Im-Politic: A Century-Old Way Forward on Defining “True Americanism”

Tags

assimilation, Christianity, conservatism, Henry Olsen, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, libertarianism, Louis D. Brandeis, national conservatism, national identity, progressivism, social conservatism, Trump, Washington Post

That sounds like a pretty interesting and important Washington, D.C. conference that took place last week that gathered a bunch of politicians, pundits, intellectuals (how I hate that word!) and activists of all kinds on the political Right. Their aim: Developing a form of “national conservatism.” Think of it as a large-scale attempt to create Trump-ism without the – ah – idiosyncracies of its namesake.

Not that it will be easy to accomplishing this worthy goal – which appears to amount to seeking to replace the economic libertarian- and globalist-dominated views that have predominated on the Right for so long with something much better suited to advance the interests of working-class Americans.

After all, like it or not, the President’s controversial character in general clearly pleases a big chunk of the electorate, and it’s probably a major contributor to the near-universal support he enjoys with avowedly Republican voters. Moreover, Trump-ism as practiced by the President includes a lot of economic libertarian-ism, as indicated by his early and avid support for a business-heavy tax cut plan, for major cuts in the discretionary portion of the federal government, and for substantially easing environmental and other regulations. And for good measure, as I’ve written, his foreign policy honors America-First precepts in the breach at least as often as not. 

So the presidential version of Trump-ism has not surprisingly attracted backers from all over the Right, and the big disagreements that apparently broke out at the conference were just as predictable. One of the thorniest has to do with the intertwined issues of identity politics and immigration, But however emotional such disputes are likely to remain, they seem to me among the easiest to resolve – at least if Trump-ism is to have any viable long-term political future, and more important, to play a constructive role in resolving them.

According to one sympathetic conservative writer, Henry Olsen, too many of the conservatives at the conference, and too many Trump supporters generally, seem insistent on emphasizing “the country’s past as a British Protestant nation, one where the vast supermajority of citizens took their moral cues from the Bible as the guide to its future.”

The author, a Washington Post columnist who is supportive in particular of much of the “nationalist” part of national conservatism (especially on the crucial trade and immigration fronts), argues correctly that “Since the 1890s, the country has successfully defined what it means to be American without recourse to denominational persuasion or British heritage.”

And in my view, he’s equally correct in contending that claims (mainly from the social conservative wing of conservatism) like “Christianity was the force that created America” simplistically overlook the more inclusive beliefs of the Founding Fathers, ignore centuries of massive demographic change, and “argue for modern America’s de facto dissolution.”

So what does hold us together – and just as important, has held us together for so long? Olsen’s pinpointing of 1890 brings the answer very close. Because its precise chronological location is the year 1915. That’s when soon-to-be-appointed Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis gave a speech in Boston titled, “True Americanism.”

If you think the title means that Brandeis was a jingoistic xenophobe, think again. He was the son of immigrants from Prague, the first Jew to sit on the high court, and a genuine titan of that era’s progressive movement. And in this address, he presented probably the strongest, most eloquent descriptions of what is unquestionably the most admirable, and effective, unifying forces a work throughout American history – what most of us would call the “American way of life.”

Indeed, Brandeis’ theme that day was why the country should welcome the immigrants arriving during that era in record numbers, and how it could maintain the consensus on bedrock national values and governing practices that’s vital to any society’s coherence – and therefore success.

I’ve quoted from this speech before, but it’s worth revisiting at some length. In Brandeis’ words, since its founding, America had

“admitted to our country and to citizenship immigrants from the diverse lands of Europe. We had faith that thereby we could best serve ourselves and mankind. This faith has been justified. The United States has grown great. The immigrants and their immediate descendants have proved themselves as loyal as any citizens of the country. Liberty has knit us closely together as Americans. Note the common devotion to our Country’s emblem expressed at the recent Flag Day celebration in New York by boys and girls representing more than twenty different nationalities warring abroad.”

He also implored his audience, “let us not forget that many a poor immigrant comes to us from distant lands, ignorant of our language, strange in tattered clothes and with jarring manners, who is already truly American in this most important sense; who has long shared our ideals and who, oppressed and persecuted abroad, has yearned for our land of liberty and for the opportunity of abiding in the realization of its aims.”

But crucially, he added, simple admission was not enough. Nor was the adoption by immigrants of “the clothes, the manners and the customs generally prevailing here” or even substituting “for his mother tongue, the English language as the common medium of speech.”

“To become Americanized,” Brandeis argued, “the change wrought must be fundamental. However great his outward conformity, the immigrant is not Americanized unless his interests and affections have become deeply rooted here. And we properly demand of the immigrant even more than this. He must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate with us for their attainment. Only when this has been done, will he possess the national consciousness of an American.”

I won’t describe Brandeis’ specific definition of that consciousness (you really should read it), but I can’t imagine that any American of good faith would quarrel significantly with it (although Brandeis’ view that this system of beliefs was distinctive and distinctively virtuous wouldn’t sit too well with many on the Left).

What plainly has been even more controversial in recent decades, however, is the equally Brandeis-ian idea that these beliefs need to be actively propagated, and his emphasis on lifelong education makes clear that this mission needed to be carried out not just by the schools, but by many of society’s most important institutions: “the public platform [i.e., by political leaders]…discussion in the lodges and the trade unions….”

So if national conservatism wants to be truly national, and therefore, successful, it will have no choice but to rally round the view that anyone from any part of the world can become an American – if Americanizing them becomes a national priority again. Of course, that’s the key to success for liberalism, too – which unlike too much of conservatism, is fine with the “anyone” part of the above conviction, but seems convinced that diversity should be sought uber alles, and perhaps exclusively.

