Immigration Politics – Cal 2013 – Starter Packet

Immigration: Aff

2AC Won’t Pass

Won’t pass –

A. GOP will link it to health care – kills the deal

Nakamura 6-17

[David. Lead Political Analyst for the Wash Post. “Republicans trying to use health-care law to derail Obama’s immigration reform efforts” The Washington Post, 6/17/13 ln//GBS-JV]

After spending years unsuccessfully trying to overturn “Obamacare,” Republicans are now attempting to use President Obama’s landmark health-care law to derail his top second-term initiative — a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s immigration system.¶ Conservatives in both chambers of Congress are insisting on measures that would expand the denial of public health benefits to the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants beyond limits set in a comprehensive bill pending in the Senate.¶ In the House, Republicans are considering proposals that would deny publicly subsidized emergency care to illegal immigrants and force them to purchase private health insurance plans, without access to federal subsidies, as a requirement for earning permanent legal residency.¶ In the Senate, Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has endorsed an amendment to a comprehensive immigration bill he helped negotiate that would deny health benefits to immigrants for five years after they become legal residents — two years after they would be eligible to become citizens under the legislation.¶ Some Republicans, eager to capi­tal­ize on public uncertainty about the complexities of the Affordable Care Act, are casting the immigration legislation as a similarly unwieldy law.¶ The immigration bill “reminds me of a more recent piece of legislation: Obamacare,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said on the Senate floor last week. “It grants broad new powers to the same executive branch that today is mired in scandal for incompetence and abuse of power. Total cost estimates are in the trillions. And rather than fix our current immigration problems, the bill makes many of them worse.”¶ The insertion of the politics of health-care reform — one of the most polarizing issues in Washington — into the immigration debate threatens to split open the emerging bipartisan coalitions that are crucial to passing a bill.

B. Won’t get through the House

Birnbaum 6-12

[Jeremy. Politics for the Washington Times. “Sensational Season for Scandal: When a Ship Runs Aground, it’s the Captain’s Fault” The Washington Times, 6/12/13 ln//GBS-JV]

What’s left among major initiatives is immigration reform. However, that faces a tough slog in the Senate and a possibly impossible trajectory in the House of Representatives. Its leading Republican sponsor, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, has already signaled that he might bail on the plan he helped craft if changes — including guaranteed bolstering of border security — aren’t added as the bill moves through the Senate.

Ext. Won’t Pass the House

PC can’t get immigration through the House – the Obama-Boehner relationship is beyond repair

Roarty ‘13

[Alex. Politics for the National Journal and the Atlantic. “There's Reason to Be Optimistic About Congress—Seriously” The Atlantic, 2/21/13 ln//GBS-JV]

Maintaining that momentum in the House won't be easy, and it could require Obama's personal leadership. Getting Boehner to take such a perilous route could depend in large part on successful cajoling from the president. And on this subject -- the relationships among Washington's top leaders -- discussion of a deal being cut becomes sharply pessimistic.¶ The two men's relationship is described as personally friendly, but professionally it has produced nothing but dysfunction. What began with the debt-limit negotiations of 2011 culminated in last year's failed fiscal-cliff talks. Boehner has vowed never to negotiate with Obama one-on-one again.¶ Washington has had a litany of successful speaker-president relationships through the years. Think Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton -- or Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill in the 1980s. But Obama and Boehner haven't been able to find a workable formula. "There is zero trust between Boehner and the president, and trust is what's necessary to get deals done," said Mike Hacker, a former Democratic leadership aide. "It's not just mutual interest."¶ The belief among the GOP that the president won't act on good faith in the current negotiations is further straining the broken relationship between the two men. Rather than trying to cut a deal with Republicans, Obama might work only toward defeating them in next year's midterms, to try to re­-take the House. At that point, assuming his party retains the Senate, congressional Democrats would be poised to pass legislation as they did during Obama's first two years in office. "In the matrix they're crafting to take back the House, there's no function for bipartisanship," said Mike Ference, a former aide to Cantor.¶ Obama's recent actions haven't put GOP worries to rest. His inaugural speech was long on urging the country to adopt a progressive agenda but short on emphasizing the need for compromise. After completely ignoring House Democrats in 2012, the president announced plans to hold eight fundraisers for them this cycle. Obama, in the eyes of the GOP, seems less interested in working with Republicans than in rolling over them.¶ The atrophying of strong relationships on Capitol Hill is only one of many reasons polarization is so entrenched. Certainly the proliferation of powerful political organizations, such as the free-market Club for Growth, and the influence of partisan media have also played a role. In the bigger picture, the decades-long popular sorting out between the parties and their ideology has probably mattered most: Conservative Southern Democrats and liberal Northeastern Republicans are now nearly extinct. But another suggested cause of increased polarization, gerrymandered districts, remains hotly disputed in the political-science community. Research shows that members' voting behavior changes only slightly, if at all, with the partisan makeup of their district; lawmakers support whatever their party decides, according to this argument.

