This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, January 15th, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown.

Immigration reform was a pledge made by candidate Obama, but what should that reform look like?

And how did President Bush's plans on immigration go wrong?

Dan Griswold, Director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies, offers

his thoughts.

President Bush tried to tackle this issue and his heart was in the right place and it took some political courage.

The Senate took it up in 2006 when the Republicans controlled

the Senate and they actually passed out a bill. It was quite watered down and at

the end of the day hardly worth the exercise.

And then the Senate under the Democrats took it up in 2007

and they were not able to pass out an immigration reform bill.

And it was both parties sort of fighting minorities within

their own caucus. On the Republican side you had the more conservative, I dare say

a nativist wing of the party opposing

any immigration reform. Democrats faced kind of a hardened union left opposition

to anything like a guest worker program and I think that was as

mistaken as the Republican opposition but the bottom line is and then of course I

think Democrats weren't eager to hand President Bush any kind of legislative

victory in the end of his term. The blood was just bad and unfortunately were

stuck with the same problem now. And for President Obama? President Obama actually pledged on the

campaign trail that he would take up immigration reform in his first year in

office. Obviously that's not going to happen but Senate Leader Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, a very prominent Democrat in the Senate,

...