Which portion of the political spectrum will be the first to recognize the synthesis – which will be a win not only for its own fortunes but, as history has taught, for the nation as a whole? So far, I’d bet on the conservatives. But not heavily.

Im-Politic: America Needs to Get Its Citizenship Act Together

Tags

Alexander Hamilton, Census, citizenship, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, national identity, naturalization, non-citizens

Despite all the heat that it’s generated, the most important citizenship-related issue facing Americans today is not the one revolving around whether long Census form should seek this information from residents of the country. Instead, given all the clashing views of national identity that have emerged in recent years, the most important issue is developing a coherent concept of citizenship – what it should entail in terms of rights and responsibilities, and why .

Suggesting that the United States – a 243-year old country with a history that’s been a rousing success by any reasonable standard – hasn’t been thinking clearly about citizenship certainly seems odd. But the history actually couldn’t be clearer. And the confusion begins at the beginning. Although the Constitution refers to “the Privileges and Immunities of Citizens,” the document says remarkably little about what these are and, more important, about the reasons that such privileges and immunities should be enjoyed by one group of residents in the country but not others.

Even the choice of some of the most prominent privileges and immunities that are specified are peculiar, to put it mildly. For instance, the framers of the document designated citizenship as a requirement for holding the offices of President, U.S. Representative, and U.S. Senator. But nowhere does the Constitution’s body say explicitly that the Vice President must be a citizen – that provision had to wait until the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804. Nor does the document explicitly require federal judges to be citizens. 

At the same time, the Constitution’s federal office-holding criteria obviously assume that some citizens are more equal than others.  In the best known example, only “natural born” citizens (a term never defined in the Constitution or by the Supreme Court, and still debated, though it’s widely thought to mean a citizens born in American territory or born outside the United States or its possessions to citizens parents) are eligible to be President.  That’s why former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger or former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger could never realistically dream of becoming President.  They, and so many other prominent Americans, were foreign born and naturalized.   

But not just any natural born citizen can serve in the White House.  He or she needs to be at least 35 years old, and have lived in the country for fourteen years.  

As for voting in federal elections, it’s now a crime for non-citizens, but that’s only been the case since 1996. It’s by no means grounded in the Constitution, which generally authorized the states to decide eligibility for elections at all levels in the federal system. And the states have a long history of permitting voting by non-citizens.  (See here for a detailed history of non-citizen voting – by a supporter of this policy.)

Further muddying the situation: Many citizens have long been denied rights and privileges extended to other citizens, at the federal, state, and local levels alike. Women have expressly been classified as eligible for citizenship since the earliest immigration and naturalization laws, which were passed shortly after the Founding. But for more than a century afterward, female citizens faced all manner of limits (mainly at the state level but including on the national level) on their “privileges and immunities” that didn’t apply to male citizens – notably, the right to vote and the right to own property. (See here for some key milestones in the history of such limits and the pushback.) Children born in the United States are unmistakably citizens, yet they still don’t enjoy many of the rights of adults.

Equally confusing are the obligations of non-citizens legally resident in the country. They can’t vote for the federal (and in most cases, the state and local) officials who make tax policy. But especially if they hold green cards, they’re considered “tax residents” upon legal entry and must declare their total income and pay taxes required under U.S. tax law. 

The same goes for questions of war and peace: Legal non-citizens can’t choose the politicians who make these decisions, but they’re potentially required to live with the gravest consequences, since they’re obligated to register for the military draft (unless they’re women – who can’t register even if they are citizens) – and have been often during American history.  (See, e.g., here and here.)

It’s not that the Founders didn’t think about citizenship seriously at all. The very first Article of the Constitution (Section 8) very prominently sets out “establishing a uniform Rule of Naturalization” as one of Congress’ powers. As early as March, 1790, the first Congress in U.S. history followed suit by passing a naturalization act to establish a process and criteria for grants of citizenship. Approved – revealingly – during the same month that that year’s Census was mandated, the law held that foreign-born persons could become U.S. citizens only if they were free, white, lived in the United States for at least two years, resided in the state where they filed the application for one year, proved their “good character” to a court, and swore allegiance to their new nation. Children of citizens born outside American territory would be considered citizens, too. Five years later, the U.S. residency requirement was raised to the current five years.

The residency requirement – and its durability – hints at one possible answer to the question of why citizenship matters. This category was valued because it identified residents judged (to paraphrase an article by former law professor and current U.S. Congress-person Jamin Raskin) “fit to govern” – and by extension (quoting directly now) deserving of “the opportunity to participate in the essential and representative act of democratic politics [voting].” The flip side of this coin, as observed by a much more conservative legal authority, Alexander Bickel, was a position found in western political theory since classical times – which inspired so much of the Founders’ political worldview: “It is by virtue of of his citizenship that the individual is a member of the political community, and by virtue of it that he has rights.”

The reference to a political community is crucial, because what little the Founders collectively said about citizenship often focused on precisely this aim, as did the (admittedly minimalist) legislative and Constitutional record they created. Jefferson and Hamilton embodied fundamentally different approaches to arranging political power within the new nation and equally clashing ideas about the optimal future for the economy (largely because of their political philosophies). But they both agreed that great dangers were likely from a large influx of newcomers from countries whose views and political traditions diverged much further still from those prevailing in the existing U.S. population – and whose national loyalties might be suspect – and that a major response was needed.

The residency requirement that became law clearly reflected Hamilton’s belief that “Some reasonable term ought to be allowed to enable aliens to get rid of foreign and acquire American attachments; to learn the principles and imbibe the spirit of our government; and to admit of at least a probability of their feeling a real interest in our affairs.” (See here for the case for the Constitution as a key part of the Founders’ exercise in political community-building. Interestingly, the author’s main thesis is that membership in this community should be expanded to include non-citizens.)  