2AC PC

Capital isn’t key to immigration reform

Hirsh ‘13

Michael Hirsh is chief correspondent for National Journal. He also contributes to 2012 Decoded. Hirsh previously served as the senior editor and national economics correspondent for Newsweek, based in its Washington bureau. He was also Newsweek’s Washington web editor and authored a weekly column for Newsweek.com. (“There’s No Such Thing as Political Capital”, National Journal, 2/7/2013, http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207)

Meanwhile, the Republican members of the Senate’s so-called Gang of Eight are pushing hard for a new spirit of compromise on immigration reform, a sharp change after an election year in which the GOP standard-bearer declared he would make life so miserable for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. that they would “self-deport.” But this turnaround has very little to do with Obama’s personal influence—his political mandate, as it were. It has almost entirely to do with just two numbers: 71 and 27. That’s 71 percent for Obama, 27 percent for Mitt Romney, the breakdown of the Hispanic vote in the 2012 presidential election. Obama drove home his advantage by giving a speech on immigration reform on Jan. 29 at a Hispanic-dominated high school in Nevada, a swing state he won by a surprising 8 percentage points in November. But the movement on immigration has mainly come out of the Republican Party’s recent introspection, and the realization by its more thoughtful members, such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, that without such a shift the party may be facing demographic death in a country where the 2010 census showed, for the first time, that white births have fallen into the minority. It’s got nothing to do with Obama’s political capital or, indeed, Obama at all.

If the plan causes a fight it solves the DA

Dickerson ‘13

(John, Chief Political Correspondent at the Slate, Political Director of CBS News, Covered Politics for Time Magazine for 12 Years, Previous White House Correspondent, Go for the Throat!, http://tinyurl.com/b7zvv4d)

On Monday, President Obama will preside over the grand reopening of his administration. It would be altogether fitting if he stepped to the microphone, looked down the mall, and let out a sigh: so many people expecting so much from a government that appears capable of so little. A second inaugural suggests new beginnings, but this one is being bookended by dead-end debates. Gridlock over the fiscal cliff preceded it and gridlock over the debt limit, sequester, and budget will follow. After the election, the same people are in power in all the branches of government and they don't get along. There's no indication that the president's clashes with House Republicans will end soon.¶ Inaugural speeches are supposed to be huge and stirring. Presidents haul our heroes onstage, from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. George W. Bush brought the Liberty Bell. They use history to make greatness and achievements seem like something you can just take down from the shelf. Americans are not stuck in the rut of the day.¶ But this might be too much for Obama’s second inaugural address: After the last four years, how do you call the nation and its elected representatives to common action while standing on the steps of a building where collective action goes to die? That bipartisan bag of tricks has been tried and it didn’t work. People don’t believe it. Congress' approval rating is 14 percent, the lowest in history. In a December Gallup poll, 77 percent of those asked said the way Washington works is doing “serious harm” to the country.¶ The challenge for President Obama’s speech is the challenge of his second term: how to be great when the environment stinks. Enhancing the president’s legacy requires something more than simply the clever application of predictable stratagems. Washington’s partisan rancor, the size of the problems facing government, and the limited amount of time before Obama is a lame duck all point to a single conclusion: The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat.¶ President Obama could, of course, resign himself to tending to the achievements of his first term. He'd make sure health care reform is implemented, nurse the economy back to health, and put the military on a new footing after two wars. But he's more ambitious than that. He ran for president as a one-term senator with no executive experience. In his first term, he pushed for the biggest overhaul of health care possible because, as he told his aides, he wanted to make history. He may already have made it. There's no question that he is already a president of consequence. But there's no sign he's content to ride out the second half of the game in the Barcalounger. He is approaching gun control, climate change, and immigration with wide and excited eyes. He's not going for caretaker.¶ How should the president proceed then, if he wants to be bold? The Barack Obama of the first administration might have approached the task by finding some Republicans to deal with and then start agreeing to some of their demands in hope that he would win some of their votes. It's the traditional approach. Perhaps he could add a good deal more schmoozing with lawmakers, too. ¶ That's the old way. He has abandoned that. He doesn't think it will work and he doesn't have the time. As Obama explained in his last press conference, he thinks the Republicans are dead set on opposing him. They cannot be unchained by schmoozing. Even if Obama were wrong about Republican intransigence, other constraints will limit the chance for cooperation. Republican lawmakers worried about primary challenges in 2014 are not going to be willing partners. He probably has at most 18 months before people start dropping the lame-duck label in close proximity to his name. ¶ Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize. Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents. Through a series of clarifying fights over controversial issues, he can force Republicans to either side with their coalition's most extreme elements or cause a rift in the party that will leave it, at least temporarily, in disarray. ¶ This theory of political transformation rests on the weaponization (and slight bastardization) of the work by Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek. Skowronek has written extensively about what distinguishes transformational presidents from caretaker presidents. In order for a president to be transformational, the old order has to fall as the orthodoxies that kept it in power exhaust themselves. Obama's gambit in 2009 was to build a new post-partisan consensus. That didn't work, but by exploiting the weaknesses of today’s Republican Party, Obama has an opportunity to hasten the demise of the old order by increasing the political cost of having the GOP coalition defined by Second Amendment absolutists, climate science deniers, supporters of “self-deportation” and the pure no-tax wing.

