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

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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.

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

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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

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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

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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.

And the Open Borders crowd needs to admit that, ethically speaking, 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.

Following Up: My Maryland Hometown Approves Non-Citizen (Including Illegal Immigrant) Local Voting

Tags

Aaron Faulx, citizenship, democracy, diversity, Following Up, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, immigrants, Immigration, Maryland, Pledge of Allegiance, Riverdale Park, voting

Monday night, the monthly legislative meeting of my hometown Riverdale Park, Maryland’s Town Council started off, as usual, with the pledge to the flag. A little less than two hours later, the Council voted 4-2 (with one abstention) to extend local voting rights to two categories of non-citizen residents (illegal and legal immigrants), and to 16-year olds to boot.

As RealityChek readers know, I wasn’t surprised by the final result – although the margin of defeat was narrower than I expected. Still, especially in light of the Pledge of Allegiance recited solemnly by Council members supporting this amendment to the Town Charter, and their backers in the audience, the voting decision was a (vigorous) head-scratcher. For it raises the most profound questions about to what exactly those in favor of non-citizen voting are vowing their loyalty.

As I wrote in that previous post, this form of voter expansion is completely inconsistent with arguments made – and with good reason – throughout American history since the era of the Founding. These arguments have held that a successful democracy cannot be created or maintained unless it’s based on a community of deeply shared ideas about democratic governance. In turn, it’s impossible to preserve this community and allow significant immigration flows unless newcomers receive extensive exposure to these values. Hence longstanding requirements that voting on the federal level be restricted to citizens, and that the naturalization process take several years. (As explained also in the post, the Constitution empowers the states to set election rules within their borders, and both historically and currently, some have decided ignore these claims and to permit non-citizen voting.)

Instead, the new Riverdale Park voting eligibility criteria specify that an applicant be a resident for a mere 45 days. Of course, even this threadbare requirement will be difficult at best to verify for illegal immigrants (along with their very identities). And it is utterly far-fetched to suppose that these verification goals can be achieved adequately with same-day registration of these voters.

But just as important, a 45-day local resident who could well have crossed the U.S. border not long beforehand cannot possibly be well-versed enough in the nation’s democratic values to qualify for the franchise – which is after all a right to make decisions with long-term implications for the community’s well-being. As for non-citizen legal U.S. residents, they either have not been present in the United States long enough to pass the national tests for citizenship (which include a five-year residency requirement), or they have chosen not to become citizens – and therefore join the national democratic community.

Is there any reason, however, to believe that the national residency requirement is inappropriate to apply on the municipal level? If so, none of the supporters of Riverdale Park voter expansion has mentioned it, and there’s no evidence that the subject even came up in discussion of the proposal among Council Members.

I sent my RealityChek post on the subject to all the Town Council members before the vote. Only two replied, and neither of them supported the amendment. In fact, I’ve only seen a single reference to the subject of a community of beliefs – in a lengthy and largely emotive ramble on non-citizen voting published by my Council Member, Aaron Faulx, in the April issue of the Riverdale Park government’s official bulletin. According to Faulx, “Our shared beliefs need to evolve toward inclusivity and engagement.”

He didn’t explain what he believes comprises these shared beliefs currently, much less why they’re flawed. But the shared beliefs he prizes are hollow at best and dangerously inadequate at worst. “Inclusivity” per se, after all, says nothing about substance. As a result, it seems to assume that even individuals who actively oppose each others’ most fundamental political and even philosophical principles can for any significant period of time work together to promote any version of common well-being – much less one bearing any resemblance to that which has served the nation so well for so long, though of course not perfectly. How on earth can that work? The only reasonable answer is, “It can’t.”

And if inclusivity per se (and its logical follow-on, “engagement”) cannot be treated as absolutes, then they inescapably need to be supplemented with some form of content. And just as logically, it can’t reasonably be assumed that those  unfamiliar with this content (through usually through no fault of their own to be sure) can instantly or quickly become familiar once they enter any political community – national, state, or local – from the outside. Some period of orientation – i.e., assimilation – is essential. And on a more practical level, some effective way of determining that the assimilation process has been completed is essential.