And yet, from literally the beginning, so many opportunities to link the creation of such a community to citizenship were went ungrasped. The Constitution could have specified that Congressional apportionment (determining the numbers of House of Representatives districts would be given to each state) must be based on numbers of citizens. Instead, it simply holds that the count should consist of “the whole number of free persons,” indentured servants, and “other Persons” (meaning slaves), who would be treated as three-fifths of the other two categories. Native Americans who were “not taxed” were the only category of resident explicitly excluded.

Moreover, because there is no Constitutionally mandated connection between citizenship and Congressional apportionment, there’s no link between citizenship and the allocation of electoral votes, either, since that figure is based in part on the number of House districts per state.

A third missing link – which seems a matter of recent bureaucratic custom rather than law: As of 2015, more than a hundred federal programs used Census data to determine the distribution of $675 billion in taxpayer funds to pay for everything from Medicare Part B to Medicaid to school lunches to highway construction.

And despite the loyalty oath required for naturalization, and the Founders’ concerns about divided or competing national allegiances, neither the Constitution nor any code of federal law has ever prohibited dual citizenship. Stranger still – many American citizens today legally serve in the militaries of foreign countries not engaged in hostilities with the United States, and even in senior government positions in foreign governments.

Numerous observers believe (and even hope) that these glaring contradictions in the treatment of citizens show that the concept is weakening.  I fervently hope that they’re wrong.  For I believe that the Founders were right.  In other words, as clearly, and as consistently as possible, it’s essential that the law define citizens as that segment of the population that enjoys a specific set of (mainly voting- and governing-related) rights in exchange for supporting the nation’s core political values. Otherwise, Americans will never preserve what one commentator has called “the cohesiveness and sense of community…vital to the success of popular government.”

But the bitter divisions that have opened recently in America’s politics and society demonstrate that the wildly incoherent approach to citizenship that’s evolved until now is giving the nation the worst of all possible worlds. If a completely chaotic disintegration of the country into a gaggle of hostile, quarreling groups is to be avoided, a clear choice needs to made – and the sooner the better.

Im-Politic: Why Illegal Aliens Feel So Entitled

Tags

Constitution, Equal Protection Clause, Fourteenth Amendment, ignorance of the law, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Supreme Court

At first glance, Thursday’s Supreme Court decision holding that an illegal alien couldn’t be convicted for possessing a firearm because he didn’t understand his status looks like the height of illegals’ coddling at the expense of common sense – not to mention obvious public safety considerations, and the legal principle that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” for violating it.

In fact, although the 7-2 ruling is defensible on the narrowest possible legal grounds (grounds that are entirely legitimate and time-honored bases for Court decisions, especially for believers in what’s known as the doctrine of judicial restraint), it reveals something at least as disturbing: how thoroughly and dangerously recent decades of lax pre-Trump immigration policies have fostered a sense of entitlement among illegals. And only slightly less disturbing: The law itself that’s in question contains its own evidence of illegal aliens coddling.

The majority’s opinion turned on the specific question of whether a law barring illegal aliens from owning firearms permits conviction only if the defendant “knowingly” violates the statute. Although this conclusion seems to overlook completely the venerable “ignorance of the law” maxim, as the majority importantly reminds, this principle (like most others worth following) isn’t absolute. I also find convincing the argument that the statute’s wording makes clear that, in this particular case, lawmakers intended the “knowingly” criteria to apply to illegal aliens’ awareness of their immigration status under the law.

But at this point, I get off the boat policy-wise. Because how on earth does any illegal alien in the United States who can pass a sanity test get the idea that he can live his or her life without being acutely aware of their immigration status? Similarly, why did the defendant believe that he had just as much of a right to own a (substantially regulated) deadly weapon as any legal American resident? Especially when he had just been told that his legal immigration status was hanging by a threat – at best. And if you think that the second and third questions are exaggerations, get a load of this description (from the dissenting opinion) of the defendant’s actions after the college he was enrolled him told him by email that, because of poor academic performance, “he was no longer enrolled and that, unless he was admitted elsewhere, his status as a lawful alien would be terminated”:

“Petitioner’s response was to move to a hotel and frequent a firing range. Each evening he checked into the hotel and always demanded a room on the eighth floor facing the airport. Each morning he checked out and paid his bill with cash, spending a total of more than $11,000. This went on for 53 days.”

To me, the answer obviously is that for so long it has been so easy to enter the United States illegally, and for legal entrants to stay once their visas have expired, that many believe that they have every right to be in the country and to be treated exactly like legal residents and citizens.

In some instances, they’re correct. Principally, the Supreme Court has ruled that the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment means that everyone in the United States at any given moment, no matter what the conditions, is entitled to the full range of protections offered by U.S. law. But these convictions also frequently extend to assumptions that illegals are also due any number of welfare state benefits, privileges like drivers’ licenses, and even the right to vote.  And of course, these assumptions have constantly be aided and abetted – and often created by – Open Borders-oriented illegal aliens’ advocacy groups and even state and local governments.

It’s equally obvious that the federal gun ownership law (which is found starting on p. 13 of the opinion linked above), unwittingly or not, betrays the illegals-coddling mindset mentioned above. After all, why specify that illegals need to violate the statute “knowingly.” They’re not supposed to be here in the first place. Systematic knowledge about them is lacking – including criminal records in their home countries. Why should they be granted any right to possess a gun under any circumstances?

So it’s clearly time to rewrite the law – especially since the “knowingly” standard is even more absurd for many other categories of individuals it denies gun ownership, like “fugitives from justice” and recipients of court orders restraining them from harming or harassing their “intimate partners” and the children thereof.