AT//Rubio Link

Rubio’ll walk on CIR

Cogan 4-2

[M. Politics for The New Republic. “Why Rubio Will Probably Walk The senator may be too risk-averse to strike a deal on immigration” The New Republic, 4/2/13 http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112814/marco-rubio-and-immigration-reform-why-hes-likely-walk?utm_source=The+New+Republic&utm_campaign=c6bd8a4b25-TNR_Daily_040313&utm_medium=email# //GBS-JV]

That's not universally seen as a positive. I didn't get into it much in my piece, but as McKay Coppins noted in his fun take on the South Florida Republican community, even some of Rubio's political allies down there have been frustrated that so far his great stores of political goodwill haven't been put to much use. And getting Republicans on board for this bill is going to require a willingness to take big risks. It's going to expend a lot of political capital, and will almost certainly mean making enemies among members of his own party (see, for example, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, also a Cuban-American GOP Senator, who says he has "deep concerns" about the deal now and is unlikely to support it in the future.) Rubio's past political behavior doesn't suggest he'd be the type to take the plunge on this, especially with all of the untold opportunities for right-wing radio to turn a small but very vocal minority against reform. ¶ Of course, he's only been in office for 27 months—that's plenty of time still for him to surprise us—but this line from Politico's report should give immigration-reform hopefuls serious pause: "Either way, in the end, Rubio's view has evolved from believing that he needed passage in order to be able to display a substantive accomplishment, to believing he will get credit for trying so aggressively." In other words, it's a lot easier to walk away, basically unscathed, and portray himself as the reasonable guy who genuinely wanted reform but couldn't negotiate with the unreasonable Democrats, than it is to stick around and actually get the bill done.

CIR Fails – General

Immigration reform’s not key to anything

Hill et al ‘10

[Laura. Research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. She has been a research associate at The SPHERE Institute and a National Institute of Aging postdoctoral fellow. She holds a Ph.D. in demography from the University of California, Berkeley. And Magnus Lofstrom is a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. He also holds appointments as a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) at the University of Bonn and as a research associate at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He has also served as a researcher and has taught at IZA and at the University of California, Irvine. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, San Diego. AND*** Joseph M. Hayes is a research associate at the Public Policy Institute of California, where he studies migration and population change throughout the state. He has studied migration in the Central Valley, the families of newly arrived immigrants to California, and the state’s prison population. He holds an M.S. in agricultural economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. 2010, “Immigrant Legalization Assessing the Labor Market Effects,” Public Policy Institute of California, www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_410LHR.pdf#ppic//GBS-JV]

