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Lou Cannon: In Aftermath of Arizona Law, Immigration Debate Stirs Historic Passions
Immigration is the canary in the coal mine of American politics. Like unseen deadly gases in a mine, fear of foreigners has a capacity to strike without warning or detection. Only a few months ago immigration was a back-burner issue in the 2010 election campaign; a poll in immigration-conscious California ranked it a distant fourth among issues of concern to Republican voters.
Then came the overwrought restrictive Arizona law giving police broad power to detain illegal immigrants. This measure — Senate Bill 1070 — has put illegal immigration on the agenda in the California and Texas elections and prompted showdowns in statehouses on immigration bills from Massachusetts to Idaho.
The Arizona bill has public support, according to surveys by the Pew Research Center and The New York Times, but is opposed by a majority of Latinos. These polls also show support for comprehensive federal reform. Pushing President Barack Obama to step up to the plate, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., placed immigration reform on the Senate agenda. Reid, who opposes the Arizona bill, is trailing in his bid for re-election and seeking Latino support.
Most of us are offspring of immigrants. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, in words later quoted by President Ronald Reagan: “All of our people all over the country — except the pure-blooded Indians — are immigrants, or descendants of immigrants, including even those who came over on the Mayflower.”
FDR made this comment in a 1936 campaign speech in which he celebrated the appealing idealism of the national motto, E Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one.” But unity was unobtainable during the Great Depression. At the time of FDR’s speech, Mexicans in the Southwest were being repatriated so they would not take jobs from American workers. (The Mexican-born population in the United States fell to 377,000 in 1940 from 639,000 in 1930.) The sweeps in which Mexicans were rounded up lacked proper judicial process: an undetermined number of U.S. citizens who “looked Mexican” were also deported.
There is a persistent dualism in American attitudes toward immigration. On the one hand we celebrate diversity and recognize, as demographer Michael Barone wrote, that the nation owes its shape and concentrations of population “less to the logic of geography than to the movements of great streams of newcomers who together created the country.” On the other, we worry that the United States will attract more foreigners than it can comfortably absorb. Although that concern is focused on illegal immigration across the 1,950-mile border shared by Mexico and the United States, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that roughly half of the 10.75 million illegal immigrants in the United States arrived legally and overstayed their visas. It is a sad fact that the mechanisms for tracking those who overstay visas — from Mexico or anywhere else — are inadequate.
Historically, anxiety about immigrants had less to do with their legality than with the race, ethnicity, or religion of the newcomers. At various times alarms were sounded about Irish, Italian, Polish, Chinese and Japanese immigrants, among others, all of whom were seen as threatening American culture and values. In California, agitation erupted against Chinese workers who had been brought in to complete the transcontinental railroad but were perceived as taking jobs from whites. Congress passed a Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.
Later, California farmers were similarly alarmed by competition from Japanese immigrants. A restrictive 1924 federal bill contained a clause that virtually excluded Japanese immigrants. Japan was incensed; the exclusionary clause signaled a long downturn in U.S.-Japan relations that eventually culminated in war.
On occasion, most notably in the case of the once-powerful Ku Klux Klan, fear of foreigners and Catholics combined with virulent hatred of blacks. But every outburst of anti-immigrant fervor also produced a political backlash. During the 1884 presidential campaign Republican nominee James Blaine was on track to win the presidency over his Democratic opponent, Grover Cleveland. Six days before the election Blaine gave a speech in New York City in which a Protestant minister warmed up the crowd by denouncing the Democrats as the party of “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.” These were not Blaine’s sentiments. His mother was Irish and Roman Catholic and he espoused Irish independence from Britain and was accordingly popular with the New York’s large Irish-American community. Most historians agree that in the tumult of the rally Blaine simply failed to hear the minister’s bigoted phrase, which he almost certainly would have repudiated. Democrats pounced, distributing handbills with the offending remark in Irish-American neighborhoods. The Irish deserted Blaine, costing him New York’s 36 electoral votes by the slim margin of 1,149 votes and the presidency.
Modern anti-immigrant campaigns have also produced unintended consequences. In California in 1994, moderate Republican Gov. Pete Wilson hitched his re-election campaign to Proposition 187, an initiative that would have denied medical and educational benefits to illegal immigrants. A Wilson television commercial showed Mexicans pouring across the border to the sound of scary music as an announcer declared, “They keep coming!”
