L’immigration et l’église catholique sont en train de devenir une force d’opposition essentielle aux USA

Sidney Blumenthal analyse la situation intérieure US avec la résurgence du problème de l’immigration qui est en train de devenir, avec une rapidité exceptionnelle, le problème intérieur n°1 aux USA. Blumenthal estime que GW Bush est en train de perdre le contrôle de cette question de l’immigration qui devient de plus en plus une problématique d’opposition. Cette évolution achève la perte de contrôle du président US de la situation intérieure générale entraînant l’éclatement de sa majorité.

Cet article de Blumenthal (Guardian de ce jour) est notamment intéressant par les observations qu’il fait sur le rôle nouveau de l’église catholique, passant très rapidement d’une position conservatrice pro-Bush (à cause de la question de l’avortement) à une position très activiste pro-immigration qui en fait soudain une force politique de très grande ampleur. La déstructuration de la majorité de GW Bush fait de l’église catholique une force puissante d’opposition, face au très fort mouvement “nativiste”, isolationniste et anti-immigrant qui est en train de s’affirmer au cœur du conservatisme républicain traditionnel.

Voici quelques passages où Blumenthal insiste sur cet aspect des choses aux USA : « President Bush's nationally televised address on immigration on Monday night was intended as a grand gesture to revive his collapsing presidency, but instead he has plunged the Republicans into a political centrifuge, breaking the party down into its raw elements, whose collisions are triggering explosions of unexpected and ever greater magnitude.

» The nativist Republican base is at the throat of the business community. The Republican House of Representatives, in the grip of the far right, is at war with the Republican Senate. The evangelical religious right is paralysed while the Catholic church is a mobilising force behind demonstrations by Hispanic immigrants. Every effort Bush makes to hold a nonexistent Republican centre generates an opposing effect within his party.

» Bush's victory in 2004 depended on the management of highly volatile constituencies: the religious right was shepherded by referendums against gay marriage; the abortion issue was used to elevate Catholic conservatives and isolate progressive-minded bishops; nativists were captivated by hosts of enemies in the whirlwind of September 11.

» Bush's political handlers were determined to suppress immigration as an issue. Hispanics made up 14% of the population in 2004, and Bush's ability to capture Catholic and Hispanic voters was one of the decisive factors in winning a second term. However, as Bush's neoconservative foreign policy has been discredited, a virulent form of isolationist nationalism has filled the vacuum. Bush conflated the fears arising from September 11 with Iraq, but the fear of the other is now being directed at immigrants - a nativist tradition that goes back to the Know-Nothing party of the 1850s and the Ku Klux Klan.

(…)

» Meanwhile, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has identified the church as the moral guardian of immigrants and the proponent of social services and citizenship. Last month, when the Family Research Council, a prominent religious-right group, tried to summon support for the house bill, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference warned it would break away, and the religious right was stymied. »

Mis en ligne le 18 mai 2006 à 08H59