Legalization of the estimated 12 million unauthorized immigrants residing in the United States would lead to both economic benefits and costs for the nation. Some arguments for comprehensive immigration reform suggest that legalizing immigrants will help end the current recession. This seems unlikely. Our research suggests that earlier findings from the IRCA era may overstate anticipated earnings from a new reform, at least in the short run. ¶ We do expect occupational mobility to improve for formerly unauthorized immigrants with higher skill levels. When compared to the continuously legal, their occupational earnings growth was about 9 to 10 percent. These higher-skill unauthorized immigrants are more likely to be overstayers than crossers, but unauthorized immigrants with college degrees are found in both groups. Lower-skill unauthorized immigrants are not likely to experience strong occupational mobility as a result of a legalization program (although their occupational earnings grow over time in the United States). It will be important that any new legislation give legalized immigrants incentives to improve their skills, especially in English. ¶ The majority of studies investigating the effect of legalizing immigrants on natives’ earnings suggest that the effects are slightly negative for workers with low skill levels. Since we find no improvements in occupational mobility or wages for the lowest skill levels in the short run, we do not expect that legalizing immigrants would place any increased pressure on the wages of low-skill natives or low-skill legal immigrants. Tax revenues may increase, although many unauthorized immigrants already file federal and state tax returns and pay sales and payroll taxes. We found that about 90 percent of unauthorized immigrants filed federal tax returns in the year before gaining LPR status. We expect that increases in tax revenues resulting from increased earnings among the formerly unauthorized would be modest.

AT//Economy IL

Immigration reform’s not key to the economy

Castelletti et al 10

[Bárbara, economist at the OECD Development Centre, , Jeff Dayton-Johnson, head of the OECD development Centre, and Ángel Melguizo, economist at the OECD Development Centre, “Migration in Latin America: Answering old questions with new data,” 3/19/10, http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/4764]

Most research on migration assumes that workers are employed in activities that correspond to their skill level. In practice workers may be employed in sectors characterised by skill requirements different from their educational or training background. In particular, migrants may be overqualified for the work they do. As Mattoo et al. (2005) show, this is the case for Mexicans, Central Americans and Andean university-educated migrants working in the US. Despite their tertiary degrees, these groups rarely hold highly skilled jobs. Worse, they may even be at the lower rungs of the skill ladder; 44% of tertiary-educated Mexicans migrants in the US are working in unskilled jobs. This equilibrium represents a lose-lose-lose situation. The home country loses human capital (brain drain), the host country and the migrant him/herself are not fully employed (brain waste), and the low skilled workers in host countries (both earlier migrants and natives) can be pushed out of the market (given that they compete with these higher-educated workers for jobs). To illustrate this phenomenon for South-South flows, we follow OECD (2007) and compare the education level (primary, secondary and tertiary) of migrants in Argentina, Costa Rica and Venezuela with their category of job qualification (low, intermediate and high skilled). Figure 3 shows the share of over-qualified migrants and native workers, residing in different countries, and the comparison between foreign-born and natives. Over-qualification rates vary sharply among countries, ranging from 5% in Costa Rica and Venezuela to 14% in Argentina. While lower than in the US, Canada and Spain where the over-qualification rates are above 15%, these results point to a high degree of over-qualification among immigrants compared to the native-born in Latin American countries. While there are possible omitted variables, it is likely that some part of the brain waste observed is because of the non-recognition of foreign qualifications or excessive requalification requirements for foreigners.

It wrecks growth

Rector ‘7

[Robert. Senior Research Fellow in Domestic Policy Studies at Heritage. And Christine Kim. “Executive Summary: The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to the US Taxpayer” Heritage Special Report #14, 5/22/7 http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/05/the-fiscal-cost-of-low-skill-immigrants-to-the-us-taxpayer //GBS-JV]