It’s often forgotten that Wilson, an able governor, led in the polls before he endorsed Proposition 187 and could have won without it. But his name has become indelibly linked with this measure, approved by voters but in large part subsequently invalidated by the courts. The principal political legacy of Proposition 187 was alienation of Latinos, whom the Democrats mobilized as they swept to victory in the state elections four years later. Latinos have retained their Democratic affiliations and now constitute more than a fifth of registered voters in California. Their influence may be tested in this year’s U.S. Senate election. Embattled Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer opposes the law, while all three Republicans who are vying to oppose her support it.
Will there be a broader political backlash? In the month since SB 1070 became law, some Republican candidates have been reluctant to embrace it. One weathervane is Texas Gov. Rick Perry, seeking re-election against the Democratic nominee, former Houston Mayor Bill White. Perry, as shrewd as he is conservative, said that duplicating the Arizona law “would not be the right direction for Texas.”
Opponents of restrictive immigration laws have also won some statehouse challenges, including rejection by the Massachusetts House of a bill to bar illegal immigrants from receiving state and federal benefits. In Idaho, where a sweeping anti-immigrant bill was rejected in committee in March, milder legislation requiring employers to verify electronically the legal status of employees has stalled.
These outcomes notwithstanding, supporters of restrictive anti-immigrant legislation have certainly succeeded in pushing the issue to the forefront of this year’s political debate. There are perils in this for Democrats in general and for Obama in particular. The latest Pew Research Poll showed that only a quarter of Americans are satisfied with Obama’s performance on immigration.
Indeed, there has hardly been any administration performance on this issue at all. Overall, the Obama administration has done reasonably well against economic headwinds, winning a major victory on health care and apparently nearing one on financial reform legislation. But the White House wants no part of an immigration fight in a midterm election year. It’s hard to fault Obama for ducking this divisive battle — indeed, some of those who urge Obama to undertake it were criticizing him only a few weeks ago for trying to do too much on too many fronts instead of concentrating on economic recovery. But it’s also hard to escape the fact that federal inaction on immigration has left a void that states can’t fill piecemeal.
SB 1070 may be unconstitutional. In any case, the measure is such a mess that the Arizona Legislature amended it after it was signed into law, replacing the requirement that police could inquire into immigration status during any “lawful contact” to a more precise standard that police could do so only if they are stopping or arresting someone for other reasons.
Still, it’s understandable that Arizona felt the need to act. Illegal immigration is down overall but has increased in Arizona, in part because a federal crackdown at border crossings in California and Texas funneled the flow of illegals into other states. Kidnapping and gang violence are on the rise in the Phoenix metropolitan area, and it is not surprising that there is public support for restrictive legislation.
The Arizona bill, however, does nothing to address the most pressing issues of illegal immigration: securing the border and finding a just solution for immigrants who have lived here for many years and are contributing to American society. Indeed, these solutions are beyond the reach of any state. On most issues your columnist shares the enduring view of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis that states are “laboratories of democracy” that should be allowed wide experimental latitude.
Immigration, however, cries out for a national solution. If SB 1070 forces Obama and Congress to consider genuine immigration reform, it will have done us all a big favor.
— Summerland resident Lou Cannon is a longtime national political writer and acclaimed presidential biographer. His most recent book — co-authored with his son, Carl — is Reagan’s Disciple: George W. Bush’s Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy. Cannon also is an editorial adviser to State Net Capitol Journal, which published this column originally.
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» on 05.25.10 @ 05:57 PM
Questions:
1. Legal immigration to the U.S. is in the 1 to 1.5 million a year range. If that is insufficient, what is the level of legal immigration that you would feel is appropriate?
2. The U.S. population is projected to increase by over 100 million people by 2050. Should we try to set any upper limit on our population growth? Or would 1 billion U.S. residents be ok with you?
3. Would you be in favor of current high levels of legal and illegal immigration if the majority of said immigrants were white?
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» on 05.25.10 @ 06:00 PM
“Japan was incensed; the exclusionary clause signaled a long downturn in U.S.-Japan relations that eventually culminated in war.”
This claim is obscene. Japan waged a race war beginning with the 1931 Manchuria invasion against all Asiatic peoples it felt were inferior, and against British and Americans it regarded as evil gaijin. Millions of Chinese, Pilipino and Indonesian civilians were murdered by the Japanese who have never been held to account. Japanese racism and military expansionism had nothing to do with the number of Japanese immigrants admitted to the U.S.