After all, one of the clearest lessons about immigration policies taught over the decades since the 1986 amnesty is that the messages sent by Washington’s words and deeds greatly influence foreigners’ willingness to enter the United States illegally. If a reasonable degree of control over U.S. borders is to be reestablished, it’s time to send out a new one: From now on, within the legal bounds set by the Equal Protection Clause, American law is going to start making it harder for illegal aliens to behave in ways that endanger citizens and other legal residents, not easier.

Im-Politic: A Better Way to Pressure Mexico on Immigration

Tags

Border Crisis, border security, Central America, Charles Grassley, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Mexico, migrants, remittances, tariffs, Trade, Trump, U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, USMCA

It’s not every day that I praise veteran Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever praised him in print. On trade policy he’s often especially especially clueless – his last foray into this field consisted of threatening to use his chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee to scuttle the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA) unless President Trump withdrew his tariffs on metals imports from Mexico and Canada.

(Grassley was upset because Mexico in particular had retaliated by slapping tariffs on some key American farm products exported by states like Iowa. He didn’t seem to realize that, as I’ve written here, the tariffs needed to be global in scope to be effective. Meanwhile, however serious American farmers’ woes, they began in earnest years before any Trump tariffs went into effect.)

So imagine my surprise yesterday upon learning that Grassley has proposed a response to Mexico’s foot-dragging on helping to ease the crisis on its border with the United States that’s much better than President Trump’s tariffs.

According to Grassley, the way to pressure Mexico to tighten its own curbs on the floods of Central Americans streaming through its territory toward the United States is to tax the remittances sent to their home country by Mexicans who have moved northward both legally and illegally.

Remittances consist of money sent by immigrants back to their home country – usually to relatives. They encourage immigration because they come from wages earned by newcomers to the United States that are much higher than those they can make in their countries of origin.

And we’re unmistakably talking big numbers – especially for Mexico. The country’s own central bank pegged them at almost $31.5 billion last year. That’s more money coming into the Mexican economy than it makes from oil exports, and in fact its second largest foreign exchange earner after auto parts exports.

Unlike tariffs, remittances taxes wouldn’t harm Americans who buy imports from Mexico – whether consumers or businesses. All the victims would be Mexicans in Mexico. And because so many poor Mexicans in particular rely on these funds to help maintain and improve their living standards, a smaller flow would squeeze their finances and surely increase political instability in a country that’s long suffered more than its share of turmoil. Don’t think Mexico’s leaders – who are already sounding inclined to make concessions to Mr. Trump to avoid the threatened tariffs – could brush these sanctions off.

At least as important, unlike the proposed tariffs, remittance taxes wouldn’t endanger Congressional passage of the USMCA or undermine the Trump administration’s China trade policies by reducing Mexico’s attractiveness as an alternative export platform for companies looking to move in whole or in part out of the People’s Republic.

The President has actually spoken of taking this step to raise the resources needed to finance a Border Wall, but never followed through. At the time, covert and overt Open Borders supporters charged that the move could be counterproductive, since the remittances increased the well-being of their recipients enough to encourage them to stay in Mexico.

But since these payments still represent only a fraction of the earnings of Mexicans in the United States, it makes no sense to believe that many Mexicans in Mexico seriously contemplating moving across the border would be satisfied by receiving a fraction of a loaf if they thought it was all potentially available.

It’s possible that the Trump tariff threat could suffice to produce enough of a Mexican response to satisfy him on border security and declare victory with no levies. In this vein, it’s significant that Mexico’s president has already signaled his willingness to appease Mr. Trump somehow. But a remittances threat could have accomplished the same goal with much less muss and fuss. If negotiations with Mexico can’t resolve the issue by the announced Trump deadline of June 10, switching tactics to a remittances tax a la Grassley would be an unmistakable no-brainer.

Im-Politic: So Trump Voters are Xenophobes and Racists on Immigration?

Tags

assimilation, Clinton, English, Grinnell College, identity politics, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, nativism, racism, Trump, xenophobia

Charges that supporters of more restrictive immigration policies are racists and xenophobes and all- around bigots are so widespread that I don’t even see the need to document this claim with links. That’s why a recent poll from Grinnell (Iowa) College is so fascinating and important. It’s full of evidence showing how overwhelming false these allegations are.

Just as important: The survey reveals strong and bipartisan support for the kinds of assimilationist approaches to newcomers that are emphatically rejected by diversity- and identity politics-obsessed leaders of the Democratic party and especially its progressive wing – although it also finds that Left-of-center backing for these views lags the national totals.

Much of this evidence comes from respondents’ views on “what it mean to be a ‘real American’.” The survey, which was taken last November (after the midterm elections) presented 12 possible answers (which were not mutually exclusive). According to Grinnell faculty who analyzed the results, agreeing with the following propositions revealed “narrow” and “restrictive” beliefs about national identity:

”To have been born in America”

“To have lived in America most of one’s life”

“To be able to speak English”

“To be a Christian”

I wouldn’t quarrel with this characterization, with the exception of English ability. How, after all, can anyone meaningfully participate in American life in any dimension without speaking the country’s dominant language?

The rest of the propositions were described by the pollsters as more values-based – and more praiseworthy.

“To respect America’s political institutions and laws”

“To accept people of different racial backgrounds”

“To accept people of different religious backgrounds”

“To believe in getting ahead by one’s own hard work”

“To believe in treating people equally”

“To support the U.S. Constitution”

“To take personal responsibility for one’s actions”

“To believe that democracy is the best form of government”

No quarrel here, either – with one major exception I’ll get to below.

According to the prevailing narrative, Trump voters should strongly support the restrictive views of American identity (i.e., those most closely associated with prejudice), and supporters of his 2016 presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, should emphatically reject them. Only that’s not what the Grinnell survey shows at all. Let’s zero in on the most clearly nativist and bigoted possible responses.

It turns out that only 33 percent of Trump 2016 voters agreed that being native-born is “very important to being a real American,” five percent view it as “fairly important” and 20 percent as “just somewhat important.” Those are higher percentages than for the Clinton voters. But 39 percent of this group regarded this criterion as being at least “just somewhat important” to “real American-ness” – including 20 percent who saw it as “very important.”

These results don’t easily jibe with the mainstream picture of most Trump voters chomping on the bit to keep out all foreigners, and the gap separating them from Clinton voters is anything but yawning. Indeed, 41 percent of Trump voters considered native-born status as “not important” (versus 61 percent of Clinton voters).

The Christian criterion generated answers more consistent with the depiction of Trump voters as prejudiced – 51 percent believed it had any importance. But only 32 percent considered it “very important,” while 43 percent called it “not important.” A quarter of Clinton voters ascribed at least some importance to a Christian identity, including 16 percent of responses in the “very important” category. Sixty nine percent dismissed it as having no importance. And the results for having lived “in America most of one’s life” generated similar numbers among both groups.

But there’s another category that can be carved out of the list of Grinnell criteria – standards supportive of the idea that newcomers need to be adequately assimilated into the nation’s culture before they can be considered “real Americans” – and in particular, need to buy into the country’s distinctive founding ideals.

It’s not an idea that dovetails terribly well with either the kind of nativism that the Grinnell researchers deplore, or with the diversity worship of the contemporary Left. But it’s hard to understand how any country can succeed without the kind of ideological and related values consensus sought by assimilation. P.S.: The imperative of this goal has been recognized and touted not only by many of the Founding Fathers, but by the early 20^th century titans of the original progressive movement.

In that vein, it’s encouraging that overwhelming majorities (more than three-quarters in all instances) of both Trump and Clinton voters agree that accepting people of different racial and religious backgrounds is “very important” to being a real American. (And yes, it’s curious that Trump voters’ score on the latter doesn’t jibe well with their responses on the Christian criterion.) Even stronger, across-the-board support was generated by the notion that “treating people equally” is crucial to real American identity.

It’s more encouraging still, if you believe in assimilation, that healthy majorities of all the Grinnell respondents concurred on the importance, for real Americans, of respecting America’s political institutions and laws, supporting the Constitution, and believing in the importance of hard work and taking responsibility for one’s actions.

But the partisan split characterizing these responses showed that Clinton voters’ support for these assimilationist values – except regarding the importance of personal responsibility – was notably weaker than the national results.

Specifically, only 68 percent of Clinton voters answered that it’s “very important” to American identity to respect those American political institutions and laws; only 55 percent put similar stock in hard work; and only 73 percent valued supporting the Constitution this highly.

Much lower still were those shares of Clinton voters who awarded “very important” status to the assimilationist values of English-speaking ability and believing that “democracy is the best form of govenrment” – at 26 percent and 52 percent. But I’ve placed these answers in a category of their own because, although the Trump voters’ levels of agreement were much higher (68 and 69 percent, respectively), they fell somewhat short of their endorsement levels of the other assimilationist positions.

President Trump often says (along with many others), “If you don’t have borders, then you don’t have a country.” I’d make the same claim for assimilation and the common ideological values it requires (again, including a working knowledge of English). According to this survey, although Ms. Clinton’s voters don’t seem nearly so sure, Mr. Trump’s voters strongly agree. And thumping majorities of the latter aren’t racists or xenophobes. That’s why their views on immigration strike me as by far the best guides to national immigration policy – and why I don’t see how any thinking adults could disagree.

Im-Politic: The Mainstream Media’s Latest Immigration Fakery

Tags

criminal aliens, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Mainstream Media, The Atlantic, Trump, Vietnam, Vietnam War

Just when I thought that it had become impossible for the Mainstream Media’s pro-Open Borders bias and Trump Derangement Syndrome to make me genuinely angry, along came The Atlantic‘s article yesterday on Trump administration policy toward refugees from Vietnam – including those who arrived in the Vietnam War’s tragic aftermath.

The piece – loudly advertised as an “exclusive” – clearly sought to convey the impression that the Trump administration has decided to start deporting certain groups within this population simply because it’s determined to rid America of as many foreign-born residents as possible, along with preventing the entry of as many newcomers as possible. In the case of the Vietnamese, of course, this policy would be morally outrageous both because so many refugees aided the U.S. military effort and (along with their descendants) face grim fates if they return; and because the United States inflicted so much damage on the country during its decade-plus of massive armed involvement. (I’m not trumpeting a position on the war – which I opposed – here. Just stating a fact.) When I saw the headline, I was up in arms myself.

Imagine my surprise, then, to discover (in the fourth paragraph) what’s really changing:

“The administration last year began pursuing the deportation of many long-term immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries who the administration alleges are ‘violent criminal aliens.’”

Why is that a change? Because, in the authors’ view, this decision violates

“a unique 2008 agreement  [between Washington and Hanoi] that specifically bars the deportation of Vietnamese people who arrived in the United States before July 12, 1995—the date the two former foes reestablished diplomatic relations following the Vietnam War.”

But Trump administration officials have concluded, and told The Atlantic on the record, that the agreement “does not explicitly preclude the removal of pre-1995 cases.”

Which seems eminently reasonable when the article finally makes clear that the U.S. intent now is not indiscriminately to round up Vietnamese-Americans and kick them out of the country in order to advance (circle one or both) nativist or racist goals. Instead, the intent was to treat as exempt from the 2008 deal “people convicted of crimes.”

Indeed, these folks were not only convicted of crimes. According to the Department of Homeland Security’s Katie Waldman, “these are non-citizens who during previous administrations were arrested, convicted, and ultimately ordered removed by a federal immigration judge.”

