Democrats need an immigration policy.
Trump had one. He said immigrants from Mexico were criminals and rapists, but a few were probably ok and those took your jobs. He said immigrants who were Muslim were frightening and some were terrorists and you can't really tell the good ones from the bad ones.
Democrats had no real policy other than to say that immigration was in our heritage, that people here illegally were a fait accompli, that that the fears were overblown and a sign of xenophobia and racism. This argument failed to connect with people. In fact, a great many people are worried about terrorism by Muslims and they didn't want to be scolded for feeling that way.
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| Click: A Nativist reaction to immigration from Catholic Ireland |
The reality is that the USA is in a period of high immigration. Some 13% of the people in the US are foreign born and some 25% are either foreign born or the children of foreign born. The vast majority of the new residents are from Latin America and Asia so they generally have darker skin color and somewhat greater assimilation adjustment than would be the case of immigrants from western Europe. Historically, in periods of high immigrant populations (Irish potato famine of the 1840s) and the Ellis Island era at the beginning of the 20th Century the higher populations brought backlash, restrictive laws (Chinese exclusion act of 1882), and nativist parties.
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| KKK, re-emerged in early 20th Century |
Since Republicans under Trump have seized the anti-immigrant political ground Democrats cannot and should not be a "me, too" party. The Democratic Party is the party of government intervention to fix problems, and rather than say that ethnic frictions are a moral problem, a sign of deplorable racism, Democrats should have--and can now--acknowledge the inevitability of frictions and make their case that immigration needs control and affirmative government to keep immigration from turning bad.
Democrats could voice this as a commitment to help immigrants become "good Americans." This would justify careful border control, expressed not as a way to keep out vermin but as a way to assure every newcomer has a chance to become a good American, welcomed by his neighbor, happy in his new home. It means language immersion programs for kids, voiced as pride in our language with the goal of becoming good Americans. It means embracing employment laws as a positive good toward the happy integration of immigrants, saying that we need to enforce these rules so that immigrants won't be resented.
Democrats 2016 were afraid of validating entry restrictions, of praising English, of enforcing employment laws because it had been conflated with racism, and a big part of that conflation was made by Democrats. Trump did not need to racialize the election; Hillary did it for him. It failed as a policy and it failed politically. As Guyer notes below, a third of Hispanics voted for Trump. Democrats can embrace immigration laws and government steps to teach English and teach civics and do it saying it is for the purpose of embracing immigrants and sharing patriotic pride in our country. They say we have these controls so that we can continue the American tradition of welcoming immigrants and making them into good Americans.
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It is not racist or xenophobic to be afraid of criminals, rapists, and terrorists and so Democrats should not mumble or excuse or minimize or work hard to contextualize criminality, rape, and terror when it is done by black, brown, foreign, Hispanic, Muslim, or other people of color. It is politically safe--indeed it is politically essential--for Democrats to say that they condemn criminality.
It is politically safe--and again essential-- for Democrats to oppose the assassination of police officers, even when it is done by people of color. Remember the message: Democrats welcome good Americans. Criminality is bad, and criminality makes it harder for Americans to continue the tradition of welcoming newcomers.
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| Democrats can talk about this. |
Democrats have a positive message of identity, but they need to get their heads around the notion that Democrats believe in good citizenship. Democrats need not minimize criminality or hesitate to encourage wholesome assimilation out of fear of accusations of racism or dislike for diversity. Democrats can say it: immigration has to be done right. It is not anti-immigrant or anti diversity. It is pro-American and pro-immigrant.
Thad Guyer observes that it is probably too late for the west to get immigration right and we are well past the tipping point. The battle lines have been drawn around race, and mass immigration from Muslim Africa and Turkey have exhausted European patience and tolerance. The Euro zone experiment is fracturing.
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| Guyer |
Guest Comment by Thad Guyer: "The Decline of the Left."
Our democratic elitism in my view is clearly on its way out at the presidential and Supreme Court levels. Whether the USA, UK or France, no political regime can survive that has become so out of touch with its native base that it thinks it can throw open the borders with almost no input from the governed. Immigration and globalism is not an issue-- it is the defining issue and blue state democrats will remain on the losing side of the wall if they can't adjust to this new political reality. I'm confident democrats will transition to it in 4 or 8 years just as we did with the 2nd Amendment. Both democrats in the Kansas and Georgia special elections campaigned on "following the rules" in immigration. Hillary was a border protector until she got scared of losing the Hispanic vote, but that illusory path to victory vanished with Trump getting a third of those voters.