Reasonable people can disagree on the specifics of all of these procedural standards. But what is thoroughly unreasonable is insisting that they, and the institution of citizenship that necessarily incorporates considered procedural and substantive considerations alike, be dispensed with in the name of a mere shibboleth – whether “inclusivity” or its cousin, “diversity” – that has in and of itself has no organizational capabilities whatever. Even sadder is the seeming refusal of the “inclusivists” to recognize or admit that these related concepts of citizenship and voting rights have for decades (not long enough, to be sure!) been available totally irrespective of race, gender, or ethnicity.

So no wonder I found these “inclusivists’” recitation of the pledge to the flag Monday night so utterly ironic, and indeed bizarre – and why you should, too. For their stated views can only logically mean that they’re pledging allegiance not to a national political community worthy of the name, but to a certain tract of land and whatever agglomeration of individuals happens to be occupying it at any given moment. Why even continue to bother?

Im-Politic: My Maryland Town Seems Keen on Non-Citizen Voting – & on Weakening Democracy

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Alexander Hamilton, assimilation, citizenship, Constitution, elections, Founding Fathers, George Washington, government benefits, illegal immigrants, Im-Politic, immigrants, legal immigrants, Louis Brandeis, Marsha Dixon, Maryland, Riverdale Park, Thomas Jefferson, voting

How thoroughly depressing to report that my town of Riverdale Park, Maryland seems about to join post-borders and post-citizenship America– that is to say, post-America America. Early next month, the town council is almost sure to approve legislation that will grant the vote in local elections to non-citizens both legally and illegally present in the United States. For good measure, the bill would lower the voting age for such elections to sixteen.

The above description should suffice to point to many of the proposal’s worst flaws. By extending the franchise to illegal immigrants, the town would create another reward for individuals who have broken U.S. law, and add insult to injury to all those outside the country’s borders who have been waiting in line and playing by the rules in order to enter. Even permitting legal non-citizens to vote on the local level would greatly empower many residents who, for various reasons, have chosen to avoid this kind of binding commitment to the American political community. In other words, both categories of canon-citizens would be able to weigh in on decisions with long-term implications for the town’s well-being without much skin in the game.

In addition, in the case of both legals and illegals, the vote would be rewarded based on residing in Riverdale Park for a grand total of 45 days. And despite the legislation’s creation of a “supplemental voter registry,” it looks like a great recipe for voter fraud given that applicants merely need to “submit a signed registration form with the town clerk in a form prescribed by the clerk.” The measure does specify that verification be provided that “the individual is eligible to vote in town elections” (by showing residency for 45 days). But how reassuring can this requirement be given that undocumented immigrants are – by definition – undocumented? Even more troubling: Applicants will be able to complete this registration process (including the supposed verification) on the very day elections are held.

As for lowering the voting age to sixteen, anyone who has ever parented an adolescent should understand why this idea should have been a non-starter.

I attended a town council meeting on March 26 to listen to and participate in debate over the bill. All manner of legitimate and specious arguments were made on behalf of legal and illegal non-citizen voting by the smallish number of residents present. Heading the first category was the compelling (though still controversial) claim that the non-citizen voting legislation would be completely acceptable on Constitutional grounds, since the Constitution says nothing explicit about the overall subject. 

Moreover, although citizenship has more recently been established as a nearly absolute requirement for voting in federal elections, the National Council of State Legislatures holds that it’s the states, with important qualifications (such as Constitutional bars on various forms of arbitrary discrimination) that posses “the ultimate authority” over elections within their borders. 

