In the Washington Post today, George Will tries to take apart Republican resistance to immigration reform piece by piece. The most interesting element of his argument is expressed in his opening and closing paragraphs:
Distilled to their discouraging essence, Republicans’ reasons for retreating from immigration reform reflect waning confidence in American culture and in the political mission only Republicans can perform — restoring U.S. economic vigor. Without this, the nation will have a dismal future only Democrats can relish: government growing in order to allocate scarce opportunity.”
Opposition to immigration because the economy supposedly cannot generate sufficient jobs is similar defeatism. Zero-sum reasoning about a fixed quantity of American opportunity is for a United States in a defensive crouch, which is not for conservatives.
As Mr. Will sees it, Republican opposition to immigration reform reflects a “waning confidence in American culture” and he sees their position as a “defensive crouch.” Reading Ann Coulter’s syndicated column today, I can see why Mr. Will feels that way. Coulter argues that the Republicans haven’t begun to lose the political argument in this country because their arguments stopped convincing Americans, but because a bunch of immigrants became voting citizens and their political views have diverged from the conservative consensus from the beginning.
With all the smirking on the left about their electoral victories, it’s important to remember that Democrats haven’t won the hearts and minds of the American people. They changed the people. If you pour vinegar into a bottle of wine, the wine didn’t turn, you poured vinegar into it. Similarly, liberals changed no minds. They added millions of new liberal voters through immigration.
On one level, Coulter reduced the issue of undocumented workers to a purely partisan consideration.
Americans are under no moral obligation to admit huge numbers of people who have no particular right to be here just because the Democrats need 30 million new voters.
I don’t think the Democrats need 30 million new voters, nor do I think we would get that many votes from immigration reform. While I would expect some electoral benefit over time from immigration reform, what motivates me is simple fairness. We ask these people to come here and work thankless jobs, and we benefit from the work they do. We should have allowed them to immigrate legally, and we should have made sure they were paid adequately so they didn’t create any downward pressure on wages. We needed the labor, and they supplied it. It’s our fault that we allowed the transaction to be in technical violation of the law.
Yet, that’s not what is really eating at Coulter and her fellow-conservative travelers.
If this country were the same demographically today as it was in 1980, Romney would have won a bigger victory in 2012 than Reagan did against Carter. And we wouldn’t have to hear about soccer all the time.
We’re living in a different country now, and I can’t recall moving! Had I wanted to live in Japan, I could have moved there. Had I had wanted to live in Mexico, Pakistan or Chechnya — I could have moved to those places, too.
I’m sure they’re lovely, but I wanted to live in America. Now I can’t.
With the repeal of Obamacare in the balance, I have argued that it’s insane for Republicans to waste resources primarying their own guys in 2014.
But any Republican who supports mass immigration has forfeited that claim. If the country is going to be ruined anyway, it could not matter less who wins any particular seat on this Titanic.
It’s hard to decipher where the line should be drawn between opposing immigration because the immigrants are brown and opposing immigration because the new Americans tend not to vote like Ann Coulter. The country is changed in both senses. In Coulter’s terms, “the country…is ruined” either way.
But Coulter isn’t speaking only for herself. She’s speaking for the conservative movement. As a result, I think Mr. Will is fully justified to characterize this sentiment as lacking in confidence about the culture and entirely defensive in nature.
I’ve said it before, but the Republican Party is a vehicle that can carry different kinds of passengers. It can carry Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller or it can carry Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. It can carry Lincoln Chafee and Olympia Snowe or it can carry Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. It can carry some combination of the two. In recent years, it has become an almost uniformly conservative-ferrying vehicle. What Mr. Will understands is, that has to change. The GOP must moderate significantly, or it will not compete on the national level again. Acceding to immigration reform is a first-step in that process.
