The border and the ballot box -- The anti-immigration movements of the past may not have created presidents, but they did change the country.
From The New York Times:
On June 7 of last year, a bill to overhaul the nation’s immigration system — a bill supported by President Bush and the Democratic leaders of Congress — died in the Senate. It died mostly because of grass-roots opposition, and its downfall appeared to serve as an announcement of the issue’s new political potency. For much of 2007, immigration seemed certain to play a dominant role in the 2008 presidential campaign.
After the bill failed, Senator John McCain, the early Republican front-runner whose championing of the bill had made him look soft on illegal immigration, faded in the polls. The new Republican front-runners, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney, were trading accusations over who had been nicer to illegal immigrants in the past.
Immigration has a fantastically complicated political history in the United States. It has produced enough populist anger to elect Know Nothing mayors of Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington and San Francisco, all in the 1850s and, more recently, to help Lou Dobbs reinvent his television career and become a best-selling author. But when national politicians have tried to seize on such anger, they have usually failed — and failed quickly. “While immigration has always roiled large sections of the electorate,” said Eric Rauchway, a historian at the University of California, Davis, “it has never been the basis for a national election, one way or the other.”
That appears to be truer than ever in 2008. Mr. McCain will all but clinch the Republican nomination on Tuesday with victories in the Ohio and Texas primaries. In the Texas campaign, except for a couple of obligatory questions about a border fence during a Democratic debate, immigration has been the dog that didn’t bark. The candidates who would have made an issue of it exited the race long ago.
There is, however, one more historical parallel to consider: as a political matter, immigration probably won’t go away on its own. The anti-immigration movements of the past may not have created presidents, but they did change the country.
[E]ight months after the Senate’s immigration bill collapsed, immigration has managed to fade into the background without really becoming less important. The next president isn’t likely to be elected on immigration, but he or she is going to have to reckon with it.
The current immigration surge . . . sows doubts about the competence of the federal government. As Ms. Ngai has written, illegal immigration “seems to undermine something fundamental to the very existence of a nation.”
In the 1990s, the number of illegal immigrants grew by 770,000 a year, according to Jeffrey Passel, a demographer at Pew. Recent efforts to tighten border security have helped reduce that annual total to 550,000 in this decade, but this still represents more than a third of total annual immigration.
Even if border security continues to improve, it seems unlikely ever to be foolproof. Just recently, the federal government backed away from a plan for an electronic fence because of technical glitches. Many experts say that a more honest immigration policy has to start inside this country — namely, with the government ending its wink-and-nod attitude toward employers who hire illegal immigrants.
There are small signs it is beginning to do so. Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, announced a week ago that 53,000 employers were now using an electronic system to check new workers’ Social Security numbers, more than twice as many as last year.
Politically, the success of a policy like this one would have the potential to persuade voters that the government was serious about enforcement. Skepticism on that very point helped kill last year’s immigration bill.
To varying degrees, Mr. McCain and his Democratic opponent — whether Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama — will most likely try to balance security and openness in the general-election campaign. Mr. McCain, who says he was chastened by the reaction to the immigration bill, has so far emphasized border security more than the Democrats have.
On June 7 of last year, a bill to overhaul the nation’s immigration system — a bill supported by President Bush and the Democratic leaders of Congress — died in the Senate. It died mostly because of grass-roots opposition, and its downfall appeared to serve as an announcement of the issue’s new political potency. For much of 2007, immigration seemed certain to play a dominant role in the 2008 presidential campaign.
After the bill failed, Senator John McCain, the early Republican front-runner whose championing of the bill had made him look soft on illegal immigration, faded in the polls. The new Republican front-runners, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney, were trading accusations over who had been nicer to illegal immigrants in the past.
Immigration has a fantastically complicated political history in the United States. It has produced enough populist anger to elect Know Nothing mayors of Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington and San Francisco, all in the 1850s and, more recently, to help Lou Dobbs reinvent his television career and become a best-selling author. But when national politicians have tried to seize on such anger, they have usually failed — and failed quickly. “While immigration has always roiled large sections of the electorate,” said Eric Rauchway, a historian at the University of California, Davis, “it has never been the basis for a national election, one way or the other.”
That appears to be truer than ever in 2008. Mr. McCain will all but clinch the Republican nomination on Tuesday with victories in the Ohio and Texas primaries. In the Texas campaign, except for a couple of obligatory questions about a border fence during a Democratic debate, immigration has been the dog that didn’t bark. The candidates who would have made an issue of it exited the race long ago.
There is, however, one more historical parallel to consider: as a political matter, immigration probably won’t go away on its own. The anti-immigration movements of the past may not have created presidents, but they did change the country.
[E]ight months after the Senate’s immigration bill collapsed, immigration has managed to fade into the background without really becoming less important. The next president isn’t likely to be elected on immigration, but he or she is going to have to reckon with it.
The current immigration surge . . . sows doubts about the competence of the federal government. As Ms. Ngai has written, illegal immigration “seems to undermine something fundamental to the very existence of a nation.”
In the 1990s, the number of illegal immigrants grew by 770,000 a year, according to Jeffrey Passel, a demographer at Pew. Recent efforts to tighten border security have helped reduce that annual total to 550,000 in this decade, but this still represents more than a third of total annual immigration.
Even if border security continues to improve, it seems unlikely ever to be foolproof. Just recently, the federal government backed away from a plan for an electronic fence because of technical glitches. Many experts say that a more honest immigration policy has to start inside this country — namely, with the government ending its wink-and-nod attitude toward employers who hire illegal immigrants.
There are small signs it is beginning to do so. Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, announced a week ago that 53,000 employers were now using an electronic system to check new workers’ Social Security numbers, more than twice as many as last year.
Politically, the success of a policy like this one would have the potential to persuade voters that the government was serious about enforcement. Skepticism on that very point helped kill last year’s immigration bill.
To varying degrees, Mr. McCain and his Democratic opponent — whether Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama — will most likely try to balance security and openness in the general-election campaign. Mr. McCain, who says he was chastened by the reaction to the immigration bill, has so far emphasized border security more than the Democrats have.
posted by Sid Cottingham | 8:32 AM
1 Comments:
Fairly balanced article, although I do wish there would be a greater contrast between legal and illegal immigration.
As a second generation American, who did some volunteer work helping Southeast Asians assimilate into our culture, I am very much in favor of legal immigration.
Illegal causes, among other things, the creation of a permanent slave class, as well as removing any incentive to have Mexico address those issues it has that contribute to wholesale emigration to the north.
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