But how did the Atlantic authors describe a U.S. government effort finally to get rid of convicted criminals who clearly have been using delaying tactics to put off removal orders by the American judicial system? As

>”the latest move in the president’s long record of prioritizing harsh immigration and asylum restrictions….”

>a ”new stance [that] mirrors White House efforts to clamp down on immigration writ large, a frequent complaint of the president’s on the campaign trail and one he links to a litany of ills in the United States.”

>a “shift” that “leaves the fate of a larger number of Vietnamese immigrants in doubt.”

>a betrayal of many “refugees from the Vietnam War. Some are the children of those who once allied with American and South Vietnamese forces, an attribute that renders them undesirable to the current regime in Hanoi, which imputes anti-regime beliefs to the children of those who opposed North Vietnam.”

In fact, if anything, the new Trump policy changes a 2017 administration decision that makes no sense at all for anyone who believes that criminal aliens have no business remaining in the United States one minute longer than necessary: exempting these criminals from deportation if they arrived in the country before 1995. What on earth was that about? And why does The Atlantic, by posting this “scoop” seem to object so strongly – especially since nowhere does this piece challenge the convictions?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: U.S. Trade Policy Deserves Blame for the Caravans

Tags

apparel, asylum seekers, Bangladesh, CAFTA, caravan, Caribbean Basin Initiative, Central America, Central America Free Trade Agreement, China, economic development, El Salvador, globalization, Guatemala, Honduras, immigrants, Immigration, manufacturing, migrants, Multi-Fibre Arrangement, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Northern Triangle, Trade, Uruguay Round, Vietnam, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Hot on the heels of the current caravan of Central Americans heading through Mexico to the U.S. border, another such procession is gathering in Guatemala. And these two have followed the flood of unaccompanied migrant children from the area that reached the United States in 2014.

I wish I could tell you that there’s a silver bullet for solving the problem – though nothing could be clearer than that these human tides will keep organizing in even greater numbers if Washington follows the general advice of the Open Borders lobby to view all of the caravan-ers as legitimate asylum-seekers entitled to full due process once they reach the border and request this status. Upon which time current procedures call for recording their claims and then releasing them based on the ludicrous assumption that they’ll report back to immigration court on the appointed date and risk being rejected and thus deported.

What I can tell you is that this crisis has been greatly aggravated by an unforgivably short-sighted U.S. trade policy strategy that emerged in the 1990s. It consisted of indiscriminately liberalizing trade with developing countries, and thereby ignoring the case for targeting trade diplomacy to ensure that countries and regions of greatest importance to the United States receive the lion’s share of the benefits. And the prime victims of this strategic failure – which mainly reflected the determination of offshoring multinational manufacturers and Big Box retailers to gain maximum flexibility to source imported inputs and final products – were the poorer countries of the Western Hemisphere. That group of course includes Mexico and the Central American countries that have sent so many migrants northward.

Interestingly, Central America and the Caribbean countries were placed prominently in line to receive significant shares of the vast U.S. market by a Reagan-era initiative aimed mainly at stemming the spread of left-wing revolutionary forces in the region. But scant years later, any hopes generated by this strategy for fostering more prosperity in these impoverished regions and strengthening the appeal of pro-Western leaders were kneecapped by two big decisions.

The first was the negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993. The second was the phase out of U.S. and other developed countries’ quotas on apparel imports that was approved the following year as part of the Uruguay Round global agreement that reduced various trade barriers worldwide and created the World Trade Organization (WTO). And the third was the Clinton administration’s subsequent rush to liberalize trade with a host of low-income countries outside the Western Hemisphere.

In principle NAFTA’s tight focus on Mexico was justifiable given Mexico’s size, position as a U.S. neighbor, and history of political, economic, and social policy failure that seemed to be reaching a crisis point. But economic growth and employment could still have been greatly lifted in Mexico and Central American (along with the Caribbean countries) had American trade liberalization stopped or at least paused there.

Yet the quota phaseout forbade Washington from incorporating any strategic or non-economic considerations into apparel trade policy, whether conditions urgently required them or not.  As a result, it ensured that the benefits of freer trade would be greatly watered down (and many garnered by China and the rest of developing Asia in particular), and insult was added to injury by new liberalization deals reached or renewed, or decisions made, regarding Vietnam, sub-Saharan Africa, Jordan, most of developing Asia (in the form of a deal on information technology products, including labor-intensive consumer electronics), and China. Largely as a result, the poorer countries of the Western Hemisphere were left in the dust in the business models of the multinationals and the big retailers.

Nowhere does the opportunity lost by Mexico and Central America come through more clearly than in the apparel trade figures. This sector is almost always the first utilized by developing countries to begin their industrialization and modernization drives mainly because its own labor intensivity means that capital and technology requirements are pretty modest, the relevant skills can be taught fairly easily, and its job-creation promise is substantial.

Here are the figures for apparel imports from Mexico, the three “Northern Triangle” Central American countries, China, and two other current Asian textile giants (Bangladesh and Vietnam) for four key years. Next to them will be the figure for the share of American apparel consumption (market share) won at that point by each. We start with 1997 because that’s the year when the U.S. government began adopting its current dominant system for slicing and dicing trade and manufacturing data – which enables us to see statistics that are apples-to-apples. The second year is 2001 – the year China’s was admitted into the WTO – and thus gained substantial immunity from American laws aimed at curbing predatory trade practices. The third year is 2006 – when Congress approved a Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) negotiate by George W. Bush’s administration. And the fourth year is last year – the latest for which we have full-year numbers.