Because in Coulter’s mind the American people are a fixed entity apart from the actual population of the country, the ones who, if they’d been able to suppress the votes of everybody different, would have defeated Barack Obama. The all-male, all-white American people that elected Andrew Jackson (and would have elected John C. Breckinridge if that DINO Stephen Douglas hadn’t gotten in the way–not).
Senator Walsh got his committee assignments.
That’s not particularly helpful. The Agriculture assignment is good, but they just passed the 5-year Farm Bill, so work is largely done for a while.
Aging and Rules do basically nothing that concerns Montanans.
Aging doesn’t even mark-up legislation.
So, that leaves Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which is a committee that can help Walsh win reelection by connecting him to interested parties in the state. But it ain’t much of a gig to hang your hat on.
Ooh.
Ed Markey took Baucus’s spot on Environment & Public Works.
Awesome!
Wall Street Republicans always favor flooding the country with cheap labor.
Main Street Republicans oppose that, and in the present case also foresee the same electoral effects everyone else can see.
We ask these people to come here and work thankless jobs, and we benefit from the work they do.
No we didn’t.
We should have allowed them to immigrate legally, and we should have made sure they were paid adequately so they didn’t create any downward pressure on wages.
You can’t flood the labor market without putting downward pressure on wages.
We needed the labor, and they supplied it.
No, we didn’t.
It’s our fault that we allowed the transaction to be in technical violation of the law.
No, it’s their fault for breaking the law, and the fault of all employers who have colluded with them, and the fault of all politicians who have colluded to ensure the immigration laws are a joke.
Do you know what it will cost to have American citizens, making minimum wage, working our fields? We didn’t ask for undocumented workers per se, but we did insist on cheap produce. We buy from the companies that give us cheap produce. We vote for the politicians that promise cheap produce. With our dollars, we asked for it. And even today, only a few of us are aware of the true costs of our choices.
>>Do you know what it will cost to have American citizens, making minimum wage, working our fields?
probably a lot less than you think. what percentage of $1 worth of lettuce do you think is field labor? I’d guess 20% or less.
It used to be done by migrant labor from Oklahoma and Arkansas. As a former engineer for International Harvester, I’m sure it can be done even cheaper by machine. But that would take investment and it’s no fun bullying or sexually harassing a machine. A pseudo-slave is much more fun for bigots and bullies.
My grandparents broke the law when they came here from Eastern Europe. I’m in no position to tell someone else that they can’t come.
Maybe none of your forbears broke the laws. Maybe you’ve the perfect moral right to pull the ladder up after you, in which case, I guess, you make an unassailable point.
But for me, personally? It’s completely morally indefensible for me to deny to others the opportunity that, through no effort or virtue of my own, I enjoy every single day.
I can’t argue with your points. Still, one has to consider the pressures on people to make them illegally enter a foreign land with an alien where you don’t speak the language.
What could force you to illegally enter Mexico (more severe penalties than the USA) and work at stoop labor? In most cases, these people were small farmers forced off the land by economic pressures caused by NAFTA and facing starvation.
Philo, it appears to me that your economic analysis is a little flawed. You act as if there is a fixed amount of jobs in this country. Doesn’t that ignore the fact that decently-compensated people have disposable income which creates job markets? More people means more needs, as long as those people have money to spend, and we have the resources to fill those needs.
Also, your analysis that we don’t need immigrant labor was shown to be the lie that it is when Alabama passed its stupidly drawn up laws a couple of years ago. Immigrant field labor fled the State, and crops rotted in the fields. Farmers begged the Legislature to reverse course, but no. And that’s just the agriculture industry. The stupid laws hurt other ‘Bama economic sectors as well.
I love it when the grifters start seeing that the 30-year game is over. It won’t be long before the library book sales won’t be able to dump the Ann Coulter books. And the only George Will books will be about baseball.
We tried the conservative prescription. As predicted, it didn’t work; furthermore it failed catastrophically both in foreign policy and in domestic policy. Even a decade of cheerleading and buying the support of Democrats in power couldn’t make it work. Not even Mitt Romney with his millions could convince Americans that it could work. Only massive bombardment in the media by the Koch brothers at selective sitting duck states could keep the conservative dream alive, and now the backlash is growing.
