I don’t know why American voters, by a 2-1 margin, support President Obama’s new immigration policy, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that most of them aren’t mean.
We saw this with AIDS in the 1980s. In the 1960s and 70s, young gay men by the hundreds of thousands fled their hometowns for the freedom and safety available to them only in a handful of urban enclaves—most notably Greenwich Village and the Castro.
In the 1980s there was a reverse migration, as tens of thousands of those same young men went home to die, their lives cut short by a new, mysterious and terrifying disease. Lots of their hometown neighbors, and even their family members, might have thought homosexuality was sinful, or a disease in and of itself, or just gross and icky to contemplate (let alone talk about). But that didn’t mean they thought it should be a death sentence. It didn’t mean they thought suffering young men—young men they and their children had grown up with—should be made to suffer more than they already were. They may have been mean to the “fags”, but they weren’t that mean.
Most American voters know illegal immigrants. Most American parents have children who’ve gone to school with, played soccer or football with, had playdates and sleepovers with, illegal immigrants. Most young American voters know, or know of, a classmate who couldn’t go to college because of his/her legal status.
They may not be Democrats, or liberals, or supporters of President Obama. But they don’t think young adults should have to live in a constant state of terror that they’ll be deported because of a decision their parents made years ago.
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/