The Double Bind Of Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric

Despite failure at the polls in 2006 and 2007, the Republicans think they have a magic bullet headed into the next election year with the issue of immigration. If they can only demagogue the issue enough, the theory goes, they can tap into nativist fears of a brown horde sweeping across the nation and eke out a victory. It doesn't matter to them that immigrants actually underuse the health care system instead of "stealing health care" away from real Muricans, or that children of immigrants actually grow fluent in English in the second generation, because they understand that learning the language is the key to economic success. They would rather demonize the other, despite the historical blunder of alienating the record numbers of immigrants entering the country (One in eight people living in this country is an immigrant, the highest percentage since the 1920s).

Most Republican candidates, even the so-called revolutionary ones, are banking on this strategy (Paul is actually much further to the right than the rest of the field, seeking to abolish birthright citizenship - some Constitutionalist). I'm not so sure. I think Republican immigrant-bashers are in a double bind. Their first problem is that the immigrant experience is too tied to America for candidates to wall themselves off from it. And so we get the stories that Tom Tancredo loves Mexican food, and had illegal immigrants renovate his house:

When Tancredo hired a construction crew to transform his drab basement into a high-tech pleasure den in October 2001, however, he did not express concern that only two of its members spoke English. Nor did he bother to check the workers’ documentation to see if they were legal residents of the United States. Had Tancredo done so, he would have learned that most of the crew consisted of undocumented immigrants, or “criminal aliens” as he likes to call them.

Instead, Tancredo paid the crew $60,000 for its labor and waited innocently for the completion of his elaborate entertainment complex.During the renovation process, two illegal workers hired by Tancredo were alerted to his reputation for immigrant bashing. They went straight to the Denver Post to complain. Tancredo “doesn't want us here, but he'll take advantage of our sweat and our labor,” one of the workers complained to the Post on September 19, 2002. “It's just not right.”

There's little way to avoid the immigrant experience, and so these kinds of hypocritical stances are unavoidable. Romney's been caught up in this as well. The other trap the Mittster has fallen into is favoring one set of immigrants over another, which is a political necessity in certain parts of the country, and again raises the charge of hypocrisy.

“I can tell you my inclination would be to say as many Cubans as want to come here should come in,” Romney said in an interview Tuesday with The Tampa Tribune editorial board. […]Romney replied that Cuban Americans are exemplary citizens who have brought “great vitality, skills and energy to the American experience.”

“In my opinion, the more the merrier,” he said.

The problem for these candidates is that, if they take a pure line on immigration, they end up attracting the ugly bigotry of white supremacy.

Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) has attracted a primary challenge from former RNC member Buddy Witherspoon, who is running to Graham's right on illegal immigration. As it turns out — and despite Witherspoon's recent denials — he has been a proud member of a white supremacist organization, the Palmetto Scoop has uncovered.

Witherspoon recently said claims that he had been a member of the segregationist Council of Conservative Citizens were "totally absurd" and that he had only ever been to one meeting. But in 1999, he told the Washington Post that he was a member, and that "Everything to me is fine from what I see and hear." Furthermore, this was at the same time as he was a Republican National Committeeman in good standing.

The truth is that voters appear to recoil when these politicians cross the fine line between the so-called "rule of law" and open racism. This is even true on the Republican side.

I was a little bit surprised that both Huckabee and McCain got applause with their relatively human responses on the interminable immigration questions. The debate was in Florida, which probably explains it, but I think it shows once again that even the Republicans are not monolithic on this question [...]It seems to me that if you can get applause (and no boos) for a comment like that on immigration at a GOP debate then Democratic consultants should relax just a tiny bit about the breathless responses they are getting in their focus groups and tell their candidates to sound reasonable too. They aren't going to be able to out-hate the Tancredo wing of the party so there's no margin in helping the Republicans set the political agenda by pushing bad legislation and even worse rhetoric.

That's the key. Democrats have to understand that a little compassion and a little sensibility will win the hearts of what I feel is a silent majority in favor of comprehensive and respectful immigration solutions. Most Republicans are either coming off as liars or racists on this question; those like Huckabee and McCain who sound like rational human beings are rising in the polls. The Lou Dobbs wing of the country is very vocal and very shallow. There's no need to give in to the nativism it promotes.