond being a border governor who has had to address difficult immigration issues. She was also Arizona’s attorney general, and before that was the U.S. attorney for Arizona, where she was one of the federal government’s chief prosecutors in the Southwest.

Napolitano has largely been a centrist on the immigration issue, raising the ire of both the political right and left in her state, where this issue has a particular volatility. As governor, Napolitano spoke out forcefully against the construction of a border fence, and also vetoed legislation that would allow police officers to arrest undocumented immigrants. She also worked to bring humanitarian help to immigrants who get lost and wander the Arizona desert while entering the country illegally.

On the flip side, Napolitano signed into law legislation that would fine, and possibly shut down businesses in Arizona that hire undocumented immigrants. It’s a varied and pragmatic view on a contentious issue. Gov. Napolitano has been tough on illegal immigration while also showing compassion toward immigrants.

That’s not good enough for Lamar Smith, a Texas congressman, and one of the more stridently anti-immigrant Republicans in the House. After Obama’s selection of Napolitano this week, Smith told USA Today that the Arizona governor is “nothing more than a sheep in wolf’s clothing” when it comes to immigration enforcement.

To the dismay of Smith and others of his political ilk, Obama’s nomination of Napolitano to be Homeland Security secretary increases the odds the president-elect will take up some form of immigration reform in his first term given the governor’s knowledge of the issue, and her background from the Southwest.

Unlike her predecessors in Homeland Security - both of whom are from the Northeast and know little if anything about immigration and the border - Napolitano’s nomination should bring some reassurance to regions like the Rio Grande Valley. A region like ours understands the need for border security while also  believing that the needs of business and commerce should be taken into consideration, along with the value of contributions made by immigrants.

Napolitano was firm in her support of the immigration reform bill that failed two years, which attempted to balance border security with the need to deal realistically with the 10-million plus undocumented immigrants now living in the United States. One of her key determinations will be whether to continue with the construction of costly border fences in a time of limited resources when those dollars could be better used to hire and train more Border Patrol agents and other federal law enforcement officers.

Napolitano’s scope as Homeland Security secretary will go far beyond border and immigration issues. Still, it will be good to finally have a leader in Homeland Security of her stature and knowledge who will view the border as more than a place to put up barriers when a more balanced and varied view is needed to address some of the more difficult issues of our day.

- R.D. Cavazos

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