At Bloomberg Megan McArdle calls for a more coherent policy on immigration:
We can argue about whether or not America has an immigration problem. But it seems pretty clear that Democrats have an immigration problem, one that they’re going to have to fix if they want to effectively oppose Trump, much less regain control of the government.
Josh Barro has laid out at length exactly what that problem is. Briefly: Democratic arguments about immigration mostly aren’t arguments. The party has relied on opposing Trump’s more outrageously exaggerated claims about the criminality and all-around character flaws of immigrants. That’s fine, as far as it goes — but as November showed, it doesn’t go far enough.
I think she errs in implying that the lack of a coherent policy on immigration is solely a Democratic problem when it’s obviously a bipartisan one. Let’s recap how we got to where we are now.
Present policies benefit recent immigrants, Hamiltonians who are always eager for cheap, servile labor, and Wilsonians, well-intentioned as always. They hurt Jacksonians while Jeffersonians stand glumly on the sidelines, pointing out the obvious, as is our wont.
Any rationalization of our policies will hurt recent immigrants, Hamiltonians, and Wilsonians and they will fight them to the death. There will never be acceptance of the obvious, that maintaining or even expanding present policy requires the unworkable notion of a right to immigrate.
Meanwhile, don’t expect coherence from President Trump. He doesn’t do coherence. Presumably, he does deals. What is the deal to be done on immigration? I honestly have no idea.
Even when I talk to regular people (friends and associates), few have really thought much past the platitudes. Details and process matter a lot, but that is messy and complicated compared to mantras like “we are a nation of immigrants.”
One of my many irritating habits is to insist that people (wife, kids, random people at a bar) have some idea what they want. It’s astounding how few people can articulate a goal. Not surprisingly it’s very hard to get what you want if you don’t know what that is.
The Trumpies knows what they want: no more foreigners. Business knows what it wants: cheap Indian programmers and migrants to pick strawberries. The Left wants everyone singing kumbaya and feeling the warm glow of righteousness. The nativist goal is morally suspect, but largely achievable. The business goal ditto. But how the hell do you get from Point A to Point Kumbaya?
I haven’t a clue what “my” team wants in practical terms. Open borders? With a nanny state? Impossible. A system based on letting in whoever produced the most heart-tugging photo this week? A system based on proving our open-mindedness?
There’s a door. We have a guy standing next to that door, charged with opening it sometimes and closing it at other times, and that guy cannot be charged with opening and closing in such a way as to achieve the goal of making people feel righteous.
If it was me I’d treat immigrants like any other resource. Do we need some soy beans? Then let’s buy some soy beans. Do we need agricultural workers? Then let’s get some. Do we need programmers? Let’s get some of those. The funny thing is that most of the countries my fellow liberals admire have just that sort of pragmatic approach. When you cut through the bullshit the essence of immigration policy in most countries comes down to limiting the number of poor people while throwing the door open to people of means. It’s about as subtle as a rope line at a trendy club: hot girls and rich guys come on in. You read their immigration sites and it’s, “Here are the many, many reasons you’re not getting in. . . Oh, I’m sorry, you have money? Then allow me to introduce your concierge.”
Without getting into an intellectual analysis of Hamiltonians vs Wilsonians, I believe it’s safe to say (in layman terms) that both parties have shied away from enacting any kind of constructive immigration reform. Instead, immigration has evolved into a convenient wedge issue and election tool, enlarging one party’s voting block – primarily the Democrat party. It joins other partisan third rail divides, such as gender, race, class, entitlements etc., comprising the ongoing disingenuous partisan food fight where the main goal, seemingly, is to retain power rather than advancing the betterment of the country. Just look at the self righteous opposition of the current minority party towards the majority from seating it’s own cabinet! Someone should just hand out pacifers.
When McArdle says that distrust of strangers is universal she’s pointing out the problem. Regardless of whether it’s universal, the idea of a stranger has changed in America. And for more and more Democrats, most people who aren’t white, and most anybody who lives in a city, there’s very little in human shape that’s strange. The women in the burqa is not strange, and the guy speaking Urdu isn’t strange.
After the election, Joyner at OTB said something indicative of where the rest of the country is. He referred to an attack on a Somali woman in one of the Carolinas, and how all of the people the Congressman whose district this occurred in were supportive of the idea that one might attack an immigrant simply out of anger at hearing another language.
To me this is pure evil. Anyone who can sides with the attacker deserves nothing contempt. But obviously these people think I am equally deranged for not freaking out like a child when I see a woman in a burqa. Or so they say–these people are not evil, and most likely they are abject and ashamed conformists. They’re cowards and what they want, from Trump, is some sort of absolution for whiteness and cowardice.