In FY 2004, low-skill immigrant households received $30,160 per household in immediate benefits and services (direct benefits, means-tested benefits, education, and population-based services). In general, low-skill immigrant households received about $10,000 more in government benefits than did the average U.S. household, largely because of the higher level of means-tested welfare benefits received by low-skill immigrant households.¶ In contrast, low-skill immigrant households pay less in taxes than do other households. On average, low-skill immigrant households paid only $10,573 in taxes in FY 2004. Thus, low-skill immigrant households received nearly three dollars in immediate benefits and services for each dollar in taxes paid.¶ A household's net fiscal deficit equals the cost of benefits and services received minus taxes paid. When the costs of direct and means-tested benefits, education, and population-based services are counted, the average low-skill household had a fiscal deficit of $19,588 (expenditures of $30,160 minus $10,573 in taxes).¶ At $19,588, the average annual fiscal deficit for low-skill immigrant households was nearly twice the amount of taxes paid. In order for the average low-skill household to be fiscally solvent (taxes paid equaling immediate benefits received), it would be necessary to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, all means-tested welfare, and to cut expenditures on public education roughly in half.¶ American families often are net tax payers during working age and net tax takers (benefits exceeding taxes) during retirement. This is not the case for low-skill immigrant households; in these households benefits substantially exceed taxes at every age level. Consequently, low-skill immigrant households impose substantial long-term costs on the U.S. taxpayer. Assuming an average adult life span of 60 years for each head of household, the average lifetime costs to the taxpayer will be nearly $1.2 million for each low-skill household for immediate benefits received minus all taxes paid.¶ As noted, in 2004, there were 4.5 million low-skill immigrant households. With an average net fiscal deficit of $19,588 per household, the total annual fiscal deficit for all of these households together equaled $89.1 billion (the deficit of $19,588 per household times 4.54 million low-skill immigrant households). Over the next ten years, the net cost (benefits minus taxes) to the taxpayer of low-skill immigrant households will approach $1 trillion.¶ Current immigrants (both legal and illegal) have very low education levels relative to the non-immigrant U.S. population. At least 50 percent and perhaps 60 percent of illegal immigrant adults lack a high school degree.[1] Among legal immigrants the situation is better, but a quarter still lack a high school diploma. Overall, a third of immigrant households are headed by individuals without a high school degree. By contrast, only 9 percent of non-immigrant adults lack a high school degree. The current immigrant population thus contains a disproportionate share of poorly educated individuals. These individuals will tend to have low wages, pay little in taxes, and receive above average levels of government benefits and services.¶ Recent waves of immigrants are disproportionately low skilled because of two factors. For years, the U.S. has had a permissive policy concerning illegal immigration: the 2,000-mile border with Mexico has remained porous and the law prohibiting the hiring of illegal immigrants has not been enforced. This encourages a disproportionate inflow of low-skill immigrants because few college-educated workers are likely to be willing to undertake the risks and hardships associated with crossing the southwest U.S. deserts illegally. Second, the legal immigration system gives priority to "family reunification" and kinship ties rather than skills; this focus also significantly contributes to the inflow of low-skill immigrants into the U.S.¶ Understanding of the fiscal consequences of low-skill immigration is impeded by a lack of understanding of the scope of government financial redistribution within U.S. society. It is a common misperception that the only individuals who are fiscally dependent (receiving more in benefits than they pay in taxes) are welfare recipients who perform little or no work, and that as long as an individual works regularly he must be a net tax producer (paying more in taxes than his family receives in benefits).¶ In reality, the present welfare system is designed primarily to provide financial support to low-income working families. Moreover, welfare is only a modest part of the overall system of financial redistribution operated by the government. Current government policies provide extensive free or heavily subsidized aid to low-skill families (both immigrant and non-immigrant) through welfare, Social Security, Medicare, public education, and many other services. At the same time, government requires these families to pay little in taxes. This very expensive assistance to the least advantaged American families has become accepted as our mutual responsibility for one another, but it is fiscally unsustainable to apply this system of lavish income redistribution to an inflow of millions of poorly educated immigrants.¶ Finally, it is sometimes argued that since higher-skill immigrants are a net fiscal plus for the U.S. taxpayers, while low-skill immigrants are a net loss, the two cancel each other out and therefore no problem exists. This is like a stockbroker advising a client to buy two stocks, one that will make money and another that will lose money. Obviously, it would be better to purchase only the stock that will be profitable and avoid the money-losing stock entirely. Similarly, low-skill immigrants increase poverty in the U.S. and impose a burden on taxpayers that should be avoided.¶ U.S. immigration policy should encourage high-skill immigration and strictly limit low-skill immigration. In general, government policy should limit immigration to those who will be net fiscal contributors, avoiding those who will increase poverty and impose new costs on overburdened U.S. taxpayers.

