The Progressives’ Gamble

Continuing on in the vein of my last post, in his Wall Street Journal column Jason L. Riley observes that the progressives who hold the reins of the Democratic Party are risking losing Hispanics with their views on immigration:

While the Department of Homeland Security is dealing with an unprecedented crush of migrants on the southern border that is straining shelter capacity and raising Covid concerns, Mr. Biden is urging his fellow Democrats in Congress to move forward with two amnesty proposals that would affect millions of people who reside in the U.S. illegally. One would provide a path to citizenship for people brought here illegally as children, the so-called Dreamers. The other would legalize the status of undocumented farmhands.

The problem with both measures has less to do with their substance than with their timing and the message to other would-be migrants considering a trek north. Immigration restrictionists with a zero-sum view of labor markets accuse foreign workers of stealing jobs and depressing wages. But the people who would benefit from these bills were already part of a thriving U.S. labor force that, before the pandemic, saw record-low unemployment rates, wages rising fastest for the less-skilled, and a pronounced worker shortage in several industries.

The question is why the Biden administration is pushing for the largest amnesty in history while Border Patrol agents are already at wit’s end and when homeland security officials are anticipating the situation will worsen as the weather gets warmer. The administration has boastfully reversed border-security policies put in place by Donald Trump, seemingly without regard for whether they were effective. This has won Mr. Biden plaudits in the media, but it also has undermined efforts on both sides of the border to reduce illegal crossings. The president should figure out which is more important.

How does this risk Hispanic votes?

The other reason Mr. Biden should be wary of moving too far left to please progressives is that it could fracture the party’s base, according to Democratic strategists who have done a deep dive into the November results. In an interview earlier this month with New York magazine, David Shor, a data analyst at the left-wing Center for American Progress, said that the party’s focus on progressive priorities cost Democrats support among blacks, Asians and especially Hispanics. “In the summer, following the emergence of ‘defund the police’ as a nationally salient issue, support for Biden among Hispanic voters declined,” Mr. Shor said. “The decline that we saw was very large. Nine percent or so nationwide, up to 14 or 15 percent in Florida. Roughly one in ten Hispanic voters switched their vote from [Hillary] Clinton to Trump.”

Mr. Shor’s comments on how the immigration issue played out in the 2020 campaign were even more illuminating. “In test after test that we’ve done with Hispanic voters, talking about immigration commonly sparks backlash,” he said. “Asking voters whether they lean toward Biden and Trump, and then emphasizing the Democratic position on immigration, often caused Biden’s share of support among Latino respondents to decline.”

That much should have been obvious from earlier polling data as well as studies by economists. Immigrants already here have more to lose from an unending torrent of new workers with whom to compete for too few jobs than other groups.

But they’re not the only ones. The most recent polling data I could find suggests that black voters recognize that they’re in competition with immigrants for jobs 3:2 compared with white voters. There’s no conflict between believing that illegal immigrants should be treated mercifully, a view held by many black voters no doubt due to their Christian faith, and believing there should be fewer of them.

As I see it progressives are engaging in a three-way gamble:

1. They’re betting that affiliation will outweigh either interest or conviction. So far it has worked out that way but the signs above suggest that the tide may be turning.
2. They’re betting that Republicans embracing racists and white supremacists or, at least, failing to reject them soundly enough will keep blacks and Hispanics in the fold. The Republicans have been cooperative in this.
3. Their media allies provide a continuing barrage of propaganda covering fire. They can probably rely on that for the foreseeable future.

but as I say, it’s a gamble. It will hold true until it doesn’t.