But the flurry of bogus arguments for permitting non-citizens to vote, and the conspicuous failure of most council members to challenge them, convinced me that this scheme is a done deal – unless it can be overturned by a referendum. For example, supporters claimed that enabling non-citizens of both types to vote was needed to establish Riverdale Park as a “welcoming community.” None responded to my objection that any resident is currently free to bring any concerns to the attention of any current town official, and that surely these officials would take them seriously regardless of that resident’s legal status.

I was also of course told that both legal and illegal residents were subject to taxation, and thus deserved representation (as 18^th century patriot Patrick Henry famously insisted). But of course, legal non-citizens are already eligible for a wide variety of benefits at many government levels, and illegals are eligible for a narrower but hardly negligible range – in addition to benefits (like public school attendance and food stamps eligibility) they can access indirectly because their children are permitted to attend public schools and, if born in the United States and therefore citizens. And let’s not forget – both categories of non-citizens also enjoy the less tangible but no less significant benefits of living in a freedom-loving democracy that, however flawed, ensures that power is exercised through the rule of law, not arbitrarily. Indeed, isn’t that largely why they’re here in the first place?

But most disturbing were two other categories of arguments – the first because it reflected absolutely no interest in political values central to the country’s historic success, the second because it suggested unmistakable contempt for these values.

This indifference – or what certainly sounded like it – came from the measure’s sponsor, Council Member Marsha Dixon, and was expressed after I described the legislation as a perfect example of poor governance. As I see it, a politician takes it on him or herself to solve a problem that’s been proactively identified by no one else in the town (even the non-citizens), according to all available evidence, and thus to fix a local political culture that has showed no signs of being broken.

Dixon’s response? (This is a paraphrase, since the official minutes of the meeting haven’t yet been posted.) She thought the town’s population had “evolved” (that I remember for sure), and therefore its voting rules needed to evolve accordingly.

But there’s evolution and there’s evolution. And Dixon’s version simply ignored one of the most important lessons taught by the Founding Fathers: The only hope for the long-term survival and health of an American democracy worth preserving is creating and nurturing a community of shared democratic values. And achieving this goal inevitably requires a process of assimilating immigrants that is inescapably protracted if it to be taken seriously.

Hence the fears expressed by Thomas Jefferson in 1782 about the encouragement of mass immigration:

“It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possible in matters which they must of necessity transact together. Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent. Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchies. Yet, from such, we are to expect the greatest number of emigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.”

George Washington shared many of these concerns, and believed that only exposure to American ways – a process that he suggested could take generations – could mitigate them:

“My opinion, with respect to emigration, is, that except of useful mechanics and some particular descriptions of men or professions, there is no need of encouragement, while the policy or advantage of its taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the Language, habits and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them—Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures and laws:—in a word, soon become one people.”

Alexander Hamilton has been portrayed in the recent blockbuster musical as a champion of Open Borders and immigrants’ rights, agreed with Jefferson and Washington, and argued strongly in 1802 against a (Jefferson) proposal to completely eliminate a fourteen-year requirement for naturalization (stemming from widespread alarm about excessive foreign influence in American affairs at a time when the new nation was threatened by both British and French ambitions). Alluding to those resulting insecurities and tensions, Hamilton allowed that

“The present law was merely a temporary measure adopted under peculiar circumstances and perhaps demands revision. But there is a wide difference between closing the door altogether and throwing it entirely open; between a postponement of fourteen years and an immediate admission to all the rights of citizenship. 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. A residence of at least five years ought to be required.”

Riverdale Park Council Member Dixon’s threadbare 45-day residency requirement demonstrates just how unconcerned about this history, and these essential considerations, so many of our politicians have become – as well as how thoughtless.

Nevertheless, her arguments at least didn’t explicitly scorn the view that the Founders’ deserve any hearing. That belief was expressed by several town residents who spoke in favor of expanding the franchise. Responding to my summary of this history, one youngish woman dismissed the Founders as figures who favored denying women the vote and treating enslaved African-Americans as three-fifths of a person (as stated in the Constitution’s Article I, Section 2) for the purposes of allotting the number of Congress members for each state. (Hamilton, of course, was “accused” by many contemporaries of having a mixed race background). A similarly youngish man smirked that, he “had no idea what was in the minds of the Founding Fathers,” and suggested he didn’t especially care.