AT//Latin America IL

Plan’s a bigger internal link to relations than immigration reform – their author concedes there are a bunch of alt causes that only the plan could conceivably resolve

Shifter 2012

(Michael, President of the Sol M. Linowitz Forum Intern-American Dialogue (Remaking the Relationship: The United States and Latin America, An Inter-American Dialogue Policy Report, April, http://www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/IAD2012PolicyReportFINAL.pdf)

In part as a result of these shifts, US-Latin American relations have grown more distant . The quality and intensity of ties have diminished . Most countries of the region view the United States as less and less relevant to their needs—and with declining capacity to propose and carry out strategies to deal with the issues that most concern them .In the main, hemispheric relations are amicable . Open conflict is rare and, happily, the sharp antagonisms that marred relations in the past have subsided . But the US-Latin America relationship would profit from more vitality and direction . Shared interests are not pursued as vigorously as they should be, and opportunities for more fruitful engagement are being missed . Well developed ideas for reversing these disappointing trends are scarce. Some enduring problems stand squarely in the way of partnership and effective cooperation . The inability of Washington to reform its broken immigration system is a constant source of friction between the United States and nearly every other country in the Americas . Yet US officials rarely refer to immigration as a foreign policy issue . Domestic policy debates on this issue disregard the United States’ hemispheric agenda as well as the interests of other nations .Another chronic irritant is US drug policy, which most Latin Americans now believe makes their drug and crime problems worse . Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while visiting Mexico, acknowledged that US anti-drug programs have not worked . Yet, despite growing calls and pressure from the region, the United States has shown little interest in exploring alternative approaches .Similarly, Washington’s more than half-century embargo on Cuba, as well as other elements of United States’ Cuba policy, is strongly opposed by all other countries in the hemisphere . Indeed, the US position on these troublesome issues—immigration, drug policy, and Cuba—has set Washington against the consensus view of the hemisphere’s other 34 governments .These issues stand as obstacles to further cooperation in the Americas . The United States and the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean need to resolve them in order to build more productive partnerships.

Immigration reform’s not key

Oppenheimer ‘13

[Andres. International Desk for the Miami Herald. http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/19/3189668/obama-may-help-latin-america-without.html 1/19/13 //GBS-JV]

Latin America is probably one of the farthest things from President Barack Obama’s mind, but there are several — largely domestic — reasons why, during his second term, he may become the best U.S. president for the region in recent times.¶ Let’s start with the obvious: Obama doesn’t have a history of special interest in Latin America.¶ When I interviewed him for the first time in 2007, he had never set foot in the region. And during his first term, unlike most of his predecessors, he didn’t come up with any grand plan for Latin America — granted, he had to focus on resurrecting the U.S. economy — and instead stated that his top foreign policy priority is Asia’s Pacific rim.¶ Still, he may end up being great for Latin America, for reasons that have very little to do with Latin America.¶ First, there are better-than-even chances that — emboldened by his 71-27 victory margin among Latino voters in the 2012 elections — Obama will be able to pass an immigration reform plan that could legalize many of the estimated 11 million undocumented residents in the United States.¶ That would be a godsend to the economies of Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Colombia and Ecuador. Most experts agree that once undocumented workers get legal status, they get better jobs and can send more money to their relatives back home.¶ According to Manuel Orozco, author of the new book Migrant Remittances and Development in the Global Economy, the $73 billion that U.S.-based undocumented workers send to Latin America annually is likely to increase by 18 percent if their immigration status is legalized. That would mean an extra influx of about $13 billion in 2014, Orozco told me.¶ Second, Obama’s new proposals to ban assault weapons in the aftermath of the most recent massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., would help reduce violence in several Latin American countries that are flooded with weapons smuggled from the United States.¶ Mexico, where more than 60,000 people have died in drug-related violence over the past six years, says 83 percent of the weapons seized in its territory are brought illegally from the United States. The Mexican government, alongside others, has demanded that Washington do something to ban sales of semi-automatic weapons and impose stricter controls on gun purchases.¶ Many Latin American officials say that, now that Obama can’t run for a new term, he will be freer to push harder for gun-control laws.¶ Third, the recent approval of marijuana legalization measures in Colorado and Washington state is likely to allow Obama greater flexibility in drug-related talks with Latin America.¶ Over the past year, the presidents of Guatemala, Uruguay, Mexico and Colombia, among others, have called for a serious debate on drug legalization with Washington. They say that four decades of drug interdiction programs have failed to curb trafficking, and that it’s time to divert more funds to education, drug prevention and rehabilitation.¶ Fourth, Obama’s stated intention to negotiate a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, while mostly geared at Asian countries, would also benefit Latin American countries on the Pacific coast, including Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile.¶ The TPP could become the world’s biggest trade deal if Japan — the world’s third largest economy — decides to join.¶ Fifth, Obama’s likely appointment of Sen. John Kerry to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State is expected to lead Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. — a supporter of greater U.S. cooperation with Latin America — to replace Kerry as chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. That’s good news to countries that rely on U.S. assistance.

