Wall Street Journal
By Gerald Seib
December 14, 2015
In
August 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed into law a bill providing
financial restitution to Americans of Japanese ancestry who were removed
from their homes and
placed in internment camps during World War II. The internment, he said
upon signing the legislation, was “based solely on race” and
constituted “a grave wrong.” He added: “Here we reaffirm our commitment
as a nation to equal justice under the law.”
Mr.
Reagan is, of course, the ultimate modern-day Republican hero. Yet
today, the current Republican presidential front-runner, Donald Trump,
cites that same Japanese
internment as justification for his proposal to temporarily ban Muslim
immigrants from the U.S.
The
juxtaposition of Mr. Reagan then and Mr. Trump now says much about how
the immigration debate—and indeed the broader discussion about an
outward-looking economic policy—has
changed in the country generally and in the Republican party in
particular, over the last three decades.
Mr.
Reagan spoke eloquently and frequently about the virtues of
immigration. Indeed, he announced his 1980 general election campaign
with the Statue of Liberty in the
background, and paid homage to the “golden door” to American immigrants
the statue represented. He then returned to the statue for another
famous Fourth of July speech six years later.
In
the Reagan view, both the arrival of immigrants and the opening of
borders to trade added to American economic strength. This year, Mr.
Trump opened his campaign by
focusing on illegal immigration and now has turned his sights on Muslim
immigration. Meanwhile, he and several other Republican candidates, as
well as all the two main Democratic presidential contenders, are
opposing a new free-trade deal with Pacific nations,
and a Congress controlled by Republicans appears increasingly unlikely
to approve the trade deal until after the 2016 election.
The
roots of these changed attitudes can be found in both a broad sense of
insecurity, and in broad changes in the two major parties.
Part
of traditional Republican support for a more tolerant view of
immigration was a moral argument: American exceptionalism is rooted in
its powerful belief that all
people are created equal, and that America is the land of equal
opportunity where all could thrive.
But
there also was a strong economic argument—that in the aggregate,
immigration amounted to an economic stimulant that ultimately was good
for everybody. Unskilled immigrants
did jobs few others wanted to do; skilled immigrants provided brains
and entrepreneurial energy.
And
in fact, that remains the argument advanced by immigration advocates. A
nonpartisan organization called the Partnership for a New American
Economy produces a regular
stream of reports designed to show the economic boost immigrants
provide. One this month on Toledo, Ohio, for example, reports that
foreign-born households in Toledo have more than $242 million in
spending power, and have contributed more than $31 million
in taxes to state and local budgets. An earlier report said that more
than one in four professional, scientific or technical service workers
in Denver are foreign-born.
Those
arguments still carry the day in the powerful business wing of the
Republican party. But others are no longer convinced. Particularly to
the middle-class, middle-aged
voters who make up much of the Trump constituency, the combination of
open trade and easy immigration seems to have more undermined than
enhanced economic opportunity. They see advantages flowing to business
leaders at the top of the income scale, and to the
immigrant workers at the bottom, but aren’t convinced that they benefit
as they struggle in the middle.
Democrats such as Sen. Bernie Sanders have been reinforcing that for a while; now some Republican candidates are as well.
Which
leads to the other significant change in reaction to immigration and
trade, which is the changing demographics of the two parties. For
cultural more than economic
reasons, more blue-collar and rural Americans have been moving toward
the GOP since the Reagan presidency began. As a group, they identify
less with the party’s traditional business wing, and are less swayed by
its arguments on issues such as immigration and
trade.
Indeed,
in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, Democrats were more than
twice as likely as Republicans to say that immigration helps America. A
higher share of Democrats—56%--said
free trade is good for America than the 48% of Republican who said free
trade was beneficial. In addition, Republicans were only slightly more
likely than Democrats to identify themselves as strong supporters of
business interests.
Now,
into this mix of economic insecurity, terror attacks have added a new
layer of personal insecurity. Mr. Trump is taking advantage of that
anxiety, though he didn’t
create it.
“Fear
is awfully powerful,” says Jimmy Kemp, son of former GOP vice
presidential nominee and Reagan disciple Jack Kemp. “We need fearless
leaders.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment