Rep. Luis Gutierrez used his time on the House floor Thursday to reintroduce Republicans to Latino voters, and did it in a way that was at once humorous but also sent a message that they can no longer afford to duck the very real issue of immigration reform.

I enjoyed this part, in particular:

I’ve been trying to introduce my colleagues in the Republican Party to real Latinos and immigrants for some time. I’ve worked on bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bills and stayed at the table to work out a compromise even when all the Republicans left the table.

But the Republican Party seemed much more interested in the imaginary Latinos they tried to use as a wedge issue. So they crafted messages aimed at the very few Americans who are not offended when Republicans talk about criminals, gang-bangers, freeloaders, and law-breakers whenever they talk about Latinos and immigrants.

The party nominated a Presidential candidate who carried around a to-do list of creative ways to offend Latinos. Call for more than 10 million people and their families to “self-deport?” Check. Celebrate the extreme Arizona approach to immigration laws? Check. Threaten to veto the DREAM Act and let hundreds of thousands of young people who have applied for Deferred Action fear for their future? Check.

Stand with other Republicans and beg for their endorsement when they have called for electrified fencing to keep out immigrants because, quote "that works on livestock"? Check, check and check.

I believe Election Day was check-mate for the Republican Party’s extreme, unfair and intolerant anti-immigrant policies.

You have to watch to get the full impact of his sarcasm.

The GOP is in a difficult spot. On the one hand, they've got a party full of racists who are threatening secession because the black guy got re-elected. On the other, they're dealing with a demographic reality that threatens to make them irrelevant if they go with the racists and ignore everyone else.

Bobby Jindal is already posturing for his run in 2016, coming out hard against Mitt Romney's claim that Obama won because he gave "gifts" to students, women and minorities. Wednesday he spoke out against Romney's claims at a meeting of Republican governors, saying "[Republicans] have got to stop dividing the American voters. We need to go after 100 percent of the votes, not 53 percent."

Slow clap for Bobby, but I don't see him getting the GOP establishment very excited with those statements.

Here's a prediction: Immigration reform will be an item on the 2013 Congressional agenda, and if they actually manage to make any progress on it, there will be town hall meetings in the summer of 2013 that exceed the madness of 2009's health care town halls. The only good thing about this will be that the crazed nativists in this country will be exposed and named where they once may have hidden in the shadows.

Fox News will predictably fearmonger about the "illegals" and how awful it is that they might have a way to citizenship, Sean Hannity will "evolve" back to his usual hating, and the oligarchs will fund the whole thing.

With that prediction in mind, I would invite every voter who stepped up on November 6th to be ready to step up and be heard again, to be committed to fighting the right-wing hysteria that will inevitably appear at the mere mention of serious efforts on immigration reform.

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Bill O'Reilly cooked up another way to attack President Obama this week -- by suggesting that he was associating with racial radicals again, namely, the National Council of La Raza:

O'REILLY: But the president spoke to La Raza this week. La Raza, a pretty radicalized group. I think they're further left than you are. I mean, they don't like any kind of border security, they want amnesty for all the people here. They object to almost every kind of measure to control illegal immigration. And yet the president feels comfortable there. Do you think he's just posturing?

This is why O'Reilly enjoys about as much credibility among Latino viewers as Lou Dobbs -- which is to say, nearly zero. Because everyone who knows their way around the immigration scene is perfectly aware that NCLR is a very temperate, middle-of-the-road organization -- and in fact is frequently criticized by other Latino groups for being too safe and cautious, and for being corporate sellouts. (Your mileage may vary.)

Indeed, all O'Reilly and his crack staff would have had to do is visit NCLR's website to read this:

Unfortunately, NCLR has been called an “open-borders advocate” and the “illegal alien lobby” numerous times. NCLR has repeatedly recognized the right of the United States, as a sovereign nation, to control its borders. Moreover, NCLR has supported numerous specific measures to strengthen border enforcement, provided that such enforcement is conducted fairly, humanely, and in a nondiscriminatory fashion.

There are a whole bunch of falsehoods about NCLR -- beginning with their name -- that endure as right-wing myths. I bet O'Reilly has pretty much swallowed those whole, too.

