A country of immigrants.

America is experiencing a lot of immigration.   Periods of high immigration are associated with periods of domestic controversy over immigration.

A premise of this blog is that the election of Donald Trump was a personal victory rather than a victory of certain specific policies.    Trump represented change; Hillary represented the status quo.  Trump was interesting; Hillary was boring.   Voters ignored things Trump said in order to vote for Trump.  

There were policy grievances that underlay the desire for change.  There was widespread and generalized frustration with the slow recovery from the financial crisis of 2008, the ongoing war in the Middle East, the failure of the recovery to improve the economic situation for non-college educated workers, and a sense communicated by the Democratic Party generally and by Hillary Clinton in particular, that her greatest concern was the problem of discrimination against certain minorities, to the detriment of a white churchgoing majority.   

Donald Trump pointed to a specific problem on the first day of his announcement.   Immigration.  He saw it as a problem.  He refined his rally speeches to focus on "illegal" immigration and he went back and forth between a focus on dangerous immigrants, illegal immigrants, too many immigrants, immigrant competition with native born workers, criminal activity by illegal immigrants, and suspicious behavior of Muslim immigrants.   A voter uncomfortable with a politician voicing pure anti-immigrant talk could filter what Trump said and hear only that he was anti "illegal" immigrants.  That voter could conclude only that Trump disliked "bad" immigrants, ones that might do terror or might murder the vulnerable or might take jobs Americans should do, but Trump was not consistent in this.  Sometimes he invoked the "great big door" and other times the peril of immigrants who weren't really like the rest of us.

America has been experiencing a period of high immigration.   We have seen this before, in the early Republic with the importation of black slaves, in the 1840s with the mass immigration of Irish during the Potato Famine, during the first decade of the 20th Century when immigrants came from southern Europe, and again, now, with the immigration from countries heretofore not widely represented.

Trump called this a problem.  Democrats did not.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 changed the rules on immigration.  It opened immigration to new parts of the world: Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East.

Immigrants and their US born children number about 84 million people, 27% of the US population.   About 1.4 million immigrants are admitted legally each year, with India the leading country, followed by China, then Mexico, then the Philippians.

In 1970 first generation immigrants represented 4.7% of the population.  Today the number is 13.5%.

Historically immigrants have created periods of backlash and opposition and political crisis.  A guarantee of free immigration of black slaves until 1820 was written into the constitution.  Nativist political parties grew up in opposition to immigrants in the 19th century.  Free white labor in California was so threatened by Chinese immigration that the US passed a law in 1882 excluding nearly all Chinese immigration.  It should not surprise politicians of either party that immigration created a political opportunity for a candidate.   Donald Trump exploited it.  Democrats were flat footed about it.

Democrats need not have been a party in opposition to immigration, but Hillary Clinton's way of addressing the concerns native born people had was to dismiss their feelings as racism and xenophobia.  The Democratic response--go to graduate school and get a license to do something complex--was not realistic for a great many people.  Democrats did not have big, sweeping programs to demonstrate their commitment to integrating immigrants into the US economy and culture.  The Bill Clinton statement that the "era of big government is over" meant that there was no big government program to address the reality of big immigration.

The result was that Trump and the GOP had a problem and a solution:  too many immigrants doing crime, terrorism, and taking your jobs and we will stop it.   Democrats did not address the problems of high immigration.  They said it wasn't a problem and if you thought it was then you were a racist and deplorable.

I am aware of no Democratic politician who is articulating a positive, big government plan for  dealing with the opportunities and problems created by this period of increased immigration.    The liberal heroes of the early 20th century were social workers like Jane Adams and their "settlement houses" which helped integrate immigrants.   Democrats need to find--or create--heroes for the 21st century.