AT//Border Security IL

Border’s sufficiently strong now

Saenz 2/13

[Arlette Saenz – Reporter for ABC News “Border Security No Barrier to Immigration Reform, Napolitano Says” http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/02/border-security-no-barrier-to-immigration-reform-napolitano-says/, 2/13/2013]

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano insisted that the U.S. border has “never been stronger” and dismissed the notion that border security is the first initiative that must be addressed before all other immigration reform is put in place.¶ “I often hear the argument that before reform can move forward we must first secure our borders, but too often the ‘border security first’ refrain simply serves as an excuse for failing to address the underlying problems. It also ignores the significant progress and efforts that we have undertaken over the past four years,” Napolitano said in testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s first hearing on immigration reform Wednesday. “Our borders have, in fact, never been stronger.”

AT//India Relations IL

Immigration reform’s worse for relations – if they’re right about the influx of high-skilled labor, India would perceive it as an American strategy for brain drain

KPMG ‘11

[KPMG International Consulting. “Unlocking the Potential: The Indian Aerospace and Defense Sector” http://www.kpmg.com/IN/en/IssuesAndInsights/ThoughtLeadership/KPMG_Indian_Defence_Industry.pdf]

No substitute to trained manpower The backbone of the defence sector as is true for most skills led manufacturing industries are its human resource and in turn, the skills and technical abilities of the workforce. Estimates suggest that almost 50 percent of the workforce in this sector is constituted by engineers and management graduates. Countries like France have developed highly regarded specialist schools like Institut Superier de l’Aeronautique et de l’Espace (ISAE) and Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile (ENAC) in Toulouse and Ecole Nationale Superieure de Mecnique et d’Aerotechnique (ENSMA) in Poitiers to train engineers for this fi eld. As the French industry grew, substantial investments were made in the form of professional federations such as Groupement des Industries Francaises Aeronautiques et Spatiales (GIFAS) to promote the interests of this sector 10 . With a pool of 134000 specialist employees, the French Aerospace and Defence industry today is clearly a European leader 11 . Whilst one could also reason that since Aerospace and Defence being a very niche sector with specific skills requirement, it is first important to develop training grounds for the manpower so that they are ‘sector ready’ for application of these skills. On the other hand, it can also be argued that once the sector comes out of infancy that one would see the setting up of such training schools/innovation hubs. Both arguments may be correct in their own respects and a logical way ahead would be that they both need to function together so that one complements the other. As one of the world’s top 10 military markets, India’s increasing importance to defence contractors has already been established. As Indian Aerospace and Defence is on the path to growth and development through technology and business from both the domestic private sector and the global integrators, there are valuable lessons that can be learnt from the experience of contemporaries across the globe, who in the past have outdone their potential in this sector. The global Aerospace and Defence evolution clearly suggests that it requires a synchronised working of the government’s will and policy coupled with technology and R&D, proven manpower and manufacturing abilities for this sector to create sustainable growth and economic contribution in a country.

More evidence – CIR would rob India’s worker base

KPMG ‘11

[KPMG International Consulting. “Unlocking the Potential: The Indian Aerospace and Defense Sector” http://www.kpmg.com/IN/en/IssuesAndInsights/ThoughtLeadership/KPMG_Indian_Defence_Industry.pdf]

D: Availability of skilled manpower An important enabler for any successful industry is enriched manpower base. It becomes even more indispensable in Aerospace and Defence owing to its dependence on highly skilled human resources. India has the largest pool of English speaking scientists and engineers in the world. With over 380 universities, 11,200 colleges and 1,500 research institutions, India has the second largest pool of scientists and engineers in the world. Every year, over 2.5 million graduates are added to the workforce, including 300,000 engineers and 150,000 IT professionals. 28 India is ranked third globally, after USA and China, in terms of absolute number of students enrolled in higher education institutions at 11.2 million students. 29 Mastery over quantitative concepts coupled with English proficiency has resulted in a skill set that has enabled India to reap the benefits of the current international demand for IT. According to industry feedback, the research and training institutes in India are insufficient as compared to the number of students. Moreover, the training provided in these institutes is not uniform across the country. The government needs to invest more into the sector for the development of professionals so as to leverage the potential of the human resources in an effective manner.

