Immigration. A debate that did not happen.

How many immigrants, and from where?

We never had a public debate and honest discussion, and that is the fault of both Trump and Hillary Clinton.   Now Trump is doing something about it and Democrats have to figure out what to do.

The Democrats may well screw this up.

The US is currently in a period of high immigration and Donald Trump caught a political wave of backlash.  Both political parties have avoided a serious discussion of the issue of how many legal immigrants are the "right" amount, and who it should be.   Each side played identity politics and denounced straw men caricatures of their opponents.

Facts:  The current immigrant population in the US is about 42.4 million people, about 13.3% of the US total population.  In 1850 the immigrant share of the population was about 10% and during the period of rapid European immigration from 1860 to 1920 the immigrant share was between 13 to 15%, roughly the amount it is currently.  There has been a significant increase in the immigrant population compared with 1970, when the share was about one third of the current level: 4.7%

Some of the current 42 million people here today lack proper documentation, approximately 11.2 million of them.   Three out of four immigrants are here legally. 

Immigration was a significant issue on the 2016 Republican primary, but it was not confronted or discussed honestly by either side in the general election.  Hillary Clinton asserted she was the defender of women and minorities.   Hillary openly defined Trump as a white racist.  Trump denied it, but prospered in part by that description of him.  He sought and received the white vote.

Trump sent out strong but contradictory messages on immigration.  One message asserted that he loved immigrants and wanted a "great big door" in the wall with Mexico.  A voter who wanted to hear that Trump was not racist nor xenophobic could hear that and affirm that Trump was making a principled argument for the rule of law, for legal immigration, versus illegal immigration.  

But Trump also made an appeal to white resentment, opening his campaign with the assertion with "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.  They're not sending you.  They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us.  They're bringing drugs.  They're bringing crime.  They're rapists.  And some, I assume, are good people."    

On its face this is condemnation only of Mexicans with "problems", not all Mexicans.  The afterthought, that some, he assumes, are good people is damning with the faintest of praise.  A great many people heard a message of white resentment of Mexicans even though he was not quoted actually criticizing Mexicans per se.  

Click: Daily News. The story does not support the headline.

The crowd warm up speaker at his Boca Raton rally was an angry, heartbroken mother speaking about the murder of her child by an Mexican national here illegally.  This became a set piece in his rallies: the Mexican criminal.   Trump was sending a message.

Trump is famous for being undisciplined but on this issue he exercised care.  He appealed to nativist sentiments without actual blanket statements that Mexicans as a group were bad.  The Daily News article show here is typical of the genre of the anti-Trump media.  Note the headline, "outrageous comments about Mexicans."  The actual story demonstrates how weak is the evidence for the headline because the author could not list actual quotations where Trump criticizes Mexicans per se, not just criminality.

Still, Trump understood that he and his policies were anti-Mexican, which is why he asserted firmly that, of course, Judge Curiel would be biased against him.  It was obvious, Trump said, that a person of Curiel's Mexican ethnicity--even a law abiding one, even a federal judge-- would dislike me.

Voters heard what they wanted to hear.  Hillary, Democrats generally, and the anti-Trump media wanted to hear racism and they heard it loud and clear.  People who dislike and are resentful of Mexicans and other foreigners heard a sympathetic voice in Trump.  People who wanted affirmation that Trump was careful only to criticize criminality, not ethnicity, and think that Trump is falsely accused of being racist heard what they wanted to hear. 

Trump's campaign website signaled that he wanted to limit legal immigration as well as illegal and this was an overt message by Jeff Sessions, Trump's closest Senatorial supporter and his nominee for Attorney General.     Click for Trump Website: Immigration

In Phoenix, Arizona after meeting with the Mexican president Trump said he wanted to return the level of legal immigration to control future immigration to encourage assimilation by reducing immigration, keeping "immigration levels, measured by population share, back to historic norms."  Trump wanted a wall, then a big door, then controls to limit the number of people who go through it.