Please start by reading Iris Chang’s “The Rape of Nanking” and then take back you statement.
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» on 05.26.10 @ 12:50 AM
It is not true that a “majority of Latinos” oppose this bill. It is not true that Arizona’s law is “overwrought” or “restrictive” bill-in fact it’s less so than federal law. But it is true that “immigration” without assimilation is extremely damaging to all—and fosters exploitation. Here’s an expert whose book will leave you far more educated about the problem than Lou’s article.
http://www.amazon.com/Mexifornia-Becoming-Victor-Davis-Hanson/dp/1594032173/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274863522&sr=8-2
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» on 05.26.10 @ 03:47 AM
LOU. olde buddy = MAY I HUMBLY(!)_ yet HIGHLY RECOMMEND you read the following:
(a) Legislative history of “The Civil Rights Law (1964)”;
(b) “The Congressional Record” before that Floor Vote- esp. remarks by then-U.S. Senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey; then
(c) [‘A CLIFF NOTES’ short version} Theodore H. Whyte book, “America In Search of Itself” - esp. section on ‘affirmative action’!
SYNOPSIS = Race- or gender-based goals, quotas and/or time- tables were expressly forbidden and never intgended by that legislation, which passed with bi-partian support given Senator Humphrey’s assurances on Senate FlooR at that time.
HOWEVER, since being singed by LBJ into law, “The Federal Register” chronicles decade after decades of NON-compliance by government bureaucrats intent on imposing race- and gender- based quotas contrary to that law’s intent!
As recent a a U. S> Senate “over-sight” (sic.) sub-committee hearing last month—chair by Sen. Ben Cardin—with the Civil Rights (si9c.) Division head from U.S. Justice Department - SENATE OVER-SIGHT HAS BEEN MORE LIKE A LOVE FEST!
The only entity SO FAR in Federal Government assuring “CIVIL RIGHTS - FOR ALL CITIZENS LEGALLY HERE, whether by birth or naturalization processes”—under that 1964 land-mark legislation’s original intent—is the U.S. Civil Rights Commission [CRC], which continues to be ‘stone-walled’ by the U.S. Justice Dept. & its “Civil WRONGS(!) Division” head - even with CRC HAVING FORMIDABLE subpoena powers!
CHECK IT OUT, LOU—THEN WRITE ONCE YOU HAVE BECOME BETTER AND FULLY EQUIPPED WITH FACTS!
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» on 05.26.10 @ 03:48 AM
Though I agree with the overall premise that immigration has historically been an issue, I disagree on the issues described in the OP’s article.
In the past, immigration was held to limits that allowed for reasonable assimmilation of immigrants into our system. With the virtual removal of those upper-end limits, either by regulation of illegal immigration, many if not all of our systems have been overwhelmed.
There are now immigrants in enough numbers that not only can the ignore any attempts at assimmilation, they are now asserting themselves in a system designed to represent the self-regulated. In short, the only real change that is being realized is the place of residence, but not the values and norms that clearly represent American ideals and way of life.
This is the real threat to America. It is, in no uncertain terms, an invasion. The only way to fix it in many cases is to start over. And that, all because of the unwillingness of these new immigrants to adopt American values and in truth, become Americans.
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» on 05.26.10 @ 07:06 AM
Lou Cannon continues with the Democrat strategy of confusing the effects of legal and illegal immigration. These are two separate discussions and do not belong in the same argument.
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» on 05.26.10 @ 07:43 AM
Lou is wrong; this is not about fear, but fairness. We are simply tired of fence jumpers cutting in line ahead of those following the law. We are tired of pointing this out and then being called racists (my Hispanic ancestors were here in California before it was part of the US Lou, so you and your lawless open borders race baters can stuff it!). Those here illegally must be deported, those with criminal records should not be allowed back. The message should be “welcome all immigrants, please use the front door”.
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» on 05.26.10 @ 08:51 AM
My only belief on this subject has always been if you want to live here do it legally or face the consequences. What these illegals are doing is in fact illegal and the law should act on it. I have a few friends who are here illegally and I would hate for them to be deported but they have broke the law and must be willing to pay the price for that just as I would have to pay for any laws I broke. I have never understood how you can be here illegally and receive governmental help? Once we know you are illegal should you not be deported and not be given money and food and education? Our system does not seem to support handling the illegal problem at all.
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» on 05.26.10 @ 07:53 PM
Good article. It doesn’t seem to get bogged down in the blame game.
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