AT//Agriculture IL

Squo solves

Resurreccion ‘13

[Lyn. Science Editor for Business Mirror. “Crop Biotechnology: A Continuing Success Globally” The Business Mirror, 2/23/13 ]

CROP biotechnology has been achieving “continuing success” globally as the number of farmers who use it and the farms planted to biotech crops are increasing, recording 17.3 million farmers who planted the crops in 170.3 hectares in 28 countries in 2012, Dr. Clive James, chairman of the board of directors of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), said on Thursday. James said the trend in crop biotechnology is in favor of developing countries, which compose 20 of the 28 countries that adopt the technology. Another significant development, he said, was that for the first time developing countries planted more biotech crops in 2012, with 52 percent, against the developing countries’ 48 percent. They registered equal production in 2011. This, James said, “was contrary to the perception of critics that biotech crops are only for the developed countries and would not be adopted by developing countries.” The increase in biotech farms in 2012 recorded a growth rate of 6 percent, or 10.3 million hectares more from 160 million hectares in 2011, James told a select group of journalists at a hotel in Makati City when he announced the results of the ISAAA report “Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops for 2012.” James said this development was “remarkable” because it recorded a 100-fold increase in biotech crop hectarage in the 17th year of its adoption—from 1.7 million hectares in 1996, when it was first commercialized. “It also reflects the confidence of farmers in the technology. They make their decision on the second year [on the technology they use] based on the performance of the first year,” he said. He noted that of the 17.3 million farmers, 15.5 million, or 90 percent, are resource-poor, thereby helping farmers increase their income. He said biotech contributed to economic gains of $100 billion from 1996 to 2011, half of this was from reduced production cost, such as less pesticide sprays, less plowing and fewer labor, and the other half was from increased production per hectare. Increased production, James said, resulted in increase in farmers’ income and “more money in their pockets.”

Some degree of famine’s inevitable

Harsch ‘3

(Ernest, Africa Recovery, May, http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol17no1/171food1.htm)

To many around the world, the image of famine in Africa is closely linked to drought and, in some countries, war. But even when there is no drought or other acute crisis, about 200 million Africans suffer from chronic hunger, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director-General Jacques Diouf noted during a recent visit to Senegal. The reasons are multiple: low farm productivity, grinding poverty, the ravages of HIV/AIDS and unstable domestic and international agricultural markets.¶ "Food insecurity in Africa has structural causes," Mr. Annan emphasizes. "Most African farmers cultivate small plots of land that do not produce enough to meet the needs of their families. The problem is compounded by the farmers' lack of bargaining power and lack of access to land, finance and technology." Because small-scale farmers and other rural Africans have so few food stocks and little income, a period of drought can quickly trigger famine conditions. This is especially true for rural women, who are among the poorest of the poor and who account for the bulk of food production in Africa.

It doesn’t cause war

Barnett ‘2k

(Jon, Australian Research Council Fellow in the School of Social and Environmental Enquiry at the University of Melbourne, Review of International Studies 26, April)

The ways in which population growth leads to environmental degradation are reasonably well known. However, the particular ways in which this leads to conflict are difficult to prove. In the absence of proof there is a negative style of argumentation, and there are blanket assertions and abrogations; for example: ‘the relationship is rarely causative in a direct fashion’, but ‘we may surmise that conflict would not arise so readily, nor would it prove so acute, if the associated factor of population growth were occurring at a more manageable rate’.38 It is possible though, that rather than inducing warfare, overpopulation and famine reduce the capacity of a people to wage war. Indeed, it is less the case that famines in Africa in recent decades have produced ‘first rate breeding grounds for conflict’; the more important, pressing, and avoidable product is widespread malnutrition and large loss of life.