This is of course a classic instance of “presentism” – the mistake of judging historical figures entirely by contemporary standards. Worse, such sneering overlooks how leaders whose views on race and gender would of course (rightly) be regarded today as racist and sexist nonetheless recognized that times could change momentously for the new nation – and included in their new nation’s organizing framework procedures for approving comparably momentous changes.

Moreover, similar views have been expressed by someone who wasn’t a slaveholder or sexist. In fact, he’s a deserved icon of American progressivism – early twentieth century Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. In a 1915 speech with a title – “True Americanism” – whose use by the left half of the political spectrum these days would be almost inconceivable, Brandeis spoke at length on the importance of assimilation.

He was no simple melting pot advocate. In fact, Brandeis explicitly stated that:

“America has believed that we must not only give to the immigrant the best that we have, but must preserve for America the good that is in the immigrant and develop in him the best of which he is capable. America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.”

But Brandeis (whose parents were foreign born) also insisted that immigrants undergo Americanization, and that at its core, this concept entailed ensuring that a newcomer’s “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.”

Brandeis was emphatically optimistic that this task could be accomplished – not least because he credited many immigrants are “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 Brandeis also understood that the “E pluribus” (out of many) part of America’s national motto needed to become some meaningful form of “unum” (one) If only Riverdale Park – and all the other jurisdictions in Maryland and elsewhere in the United States that have either jumped on this bandwagon or are actively mulling this step – weren’t acting so determined to evolve beyond that vital ideal, too.

Glad I Didn’t Say That: No Obama Learning Curve on Immigration

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Barack Obama, crime, Ed Gillespie, Fairfax County, gang violence, gangs, Glad I Didn't Say That!, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, immigrants, Immigration, MS-13, Virginia, Virginia governor's race

“[I]n Fairfax County [Virginia] MS-13 related incidents in the first 4 months of this year jumped more than 160 percent compared with 2015.”

—WJLA.com, Washington, D.C., June 30, 2016

“This [MS-13] problem is horrible. This is four murders in this park. Obviously, we’ve had other murders in the region in the past few weeks. This is getting out of control and we need to stop it.”

—Fairfax County police chief Ed Roessler, March 3, 2017

“Along with Los Angeles, ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] considers Northern Virginia a hub for MS-13.”

—Fox5DC.com, Washington, D.C., July 27, 2017

Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie’s ads spotlighting MS-13 threat are “really trying to deliver…fear. What he really believes is if you scare enough voters, you might score just enough votes to win an election. It’s just as cynical as politics gets.”

—Former President Barack Obama, October 19, 2017

Im-Politic: Beyond the (Poll) Numbers on Immigration

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culture, Democrats, economy, Gallup, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Jobs, polls, Republicans, taxes, Trump, wages

Do apparently clashing poll results on immigration mainly signal that polling companies don’t know what they’re doing? That Americans are fundamentally conflicted on the issue? Or can sensible, and even obvious, reasons be identified for the seeming gap if you just do a little extra thinking? Examining three recent Gallup soundings convinces me that it’s the latter.

On the proverbial one hand, two new Gallup surveys about immigration appear to show that Americans have become much keener on immigrants – possibly including illegal immigrants, though Gallup hasn’t drawn this distinction. On June 29, Gallup reported that a record (post-1993) share of Americans (49 percent) now agree that “immigrants mostly help the U.S. economy by providing low cost labor.” Moreover, except for a drop in the very late 1990s and early 2000s, this number has been rising – though since 2005, the increase has been gradual.

Forty percent of respondents agreed that immigrants “most hurt the economy by driving wages down for many Americans.” In contrast to the trends for those expressing favorable opinions, the share of Americans worried about immigrants’ wage-related economic impact has decreased pretty sharply since 1993 (when it stood at 64 percent), and especially since the early 2000s (when it peaked at 65 percent).