This May 1st, immigrant communities and citizens alike will hit the streets to say no to Arizona's new "show me your papers law" and yes to real, federal action on immigration reform this year. Eighty cities across the country are gearing up for major rallies, marches, and protests tomorrow. Students who had come in from New York, Florida, and California to participate in the Washington protests led their own action in front of Governor Jan Brewer's DC office today. They chanted, "Arizona, Shame On You! Immigrants Are People, Too!"

Watch it:

Tomorrow's marches are a follow-up to the major March for America: Change Takes Courage, which drew over 200,000 people to the National Mall on March 21st. At that event, President Obama delivered a firm message promising he'd work on comprehensive immigration reform "this year." Now, with Arizona's new law driving already-desperate communities into action, we're likely to see events in Chicago, New York, and L.A. turn out tens of thousands of people.

At the DC event, 40 protesters will go so far as to risk arrest, practicing peaceful civil disobedience in the face of cynical Washington politics.

Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Community Change, writes today at Huffington Post:

Tomorrow, there will be over 80 demonstrations in favor of immigration reform across America. One of them will be in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House. There, some 40 dignitaries including a member of Congress, clergy, heads of organizations and community leaders will likely be arrested in acts of civil disobedience against unjust immigration enforcement and the political cowardice in addressing our broken immigration system. I will be one of those getting arrested.

I am willing to get arrested tomorrow because the massive deportations being undertaken by the Obama Administration are tearing apart families, separating children from their parents, risking the lives of disabled immigrants and vulnerable refugees, and spreading terror into our communities. I will be arrested because America needs to understand immigration reform is not merely a political issue; our broken system is a moral disaster unfolding in our nation. Civil disobedience is important at this point because it signals to our leaders that the current situation is so unjust and unsustainable that people are no longer willing to comply or be complicit in the injustices committed by our government.

Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who just announced that he intends to join in the civil disobedience, released this statement:

We have to keep the pressure on and let the President and Congress know we need immigration reform this year," the Congressman said Friday. "I am joining the rally in Washington because the effort to get immigration reform passed is escalating, the attacks on immigrants and immigration reform are escalating, and the Arizona law is a wake-up call that inaction at the federal level has huge consequences for communities, families, and individuals.

WHAT:   Rally for Immigration Reform

WHEN: Saturday May 1, at 2:00 p.m. ET (music program starts at 1:30 p.m.)

WHERE: Lafayette Square, (across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House)

In addition to civil disobedience, many May Day events will feature celebrities who are taking a stand against what happened in Arizona. Via Perez Hilton:

And if you're lucky enough to be in Los Angeles this weekend, go be a part of their march with guests like Gloria and Emilio Estefan also taking part!

It's not just a hispanic issue, it's one that affects everyone regardless of their background.

Last but not least, students who've walked 1,500 miles on what they are calling the "Trail of Dreams" will be a major part of the Washington, DC event. Watch their stories:

Find a protest near you.

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So, I have a question:

Since when was it any damn news anchor's business how good of a Catholic their guests are?

Last night, filling in for Bill O'Reilly on his Fox program, Laura Ingraham invited on Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois to talk about health-care reform and comprehensive immigration reform, Ingraham took a wild tack to go after Gutierrez: She questioned him on how good of a Catholic he was, because he had announced he was voting in favor of President Obama's health-care package.

Her reasoning was that the national Catholic Bishops' conference had announced that anyone voting in favor of the bill would not be a good Catholic. As Gutierrez tried to politely point out, this really is a church-state separation matter. Or has Ingraham forgotten the bad old days when it was pro forma for anti-Catholic bigots to accuse Catholic politicians of doing the bidding of the Vatican?

Maybe Ingraham should ask those nuns who defied the bishops just how good of Catholics they are. Hold out your wrists, young lady!

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Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the Illinois Democrat, kick-started the coming immigration debate this week by delivering a 10-point plan for immigration reform that looks like a solid progressive start:

Pathway to legalization for undocumented workers

Professional and effective border enforcement

Smart and humane interior enforcement

Protecting workers

Verification systems

Family unity as a cornerstone of our immigration system

Future flows of workers

AgJOBS

DREAM Act

Promoting immigrant integration

[Go read the details.]