A decade too late, it’s over for conservatives as a viable ideology. Nothing but lies and tricks and massive waste of campaign money can keep their political seats.
Now, will Democrats press their advantage or fail once again to seize the reins of power out of fear of accountability?
We’ve been saying this for years, but ideologically the Republican party is utterly finished. It doesn’t matter who the nominee is or what the nomination process looks like. What would a Republican campaign possibly be ABOUT?
We’ve been saying it for years, and they’ve still got a lock on the House. A Republican campaign is about defending American from the Civil Rights Era and everything thereafter.
Republicans market their ideology as trying to save America from total ruin at the hand of…
THE END OF THE WORLD!
As long as the rubes and pig people can be convinced through fear and hate that “others” are coming to take their stuff and change their country, the Republicans will continue to hold enough power to hold progress back.
Except they can’t run a national campaign like that. They have absolutely no way to run a pro-active national campaign with any kind of coherent message. It’s simply not possible any more. People talk about how they need to moderate to have a prayer in 2016. There is absolutely no mechanism by which the party can moderate itself. Quite the opposite.
Now, they can do just fine in congressional districts and maybe even get a senate majority, and that can serve their “Dog-whistling for Wall Street” agenda quite well. Plus to whatever extent national Democrats embrace status-quo neoliberalism, the playing field is already entirely tilted for them. All true. I’ve argued elsewhere that it’s not even clear Republicans should want a national message and campaign at this time, since many of their donor’s interests are served quite well by rearguard obstruction and local Kochistans. And state goverments can be turned over to extremist agendas just fine while Republicans sink nationally. And that dynamic could go on for decades, well past the predicted “collapse” of the party into sectarian strife. But, as far as a national presidential election and all the associated electoral momentum, they have absolutely snothing at all except arcane dog-whistling and flavor of the month freak-outs, which is pretty much less than nothing at this point. But the point is well taken that this fact is not exactly reassuring.
Coulter’s America remains a Norman Rockwell image, while the rest of us have moved on past the 1950s.
I do believe you mean George Lincoln Rockwell. Norman Rockwell would seem to Ann Coulter like Norman Thomas. His “Four Freedoms” series (based on FDR’s speech) would set Ann Coulter off on one of her anti-Commie rants.
Except there were no characters like Coulter in Rockwell’s world. For good reason.
George Will never lets facts get in the way of his fantasy world where Republicans create wealth and happiness for all instead of the reality of depressions and misery for most.
People that promote lies that hurt others are evil.
…would never have gotten the GOP nomination in the first place because he’s a member of a freaky demi-cult.
You can’t pick and choose which forms of progress are acceptable, Ilsa. You’re stuck with all of them.
Unfortunately Coulter’s brand of tribalism/xenophobia is an American tradition, but then so are pluralism and egalitarianism. John Brown is as American as John C. Calhoun. And fortunately for the pluralists, it’s simply a fact that the United States is and always has been multicultural. And unfortunately for the xenophobes, their numbers are dwindling. I suspect that’s why we’re seeing this return of open and unapologetic bigotry–they’re feeling besieged.
But really, it’s impressive. Here I am, a straight white man, and even I’m not American enough for Ann Coulter. On my dad’s side I’m descended from Slavic immigrant who brought their strange and alien and vinegary ways to northeastern Pennsylvania in the early 20th century.
And on top of that, I live in California. I don’t mind being considered un-American by Ann Coulter, of course, but if you try to take away my taquerias there’s going to be trouble.
I’m with you, Stephen, except my ancestors (half of them, it’s the melting pot) came from Southern Europe instead of Eastern Europe. I’m sure I’m not American enough for Ann Coulter, either, although I live in “flyover” land. I consider her scorn a badge of honor.
