Advertisement
Commentary
The GOP candidates' approach to immigration is bad for everybody. Including Republicans
Immigration is reportedly one of President Biden’s “least favorite issues to discuss.” Only the comatose would blame him. It is the quicksand of politics, sucking to their doom politicians who dare dip a toe in its churning goo.
Donald Trump, fresh off his runaway victory in the Iowa caucus, has promised to close the southern border. For years he’s been inflaming his base with “Hitleresque” language about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Amid migration that is swamping officials and facilities at the southern border, Congress dawdles, as it has for years, over the solution: spending money on more immigration courts, border agents and processing facilities, while updating admissions criteria. (I’d argue for a Canada-style system, privileging potential to contribute economically to the nation.)
Yet discuss this matter we must. Gallup ranks immigration as the public’s second-biggest political concern. Unmanageable levels of migration drove even blue state leaders, including Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, to yelp for help from Washington. As New Hampshire prepares to vote, it must weigh a Republican presidential field competing to outdo each other in effecting the “Great Subtraction” in immigration.
Ron DeSantis, who edged out Nikki Haley for silver in Iowa, called people fleeing foreign repression and poverty an “invasion” that demands Donald Trump’s pipedream of a Mexican-funded wall. Haley, meanwhile, says she would deport anyone who came here during Biden’s term, even legally. Both these ideas qualify as hardline. (And Trump still muses about reviving family separation, though a judge banned that atrocity.)
I want to suggest to my fellow Republicans preparing to vote in next Tuesday’s primary and beyond that these GOP impulses imperil your prosperity and national security.
Begin with plunging birth rates among native-born Americans, which means we’ll increasingly depend on young immigrants to join the military to defend the country. Given the conservative right’s attraction to authoritarians like Trump, perhaps some MAGA types wouldn’t mind if Vladimir Putin overran us. Presumably, however, they expect Social Security to support them in their golden years, in which case they'll need young immigrants in the workforce to pay into the program's payroll taxes. They’ll need young immigrants in the workforce to support their retirement by paying Social Security taxes. (Trump’s go-to immigration economist made that point himself ahead of Trump’s 2016 election.)
Moreover, Republicans grouse about our supposedly anemic economy. The complaint is bogus, but immigration restrictions could make it real.
When U.S. Border Patrol temporarily closed railroad bridges in Eagle Pass and El Paso, Texas, the loss of cargo shipments slammed trade-dependent local economies. The head of the Texas Association of Business condemned the shutdown as a “half-baked decision."
The closure of an Arizona point of entry by the Biden administration, intended to curb surging migration by rail, is presumably met with MAGA approval. Yet the state’s governor, of the same political party as Biden, disagrees. The move was as damaging to Arizona as it was to Texas.
Republican rants against immigration come in a historical context of American xenophobia. That ugliness, not economics or defense, is what animates MAGA Republicans.
Now imagine those states’ losses spread along the whole border. The Republican Party, the self-declared party of business, apparently learned economics from whoever taught its bankrupt frontrunner for the presidential nomination.
The GOP also claims to be the only trustworthy guardian of national defense, yet its immigration agenda would hamper security. Some Republicans propose abolishing presidential “humanitarian parole,” adopted in the 1950s to temporarily admit or retain noncitizens. This long-standing policy saved immigrants fleeing the dictators who are our enemies, including people who were on the run because they helped us. Making the United States an unreliable ally hardly makes us more secure.
Eliminating humanitarian parole could even worsen undocumented immigration, the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell writes, because “parole is an orderly, legal pathway to enter the United States. The easier it is to come here safely and legally, the less incentive there is to pay smugglers and sneak in illegally.” Parole isn’t hurdle-free. It requires security and health screenings, Rampell notes, along with a private U.S. sponsor and proof that the applicant faces a humanitarian emergency.
Another Republican suggestion would revive the pandemic’s Title 42, expelling migrants before they have a chance to apply for asylum. That provision actually created more undocumented entries. People who were expelled tried to re-enter illegally again, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics.
Xenophobia has long been a poison in American culture. There were riots in the mid-1800s against my Irish Catholic ancestors. The Chinese Exclusion Act barred immigrants from that country for six decades. Advocates of prohibition, objected not only to drinking but immigrant drinkers.
Republican rants against immigration come in a historical context of American xenophobia. That ugliness, not economics or defense, is what animates MAGA Republicans. After all, Trump explicitly welcomed immigrants from white nations like Norway; it’s people from “s---hole nations” of color who haunt him.
Immigration reforms in the 1960s changed America’s complexion, bringing newcomers from Asia and Latin America. The dyspeptic response from Trump’s minions is predictable. It also must be rejected on behalf of the national interest.
