WILL GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION EDGE OUT IMMIGRATION REFORM?
The Newtown gun massacre is, without a doubt a tremendous tragedy, and consequently politicians are already calling for tighter gun control laws. This, of course, was not on the policy agenda coming out of the 2012 presidential election.
But now that all eyes are focused upon the senseless murder of 20 children at the hands of a man with a semiautomatic assault rifle, whether countless thousands of children will have the chance to live a secure life as a result of immigration reform may be moved to the back burner. At least, that’s what some are saying.
Immigration reform in this country is an iffy subject anyway, and whether the next four years would yield any tangible legal results was, despite promises from the president and other politicos, far from certain. Now that there’s a more black-and-white legislative issue that’s hopped in front of immigration reform that’s been wallowing in legislative limbo for decades, it would be politically easy to just ignore it.
For example.
Senator Diane Feinstein has already pledged to introduce gun control legislation next year. It’s been less than a week since the tragedy in Newtown. Immigration reform has seen hundreds of deaths, thousands of affected families, and countless tragedies in the decades it has wallowed as an unresolved American political issue. I’ve never seen any politicos rush to introduce legislation to fix it so quickly.
I personally don’t think Congress can afford to ignore immigration. One reason is that several recently elected officials ran in part on immigration reform. Secondly, the ever-coveted “Latino vote” rests largely upon immigration reform in the minds of many of these politicians.
However, I think we can all agree that making sure gun control doesn’t supersede immigration reform as a legislative priority is just one more reason why Latinos and the general public is going to have to apply pressure to our representatives and remind them that they can do more than one thing at a time.
Copyright 2012 by Sara Inés Calderón