P.S. My people did bring pizza, but I like pierogi’s too and, of course, tacos.
“…it’s important to remember that Democrats haven’t won the hearts and minds of the American people. They changed the people.”
These guys just don’t get it, do they? It DOESN’T MATTER where the votes come from (assuming the votes are legal). It matters how many there are.
You have to be a US Citizen, be living in a jurisdiction for a short period of time, and be older than a given age (usually 18) to vote. You don’t need land, cows, a job, or a bank account.
Cows don’t vote. That’s why the Rhode Island has more votes than Wyoming.
Land doesn’t vote. That’s why Massachusetts has more electoral votes than Alaska, Montana and Idaho combined, and more congresspeople than AK+MT+ND+SD+WY+ID combined.
She is wrong, too. She means white people are still Conservative. Certainly not true of young white people.
“The GOP must moderate significantly, or it will not compete on the national level again. Acceding to immigration reform is a first-step in that process.”
Remind me why exactly I am supposed to want the GOP to compete on the national level again.
because otherwise, the pundits won’t be able to say “both sides do it” with a straight face.
They’d have to use their gay face.
“Reading Ann Coulter’s syndicated column today…” – Oh Booman the things you do for us are much appreciated. There’s no way I could have made it through that.
“We ask these people to come here and work thankless jobs, and we benefit from the work they do. We should have allowed them to immigrate legally, and we should have made sure they were paid adequately “
We do allow people to come here legally. We allow 1,000,000+ to establish legal permanent residence here in 2011. We naturalized 700,000 in that year.
If that is not enough, raise the quotas. But that is not what “immigration reform” is all about. “immigration reform” has nothing to do with immigration. It is legalization of those who have bypassed our rules.
Try to actually correct your own ignorance, Boo. Seriously, this notion that we do not allow anyone to emigrate legally makes you sound like a moron. We have a huge immigration of legal immigrants, and they invariably DO NOT support this legalization of criminals which is the “immigration reform” we are talking about.
And the statement “we benefit from the work they do”. I don’t know who this “we” is. The “we” is certainly NOT the hundreds of thousands of skilled blue-collar Americans who have been driven out of the construction trades by the vast numbers of workers here, legal or illegal, who do this work. The Democratic Party has lost these people due to the fact that we do not support their need to make a living, but rather wish to increase the competition for labor in that area. The “we” does not include the millions of American students who have done well in college but cannot find jobs. The “immigration reform” that Democrats are supporting will hugely increase the green cards and H-1Bs which take jobs from our children and give them to foreign non-citizens who are NO BETTER QUALIFIED, but for which we give TAX BREAKS to hire over our own children.
There are a lot of ways to put it. There is “we” as in all of us who ever buy lettuce, or shockingly inexpensive ground beef at Wal Mart. Or the “we” that goes to Chevy’s and eats food cooked by “them.” Or the “we” in whose motel rooms fresh linens miraculously appear every day.
And then of course there are all of “us” who don’t see Mexicans as foreigners. Maybe you could look at it that way in the parts of the country that were never part of Mexico, but:
I’m not saying this justifies unlimited immigration, but I can’t really get behind this “our own children” thing. I know enough history to know that my ancestors were foreign non-citizens who were NO BETTER QUALIFIED blah blah blah. We’re all immigrants here, dude. Homo sapiens is not native to this hemisphere.
Yeah, that “we’re all immigrants” crap is trotted out as if it actually means something. So fucking what? The rules are the rules. Once upon a time one thing was true, and now it ain’t. FUCKING deal with it. 100 years ago, 200 years ago, we needed bodies here. Today we do not. Rules change.
And the “miraculous bed linen changers” are either illegals in Arizona or low-wage American citizens in most other areas. I know that you probably don’t really think about such jobs, but some people actually want such jobs and need those jobs, and resent the illegals who displace them.