An NYT podcast at its best last week interviewed Paris and Moscow correspondents about the fall of the European left. It contains no hype, spin or Trump trash talk-- just a sobering analysis of how unpopular immigration policies, fear of cultural eclipse, and blue collar job loss have put Western liberal democracies in decline.
https://t.co/8dd3Fe8XeB.
David Brooks says there is surprisingly little defense against this decline. See NYT, "The Crisis of Western Civilzation",
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/opinion/the-crisis-of-western-civ.amp.html.
He cites our self-inflicted wounds, as Upclose puts it, with our failure to condemn leftist campus fascism, asking what's up at Berkeley? He cites a powerful Atlantic article decrying the movement "to scrub campuses of words, ideas, or subjects that cause discomfort or offense".
https://t.co/AAGXfTBBWa.
The clear loser issue of sanctuary cities is yet another obstacle to a Democratic comeback.
If we want to have Obamacare (or better), climate protection, clear air, feminist
economics, Planned Parenthood, a humane Supreme Court, and most of the rest of our agenda, then we have to win, and that won't happen without the right rhetoric on border control, H1 visas and blue collar job protection. The country is going to have those with or without us.
1 comment:
"Au revoir politique traditionnelle"
For over 50 years, two traditional parties have controlled French politics, and articulated the entire policy agenda for implementing the core values of "liberté, égalité, fraternité". The Socialists and the Republicans were those two parties, and it has been "difficult for parties outside these two major coalitions to make significant inroads" (See, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_France). As with our Libertarian and Green parties, all other French parties remained outsiders, fringe, far left and far right. From living in Europe in 1996 to frequent trips to Paris since (including twice last year), the French left and right mainstream seemed like old friends, popping out at me from ubiquitous newspaper stands to subway walls. My French colleagues belonged always to one of those two parties.
In recent years I saw the fractures beginning, the concern over immigrant men clustered thickly around the train stations, the warnings about pickpockets, the blankets and tarps starting to appear in streets around the city, the fears of terrorism at all transportation hubs. Then urbanites I knew started relocating to the suburbs or moving away from Paris altogether. "Uncontrolled" was the key word used to describe immigration, spoken not as xenophobia but as something terribly broken; a feeling that government didn't have a handle on it, that there was a free for all at the borders underway that would only grow more uncontrolled unless somebody did something.
That disaffection laid low both traditional parties this weekend, supplanted by two extremes on immigration: The National Front wants to end most immigration and globalism, led by Marine Le Penn; and an amorphous sounding so-called "centrist", Emmanuel Macron, who says the answer is to embrace "inevitable" and "unstoppable mass migration" and globalism. Macron does not even represent a political party, he quit the Socialist party to found a “movement” called “The March”. Neither candidate could get even a quarter of the vote, combined they got 45%, leaving 55% of the electorate who voted for neither of them dismayed. The two major parties of late had talked tough on controlling the borders, but by now lacked credibility. They will still wield most of the power in a fractured parliament, but the new president will not be from their ranks. By contrast, the establishment parties in power in the US (Trump for the Republicans), Australia (Malcolm Turnbull for the Liberal Party) and the UK (Theresa May for the Conservative Party), and even the shaky Dutch coalition (led by Mark Rutte), hold power now with one thing in common: resolute, clearly articulated controlled immigration and border policies.
Pollsters say that Macron, who is viewed by most voters as a "vapid" and "hollow" ex-banker huckster, will defeat Le Pen, who is viewed by most voters as a reckless xenophobic nationalist. Leaders of both major parties are urging their members to hold their noses and vote for Macron not as support for him, but to avert the "dangerous nationalist". Today Paris is not the city of lights, but the city of despair. The one thing that most voters agree on is that the traditional French body politque has been wrecked by the establishment's lack of ability or resolve to control runaway immigration and globalism.
Heretofore in the US, UK, Australia and France, a political party that failed to demonstrate that ability and resolve has faced electoral defeat, hopefully to have one of their own at the top another day. But what happened in France this weekend shows it can get even worse—parties lacking that resolve can lose their “major” party status altogether, and be supplanted by a fringe party, or a newly invented “movement”.
Democrats should take heed.
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