Bloomberg View (Opinion)
By Francis Wilkinson
October 16, 2014
Even
Senator John McCain has surrendered. A steadfast supporter of
immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship, McCain essentially
acknowledged yesterday in Georgia
that his party's anti-immigration forces have demolished any hope of
soon legalizing the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the
U.S.
McCain's
assessment is as unimpeachable as it is irrational. In an interview
with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he said that, "I understand now,
especially in my home
state of Arizona, that these children coming, and now with the threat
of ISIS … that we have to have a secure border."
Follow
that? Immigration reform, including the legalization of millions of
immigrants already living in the U.S., is on hold because tens of
thousands of Central American
children have surrendered to border authorities. Also, because a
sadistic army is killing people in Syria and Iraq. McCain, often a
summer soldier when the forces of demagogy call, was perhaps too
embarrassed to link Ebola to the new orthodoxy; of course,
others already have.
It's
hard to see how Republicans walk this back before 2017 -- at the
earliest. What began with the national party calling for immigration
reform as a predicate to future
Republican relevancy has ended with complete capitulation to the
party's anti-immigration base. Conservatives are busy running ads and
shopping soundbites depicting immigrants as vectors of disease,
criminality and terrorism, a 30-second star turn that Hispanic
and Asian voters, in particular, may not entirely relish.
"The
day after the 2014 election," e-mailed immigration advocate Frank
Sharry, Republicans will "face a future defined by an anti-Latino and
anti-immigrant brand and the
rapid and relentless growth of Latino, Asian-American and immigrant
voters."
Sharry
is bitter about the Republican rejection of comprehensive immigration
reform. And public opinion has turned against immigration in the wake of
the border influx
of Central Americans earlier this year. But is Sharry's analysis
skewed? There has never been a convincing "day after tomorrow" plan for
Republicans if they abandon reform and embrace their most anti-immigrant
wing.
Yet
it looks as if Republicans have done just that. "Secure the border" is
an empty slogan and practical nightmare. But if you're a conservative
politician desperate to
assuage (or exploit) what writer Steve Chapman calls the "deep
anxieties" stirred by "brown migrants sneaking over from Mexico," it's
an empty slogan with legs. It will be vastly easier for Republicans
running in 2016 to shout "secure the border" than to defy
the always anxious, politically-empowered Republican base. Perhaps
Republicans in Congress will muster some form of Dream Act for immigrant
youth or a visa sop to the tech industry, but they seem incapable of
more.
In
that case, the path of least resistance -- and it has been many years
since national Republicans have taken a different route -- will be to
continue reassuring the
base while alienating brown voters. (After six years in which
Republicans' highest priority has been destruction of the nation's first
black president, it's doubtful black voters will be persuadable anytime
soon.) The party's whole diversity gambit goes out
the window. The White Album plays in perpetuity on Republican
turntables.
That
would be a significant problem if it resulted only in the
marginalization and regionalization of the nation's conservative party.
But a racial hunkering down in an
increasingly multi-racial nation will not be a passive or benign act.
Pressed to the demographic wall, Republicans will be fighting to win
every white vote, not always in the most high-minded manner. Democrats,
likewise, will have a powerful incentive to question
the motives and consequences of their opponents' racial solidarity.
Immigration has always been about more than race. November's election will go a long way toward making it about nothing else.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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