1997

Mexico:                       $5.317b                    11.29 percent 

El Salvador:                 $1.052b                     2.18 percent

Guatemala:                  $0.973b                     2.07 percent

Honduras:                    $1.689b                     3.59 percent

China:                          $7.279b                   15.46 percent

Bangladesh:                 $1.442b                      3.06 percent

Vietnam:                      $0.026b                      0.06 percent

2001:

Mexico:                       $8.112b                     12.99 percent 

El Salvador:                 $1.634b                      2.62 percent

Guatemala:                  $1.630b                       2.61 percent

Honduras:                    $2.438b                       3.91 percent

China:                          $8.597b                     13.47 percent

Bangladesh:                 $2.101b                      3.37 percent

Vietnam:                      $0.048b                       0.08 percent

2006:

Mexico:                       $5.514b                       7.16 percent 

El Salvador:                 $1.408b                      1.83 percent

Guatemala:                  $1.685b                      2.19 percent

Honduras:                    $2.519b                      3.27 percent

China:                        $22.405b                    22.09 percent

Bangladesh:                 $2.915b                       3.79 percent

Vietnam:                      $3.226b                       4.19 percent

2017:

Mexico:                       $3.806b                       4.52 percent 

El Salvador:                 $1.920b                       2.28 percent

Guatemala:                  $1.371b                       1.63 percent

Honduras:                    $2.522b                       3.00 percent

China:                        $29.322b                     34.85 percent

Bangladesh:                $5.046b                       6.00 percent

Vietnam:                    $11.613b                     13.80 percent

The big takeaway? Even during the decade after the Central America free trade deal was signed, the three Northern Triangle countries actually saw their share of the U.S. apparel market stagnate or actually shrink. Mexico’s share has been cut by about almost 60 percent. And the business won by China, Bangladesh, and Vietnam has exploded – since 2001 for China, and since 2006 for the two other Asians. Again, the year that the free trade deal that was supposed to benefit El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras was inked.

With Mexico, there are of course mitigating factors. Chiefly, although its apparel competitiveness in the U.S. market is way down, its competitiveness in higher value automotive manufacturing in particular is way up. But millions of poor Mexicans still could have benefited from apparel employment, and no such progress has been made in Central America – which is partly understandable since incomes are even lower, and governments and other institutions needed for economic development are so much weaker.

Apparel should have been the great hope for these populations, but that sector’s potential for expanding production (which of course needs to be export-oriented since these countries’ domestic markets are tiny) and employment has been virtually choked off. Just as important, the prospect that apparel wages in the Northern Triangle might rise adequately has been limited, too – since pay throughout developing East and South Asia (even in China, according to the chart below) remains so much lower.

American trade policy could have lent a big helping hand to Central America had it adopted a strategically sensible set of priorities. But it failed to learn a fundamental lesson of strategy: When everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. You can see the victims of this failure in the flow of human misery heading up from the Northern Triangle.

Those Stubborn Facts: When U.S. Immigration Bottomed, Unions Peaked

Tags

immigrants, Immigration, labor, Population Reference Bureau, The New Republic, Those Stubborn Facts, unions

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“American labor’s peak decade”: the 1930s

—The New Republic, October 2, 2018

Decade during which legal immigration into the U.S. bottomed*: the 1930s

—Population Reference Bureau, May 9, 2014

*since the 1830s

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(Sources: “America’s Missing Labor Party,” by David Sessions, The New Republic, October 2, 2018, https://newrepublic.com/article/151119/americas-missing-labor-party-book-review-erik-loomis-history-ten-strikes; “Trends in Migration to the U.S.,” by Philip Martin, Population Reference Bureau, May 9, 2014, https://www.prb.org/us-migration-trends/)

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Illegal Immigrant Poverty Rates Mock Claims that they’re U.S. Economic Saviors

Tags

Census Breau, citizens, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, immigrants, Immigration, non-citizens, Pew Research Center, poverty, social mobility, taxes, Vox.com, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As the U.S. immigration policy debate rages on, claims continue that more lenient admissions policies, including amnesty policies that would clearly strengthen the magnet for more illegal immigration, are urgently needed to fix the nation’s demographically imperiled pension finances.

One of the latest examples comes from the left-leaning news and opinion site Vox.com:

“Economic estimates show that immigration would help save the Social Security system. Not just legal immigration — illegal immigration too.”

“Undocumented immigrants and immigrants with legal status pay billions of dollars each year into the Social Security system through payroll taxes. Based on estimates in the trustees report, the more immigrants that come in, the longer the Social Security system will stay solvent. That’s because immigrants, on average, are a lot younger than the overall US population, so their retirement is far off. And undocumented immigrants pay for Social Security, but they’re not allowed to get benefits.”

I’ve previously debunked such claims about illegal immigrants by showing both that their contribution to the national tax haul currently is much less a drop in the national bucket, and that it’s likely to stay tiny because social mobility in America has slowed to a crawl – meaning in particular that prospects keep getting bleaker for major income ladder climbing by the kinds of low-skill, poorly educated workers who dominate illegal immigrants’ ranks.

So it’s important to report that some recent data from the Census Bureau strongly confirms that mobility point – along with suggesting that one of the best ways to give illegal immigrants a leg up is to cut back their numbers seriously.

The statistics come in the form of figures kept by the Bureau on the “detailed social and economic statistics for age groups as well as racial groups that include the Hispanic, black or African-American, Asian and foreign-born populations.” These include numbers on poverty rates for native-born Americans, naturalized foreign-born citizens, and non-citizens (who of course by definition are foreign born). The latter aren’t necessarily illegals – for a variety of reasons, many legal immigrants never apply for citizenship, or don’t do so right away. But the non-citizen group would include all the illegals.

It seemed to me that the best way to tell if this non-citizen group and its illegal members are making noteworthy economic progress would be to focus on those in the 18-64-year old age group – i.e., those overwhelmingly likeliest to be employed, or seeking employment. The data go back to 1995 and up to 2015, so changes over a respectable period of time can be assessed. Below are the main findings, which also compare how poverty rates for non-citizens of working age have fared versus their native-born and naturalized citizen counterparts.