Also encouraging for proponents of more immigration or more lenient policies towards illegal immigrants: a poll the day before showing that the percentages of Americans viewing immigrants as a plus rather than a negative for the country on economic and non-economic grounds had grown impressively between 2007 and 2017. Interestingly, though, even in 2017, the only category in which a majority of Americans emphasized the positive impact of immigration was in “food, music and the arts” (57 percent – up from 40 percent in 2007). Only ten percent of Americans said that immigration had worsened matters on these scores.

On “the economy in general,” only 45 percent in 2017 saw immigrants “making the situation in the country better” (up from 28 percent in 2007). And only 23 percent and 20 percent believed that immigrants had improved the national situation when it comes to “taxes” and “job opportunities for you and your family” – up from 19 and 11 percent, respectively, in 2007.

As for those who believed immigrants’ effects were negative, 30 percent agreed with that proposition regarding the overall economy, 41 percent went along on the subject of taxes, and 28 percent expressed this view on the job issue. (The remainder of respondents stated that immigrants weren’t having much effect in any of these areas.)

As Gallup noted, positive answers to these questions in 2017 were generally at their highest levels since the firm began asking them in 2001. And despite the high negative numbers, a strong argument can be made that the considerable indifference expressed can be seen as an endorsement of immigrants’ growing numbers overall, given the emotional resonance of the issue.

Yet a June 7 Gallup survey created a substantially different picture. It reports that the shares of Americans believing that immigration “should be decreased” has kept falling since the mid-1990s (from 65 percent to 35 percent). But it was still bigger than the growing share believing that immigration “should be increased” – which has risen from the high single digits from the mid-1960s to 24 percent nowadays. Thirty five percent of Americans want “immigration to be kept at its present level,” and this number has stayed pretty stable – with some fluctuations – since the mid-1960s.

And here’s a surprise: Over the past year, the share of Democrats and Democratic leaners who favor decreasing immigration has actually risen slightly (from 20 to 23 percent) while that of Republicans and Republican leaners has shrunk from 60 percent to 48 percent. It’s true that the share of Democrats and leaners favoring greater immigration levels rose slightly as well. But it still stands at only 33 percent. (The rest expressed satisfaction with current levels.)

In this survey, Gallup analysts ventured an explanation for the unusual finding for Republicans; the GOP shift:

“could reflect a sense of political victory among Trump supporters who believe the president is fulfilling the immigration-related promises he made on the campaign trail. Republicans could, thus, feel more satisfied with the current status of immigration than they did during the height of the presidential election. Also, some Trump supporters might believe immigrants are being more thoroughly vetted by the Trump administration.”

I wish that Gallup had been as analytically ambitious in interpreting at least some of the growing popularity of the immigrant population according to the many indicators. One explanation that seems pretty obvious to me: It’s been influenced pretty considerably by the phenomenal growth of the country’s immigrant population. Indeed, since 1960, it’s more than quadrupled in absolute terms (to an estimated 41.3 million as of 2013). And from 1970 to 2013, immigrants increased their share of the American population from 4.7 percent to 13.1 percent. So more of the respondents being reached by Gallup are immigrants themselves, or their children.

It’s true that throughout American history, immigrants have shown a striking tendency to oppose more immigration once they’ve become established in their new homeland – usually for fear of facing new economic competition. But one of the most important and distinctive aspects of American immigration policy in recent decades has surely undercut this form of nativism – the focus on family reunification. That is, it’s likely that many recent immigrants favor more immigration because they view it mainly as a chance to bring in not additional low-wage workers, but close relatives. At the same time, we’ve got statistics strongly indicating that Hispanics’ views on immigration don’t necessarily dovetail with this observation.

So it seems that the most useful bottom line is that polls continue to be important sources of information about major political, social, economic, and other trends, but that to gauge public opinion accurately, you need to keep looking beyond the raw numbers.