Click Here: Washington Post

This morning as I prepare this blog Trump is leaking draft memos that bring further clarity to his position on reducing legal immigration.  The draft executive orders focus on reducing immigration and foreign travel visas for people. 

Hillary Clinton's campaign attempted to collect aggrieved constituencies of racial and ethnic identity.  Hillary attempted to divide and conquer, as did Trump. 

LA Times, following Trump's speech in Phoenix, AZ

One effect of the Clinton strategy was the need to treat all discussion of immigration as a matter of racism vs. non racism.   Whites who are uncomfortable with immigration and the speed of assimilation were broad brushed as xenophobes and racists and called deplorable.  It hurt Hillary.

It also froze real discussion of the effects of immigration, pro and con.  Discussion of immigration marked a person deplorable.   Democrats cannot talk about immigration lest they be considered Trump-like.

 A principled, non racist argument can be made that immigration of low skilled people depresses the wage scale for blacks, for low skilled native born whites, and for teenagers.   Barbara Jordan made that argument.  She said that too much immigration slows black recovery from the effects of Jim Crow discrimination.  Justice for blacks require that we slow down immigration, she said.

Click: Help working Americans. Reduce immigration.

Hillary Clinton could have made this argument, but did not, because Democrats insisted that immigration was solely an issue of xenophobia, not of tradeoffs between some Americans--those who benefit from having inexpensive nannies and landscaping--versus other Americans who might earn enough money doing agricultural and construction labor that they can survive in America.  

There is also room for a public debate between the interests of Americans citizens vs. foreigners hoping to escape poverty, political repression, or war.  Do we owe impoverished Mexicans an escape, even if their immigration pushes a native born American deeper into poverty?  Some will say we do.  Let them assert it loud and clear and make their case.

The traditional Democratic constituency of blacks and less educated white working class people were abandoned by Democrats on this issue when Democrats asserted it was a matter of racism, not economics.    Blacks stayed loyal to Clinton; white working class people defected to the person asserting a problem (job losses), a cause (competition from foreigners), and a solution (a wall, new trade deals, and deportations of illegal immigrants.)

Do immigrants in fact depress wages of low skilled Americans?  If we did not have as many immigrants would the wages for agricultural work in fact climb to $15 and $20 an hour?  I don't know, but Trump is asserting it would help.  Why are no Democrats refuting Trump if he is dead wrong on this?

Liberal Americans of my generation used to worry about Zero Population Growth and the effect of population on the American environment.   My generation fretted over too many people ruining American land and water.  Now the issue of the carrying capacity of our country cannot be discussed, because environmentalists are tied to the Democratic Party and the parties have defined questioning of immigration as a sign of xenophobia, not environmentalism.


I heard Rick Santorum speak to the ethics of our allowing highly skilled people to immigrate to America.  This is unjust, he said.  We are cheating other countries.  Those people are needed back in their home country.  The principled argument, he said, is to help blacks still in poverty after Jim Crow and to do our duty to foreign countries by sending back home their brightest and best educated.  That is a principled argument a Democrat could make.

https://www.numbersusa.com

At this point Trump has grabbed the issue.   I believe he has in fact appealed to racial resentment--as did Hillary and the Democrats.  Questioning Immigration has been conflated with xenophobia.  Both parties thought they would benefit by playing racial politics, each grabbing for their constituency.   

The issue is not required to be one of "national identity" nor a dog whistle for or against any one race, although one side or the other might try to gain advantage by doing so.  

The issue of immigration could be disentangled from that and discussed as a matter of what is in the best interests of the American people.   Democrats could emerge the stronger party if a leader were to risk being thought racist or xenophobic by raising the issue of which and how many immigrants to allow to come to America, legally and with careful intent.   

Possibly only a black or Latino candidate can safely make those arguments but Trump showed that a white male could do it and elicit votes while appealing to white resentment.  Possibly Democrat of any race or ethnicity can assert that immigration has problems and needs reform and we should do it for the very best of reasons.