Year      native born 18-64s    naturalized 18-64s      non-citizen 18-64s

1995          10.8%                           8.4%                           25.7%

2001            8.8%                           8.1%                           17.8%

2007         10.0%                            8.5%                           19.9%

2009         11.9%                          10.1%                           24.2%

2015          9.7%                             8.9%                           17.9%

The most obvious takeaway is that the the poverty rates for the non-citizens of working age have remained much higher than those for the rest of the population of working age. And in absolute terms, for a high-income country like the United States, they’re exceedingly high.

These numbers also show that the poverty rate for the working age non-citizens has declined considerably faster than that for native-born Americans (-30.35 percent vs -10.19 percent). And that 30-plus percent drop contrasts especially strikingly with the change in the naturalized citizen rate – which actually rose by 5.95 percent.

So doesn’t that latter trend strongly suggest that illegal workers do keep increasing earnings significantly? Not so fast. First, remember that the performance of the illegals is undoubtedly worse than that of non-citizens as a whole. After all, illegals don’t have a heck of a lot of bargaining power at the workplace. Second, as RealityChek regulars know, the most accurate read on economic trends comes from comparing similar phases of the economic cycle – e.g., recessions with recessions, expansions with expansions.

And in that vein, what the data underscore to me is that the biggest drop in the working age non-citizens’ poverty rate came during the last half of the strongest and longest American expansion to date – that which lasted from 1991 to 2001. Between 1995 and 2001, it fell by 30.73 percent. During the bubble era expansion of 2001-2007, the non-citizen poverty rate actually increased (by 11.80 percent). Their fortunes improved notably during the first six years of the current expansion – decreasing by 26.03 percent. But that slowdown was more modest than that of the 1991-2001 recovery.

It’s certainly possible that since then, the rate has fallen further – and that this expansion will start speeding up, leading to additional improvement. But given the length of this recovery (more than nine years), that would be surprising – at least for any prolonged period.

Further improvement, however, could indeed be on the horizon because during the current recovery years, when that 26 percent fall in the poverty rate took place, the illegal immigrant population shrunk – from 11.5 million to 11.0 million, according to the pretty authoritative Pew Research Center. I say “pretty authoritative” because measuring activity related to illegality is always difficult. But these Pew data strike me as reasonable because all else equal, whenever the supply of anything (like illegal immigrant workers) decreases, its value (earnings) tends to increase.

So if the Trump administration can keep illegal inflows down, illegal workers’ poverty rates seem likely to fall further because of rising pay. But ironically, this development would also weaken the case that illegals will prove to be the U.S. economy’s financial salvation. For their incomes will remain very low in absolute terms by any reasonable measure, and their numbers will be smaller than their supporters seem to assume.

Moreover, the less illegal immigrant competition they face, again all else equal, the higher the pay of the much greater population of native-born workers will rise. Legal immigrants stand to benefit as well.

Something to keep in mind when you next hear some Open Borders enthusiast shout, “Abolish ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement]!”

Im-Politic: What Kamala Harris Didn’t Tell You About the Founding Fathers and Immigration

Tags

Declaration of Independence, Founding Fathers, Fourth of July, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Independence Day, Kamala Harris, progressives, slavery

Freshman (person?) Democratic Senator Kamala Harris of California clearly thought she had made a slam dunk point in the national immigration debate on July 4, when she sent out this tweet:

“A reminder this Fourth of July: it was eight immigrants who signed the Declaration of Independence. Happy Independence Day.”

And lots of the Twitter-verse evidently agreed, for the tweet received more than 132,000 “Likes” as of this morning. The messages she sought to send and that they received were clear:  Anyone who diverges from the Open Borders gospel they’re preaching is ignorant of and maybe even opposed to fundamental American values, especially like inclusiveness and diversity; and these supposed nativists either don’t know or don’t want others to know that the foreign-born have made outsized contributions to the country’s historic success.

Unfortunately for Harris and her fans, she should have done a little more research. For it turns out that most of these eight immigrant signers of the Declaration shared another characteristic that’s consistent with another claim often pushed by many of Harris’ fellows on the progressive Left: that the Declaration signers and the Founding Fathers generally were white racists who have at best little to teach the nation today. (Click here, here, and here for some examples – the latter from a University of Michigan Law School professor, no less.)

Specifically, no less than five of the eight immigrant Declaration signers were slave-holders. Here’s the evidence for Button Gwinnett of Georgia and Robert Morris of Pennsylvania (both born in England, rather than in one of the thirteen colonies); for George Taylor of Pennsylvania (born in Ireland); for John Witherspoon of New Jersey (born in Scotland); and Francis Lewis of New York (born in Wales).

Even worse, two of the five (Morris and Lewis) were significant players in the slave trade.

Of course, many of the remaining 48 Declaration signers who were born in the colonies owned and/or traded slaves, too, along with other Founders. And why should anyone be especially surprised? All were products of their time. Some were honest enough with themselves to recognize the self-evident conflict between slavery on the one hand and the principles of liberty and freedom and equality that they espoused on the other. Some weren’t. Nor should this observation be the least bit surprising: Where they were born was completely irrelevant.

As for the Open Borders crowd in general, it needs to admit that, ethically speaking, in its view there’s no difference on average between foreign-born Americans, native-born Americans, immigrants, and aspiring immigrants either. You can throw in refugees and asylum seekers (real and fake) as well.

Let’s of course by all means continue to have a robust debate on U.S. immigration reform. But let’s focus on genuine policy dilemmas, like economic impact, financing the costs, proper assimilation measures, and national security screening, instead of trying to write a morality play. Dropping the immigration fake history (and Harris is hardly the first such trafficker in this genre) would be a great place to start.