Then he went on Lou Dobbs' CNN program to discuss the plan with an obviously skeptical Dobbs -- who, of course, had to whine about how he was being attacked as a racist, just for promoting an extremist agenda.

In the process, he makes clear just what the primary cry of the nativists in the upcoming debate will be: "Amnesty!"

DOBBS: Fundamental to the question becomes, is it every illegal immigrant, is it unconditional amnesty, and what will be the impact of that? And those are issues. Think about it, we're here in 2009, some left wing ethnocentric interest groups are calling for my firing from CNN because I'm quote unquote a racist. I could obtain purity in a moment if I would just simply embrace open borders and sponsor illegal immigration. That's the kind of distortion that is not helpful. The reality is, we have some basic questions that people are avoiding asking. And if I may, let me ask a couple and see how we go and go forward. One, should every illegal immigrant in this country receive amnesty?

Gutierrez, however, is up to the job, and gives a clear and sensible answer:

GUTIERREZ: I believe that every undocumented worker in this country who can come forward and show that they've violated no other law except the immigration law, which they used breaking the immigration law to arrive in this country, that's it. No other felony, no other criminal record. That they are sustentative, they got family, they've got a job, they've been working, and they're ready to prove that by bringing forward and going through a very rigorous background check, we should give them an opportunity. Does that mean they go directly to permanent residency and directly to citizenship? No, we have to earn that too. But I think we can give them a program of five, six years which they continue to work, pay taxes, learn English, civics, become fully incorporated and at the end, if they fill the test, then we'll let them stay. But I want them to earn because in the interim period, many Americans say they're here and they're not paying their fair share. My program says, let them pay their fair share. Because we don't have political will, we don't have the programs to deport them, why don't we integrate them? There will be undesirable immigrants to this country, which we can weed out of the program very easily. We can have a set of rules.

It was a good start, if the objective is to make this a rational debate. And certainly, that's what progressives will want to do, because they have the facts and hard realities on their side.

Not that it means we'll actually get a rational debate. The Dobbses seem intent on ignoring the facts and whipping up people's fears, and we can expect that's what we'll get from the Fox crew as well.

Still, anticipating that, progressives need to find a common set of principles for advancing real immigration reform that works and makes valued citizens out of marginalized immigrants, brings them into the labor force (especially as union members) and taxpayers. Because there is going to be a lot of divisive crap thrown up in this debate, and lot of different and competing legislative plans. It will be important to keep our eyes on the prize.

To that end, Duke1676 at MigraMatters has put together a list of 25 principles for progressives in the immigration debate, including:

-- End policies that rely only on enforcement and deterrence as the sole means of regulating migration.

-- Address the root causes of immigration, and change US policy so that it doesn't foster and produce conditions that force hundreds of thousands of people each year to leave their countries of origin in order to simply survive.

-- Tie all current and future trade, military, and foreign aid agreements to not only worker protections both here and abroad, but also to their ability to foster economic progress and social justice for the working class and poor in sender nations.

-- Formulate a reasonable, humane, fair and practical method for determining the levels of immigration going forward. Establish an independent commission free from the pressures of political expediency and business interests to review all the pertinent data and set admission numbers based on labor, economic, social, and humanitarian needs.

-- Provide a path to legalization for all current undocumented immigrants living and working in the US, free of restrictions based on country of origin, economic status, education, length of residency, or any other “merit based” criteria.

-- Secure the borders by first ensuring that the vast majority of new immigrants have the ability and opportunity to legally enter the country through legal ports of entry by increasing the availability and equitable distribution of green cards. This would curtail the flow of migration through illegal channels. Only after that, should enforcement begin to ensure compliance, or any work to physically secure the border take place.

And finally, the bottom line:

Recognize that immigration is a vital part of maintaining a healthy and vibrant America. It is what has set this nation apart from all others since its inception. To close our borders to new immigrants is to cut off the lifeblood that has always made this nation grow and prosper.

These are good starts. Progressives are setting the table for a rational debate on immigration. We're inviting conservatives to join us. But we're not holding our breaths.

Below: Another video of Rep. Gutierrez outlining his plan.

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