When we were fixing up our house in IL, I did not hire the illegals to do the work because I want Americans to get jobs. We do NOT have jobs that Americans will not do, dude. We have jobs that the capitalists love to get done at starvation wages. Why is it that you support the same policies that the likes of Bob “Swift Boat” Perry did, who destroyed Kerry with the millions and millions he made by importing illegals to build his crap houses in Texas? Since when is THAT a Democratic approach to labor?
Why is it that Democrats think it is so good to undercut wages and get people fired? Why is that, dude? Since when is the Democratic Party and liberals the party of NO MIDDLE CLASS JOBS? It just is beyond my comprehension.
Of course the rules are the rules, but who makes them? We do. You obviously don’t agree, but I favor some changes in the rules. If Congress changes the law, the illegals won’t be illegal anymore, now will they?
At any rate, haven’t you noticed that a lot of the same Democrats who support the pathway to citizenship also support an increase in the minimum wage? And that’s not even because it’s necessarily the best way to create MIDDLE CLASS JOBS but because it’s something that might be feasible under our current politics. What we really need is higher taxes on the ultrawealty, stronger unions, stronger banking regulations, etc. etc., and on top of all that we basically need to retool our entire economy to get off the fossil fuels if we’re to have any future at all.
So there’s plenty of work to be done, and trillions of dollars in capital that we’re allowing a bunch of assholes to just sit on. All of that is a much sounder approach, in my view, than scapegoating wetbacks.
Personally, I think the “raise the minimum wage” campaign is idiotic. Why do we want stronger minimum wage jobs? We want people to have better than minimum wage jobs. It’s a stupid campaign, and I will support it but not much. We want GOOD JOBS, not minimum wage jobs. You can’t live on minimum wage jobs, and if we increase the minimum wage by 10%, you will still not be living on the minimum wage.
My mother’s family all came here from Hungary, of German background (if that is confusing, you don’t know the central European history). They none of them support illegals. They all came legally. We currently naturalize between 750,000 and 1,000,000 persons per year. I support modest changes in the speed of the naturalization process and the ability of those with legal permanent residence to assist and unite their families. We can improve the legal immigration system. Legal immigrants, who strongly oppose amnesty for illegals, also support fixing the LEGAL immigration system.
But the immigration changes in S 774 will increase the green cards and H-1B allocations to huge levels. This is a crippling attack on American students. We do NOT have a deficit of STEM workers. We have a deficit of low wage workers under 35 who will work for 40-50% of the prevailing wage. But the thirst for cheap labor is without end.
What amazes me is that so many democrats, apparently including you, support low wages, crap working conditions, and American sweatshops. When you are on the same side as Bob “Swift Boat” Perry, you should be asking “Why do I support the same policies as a sweat-shop cheap-ass Democratic-party-hating thug like Bob Perry?” You ever ask that question?
I can understand your anger about American business owners’ immoral undermining of the labor market. There’s some things missing in your representations, however.
Problems with the current number of undocumented immigrants in our job market: these immigrants can sometimes be made to accept illegal SUB-minimum wages and denial of overtime and work safety protections, and they can be much more easily prevented from organizing by employer intimidation. The result is not just a larger undermining of U.S. worker power, it also leaves many millions of people living in our country who have very little disposable income. If these immigrants had more pay and benefits, they would increase the health of our common economy.
And let’s respond to your incredibly myopic reference to your family’s immigration to the U.S. My family also came to America as a result of the much looser immigration policies which handed your family their opportunities.
“They all came legally.” THAT. IS. EXACTLY. THE. POINT. Your Hungarian forebearers, and my Lithuanian great-grandparents, would almost certainly have never made it to the U.S. legally if today’s immigration laws existed back then. Our current laws are wildly unresponsive to the world as it is. They attempt to stand in the way of desperate human need, need which creates practical actions in response to impractical laws.
Your claim that your family was somehow more moral than today’s undocumented immigrants just because your family was allowed legal entry is quite offensive.