Gillibrand’s Immigration Views Draw Fire
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. re-enacts the swearing-in of Kirsten E. Gillibrand. Her husband, Jonathan, held the Bible.
During her one term in the House of Representatives, from a largely rural, traditionally Republican district, Kirsten E. Gillibrand was on safe political ground adopting a tough stance against illegal immigration.
Ms. Gillibrand, a Democrat, opposed any sort of amnesty for illegal immigrants, supported deputizing local law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration laws, spoke out against Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s proposal to allow illegal immigrants to have driver’s licenses and sought to make English the official language of the United States.
But since her appointment by Gov. David A. Paterson last week to fill the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ms. Gillibrand has found herself besieged by immigrant advocates and Democratic colleagues who have cast her as out of step with a majority of the state, with its big cities and sprawling immigrant enclaves.
Immediately following the announcement, liberal blogs and New York’s ethnic media lit up with complaints about Ms. Gillibrand’s positions. A group of Hispanic state lawmakers have threatened to support a primary challenger to Ms. Gillibrand, who must stand for election next year. And El Diario La Prensa, the Spanish-language daily, described her as “a disappointing choice.”
“If Gov. David Paterson wanted to deliver a slap to immigrant New Yorkers, he effectively did so with his appointment yesterday of Representative Kirsten Gillibrand,” El Diario said in an editorial on Saturday.
The flap over Ms. Gillibrand’s immigration record underscores the political challenges she faces as she broadens her political constituency from an overwhelmingly white district along New York’s eastern fringe to the entire state. Census data show that about 21 percent of the state’s population and 36 percent of New York City’s residents were born overseas, said Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College.
Gun-control advocates, including Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a Democrat from Nassau County, have also taken sharp issue with Ms. Gillibrand’s opposition to some gun control measures, with Ms. McCarthy threatening to run against her.
Ms. Gillibrand, who was sworn in as senator on Tuesday, has tried to allay some of the concerns, reaching out to Hispanic elected officials and pledging to reconsider some of her positions. Outside a reception in Washington following her swearing-in ceremony, she acknowledged that she had an obligation to revisit some of these questions as she now “represents the whole state.”
Assemblyman Peter M. Rivera, a Bronx Democrat, received a phone call from Ms. Gillibrand over the weekend after he said that her immigration record “borders on xenophobia.” And when Mr. Rivera and some other Hispanic state lawmakers scheduled a press conference for Tuesday morning to announce plans to meet with “potential candidates to unseat her” in 2010, an aide to Ms. Gillibrand called the organizers and offered to have “a sit-down,” the assemblyman said.
The press conference was postponed for scheduling reasons, Mr. Rivera said.
“She did not answer the issues issue-by-issue,” Mr. Rivera said of his conversation with Ms. Gillibrand on Saturday. “All she said was that she needs to work with a broader group of individuals.”
Still, Ms. Gillibrand has not backed down from her long-standing opposition to “amnesty” for illegal immigrants, which has left some immigrant advocates wondering whether she would support any law that would establish a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
In Washington on Tuesday, the new senator elaborated, saying, “I don’t support amnesty because I don’t think it will work.” She added that the amnesty bill was “fatally flawed.”
She said, for example, that “the guest worker program all but guaranteed illegal immigration.” But she suggested one alternative might be to allow consecutive five-year work visas, with the ability to apply for permanent residency at the end.
Ms. Gillibrand also said that she would support finding ways to speed up the reunification of immigrant families; some of them can wait as long as eight years.
“They should get rid of the backlog,” she told reporters in the Russell Senate Office Building.
In the House, where she served from 2007 until this week, Ms. Gillibrand frequently voted more conservatively on immigration issues than a majority of her Democratic colleagues.
In votes that pitted her against a vast majority of her fellow Democrats, she sided in favor of bills that required adult occupants of affordable housing to provide proof of residency and that penalized cities that protected undocumented immigrants, such as New York.
She also diverged from the overwhelming majority of Democratic representatives by voting in favor of bills that increased financing for law enforcement against illegal immigrants and that protected businesses requiring their employees to speak English on the job.
She is a co-sponsor of the SAVE Act, widely disparaged by immigrant advocates, which aims to crack down on illegal immigration with more border guards and surveillance technology, accelerated deportations and a mandatory program requiring employers to verify the immigration status of employees.
Americans for Better Immigration, a lobbying group that pushes for tighter immigration enforcement and a reduction in immigration, has given her a grade of B, placing her among the group’s 22 top-rated Democratic House members.
Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, has not yet spoken with Ms. Gillibrand since her appointment. But Ms. Hong said, “The quicker and the clearer she distances herself from some of the positions that are associated with anti-immigrant extremists, the better signal it is for immigrant communities.”
“Her past positions are pretty much out of line with the rest of New York State and the president and with her predecessor,” Ms. Hong said.
Theodore Ruthizer, an immigration lawyer in New York and past president and general counsel of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that he has spoken at length with Ms. Gillibrand on a number of occasions and believes she will “modify” her positions on immigration in her new job.
“I think she needs to be educated, frankly,” he said. “It was a low priority for her.”
Michael Powell contributed reporting from Washington.
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