Let Them In_ The Case for Open Borders - Jason L. Riley [60]
In 2004, Bush won more than 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. In New York, New Jersey, California, Nevada, and Illinois, he won less than 40 percent but more than 20 percent. In Florida, he won the Hispanic vote outright, with 56 percent. “Latinos vote more like their neighbors,” said Barone. “In East L.A. they’re voting 90 percent Democrat, but when you get down to Santa Ana, in Orange County, they’re voting about 52 percent Democrat. And nationally, if you’re looking at around 60-40 Democrat in the 2004 election, that’s already closer to whites, who were at 58-42, than it is to blacks, who were something like 90-10.” Clearly the Latino vote is not (yet) “lost” to Republicans today. And if that does eventually happen, it will result from a GOP self-fulfilling prophecy.
FOOL’S GOLD
As a voting issue, immigration restrictionism is political pyrite. It’s often likened to economic protectionism because both tend to poll better than they perform on Election Day. Americans may rail against illegal aliens in telephone surveys, but election results have shown time and again that it’s seldom the issue that decides someone’s vote. The lesson for the GOP is that hostility to immigrants is not a political winner. That’s been the lesson in the past, and given demographic trends, as well as a voting public that is more racially and ethnically tolerant than at any time in U.S. history, it’s likely to be the lesson in the future. Unfortunately, it’s not a lesson that some conservatives are in danger of learning anytime soon.
In an interview in early 2007, President Bush told me he was concerned that internal Republican disagreement over immigration was sending the wrong message to voters. “I don’t want our party to be viewed as anti-anybody,” said Bush. “If you get labeled as anti-people, you can’t win elections. ” When I asked what was driving the dispute, he first replied: “I think conservatives tend to want to enforce the law,” and then added, “yet the system that has sprung up as a result of [current] law is inhumane in many ways.” Elaborating, the president said: “People want to be here so badly to put food on the table for their families that they’re willing to get into the bottoms of eighteen-wheelers, for example. There’s a whole hotel industry providing safe houses on both sides of the border. There’s an interior transportation industry. There’s document forgery taking place. There’s a whole infrastructure that has sprung up as a result of a system that’s not working.”
Aside from that, said Bush, “this is an emotional issue,” and he worried that some conservatives had let their emotions get the better of them. “It’s interesting,” said Bush. “There have been periods in our history where nativism has had a strong appeal. Sometimes nativism, isolationism, and protectionism all run hand in hand. We got to be careful about that in the United States. The 1920s was a period of high tariff, high tax, no immigration. And the lesson of the 1920s ought to be a reminder of what is possible for future presidents.”
In 2007, immigration restrictionism on the right, if anything, intensified, particularly on talk radio. Despite losing the House and Senate in the previous year, President Bush and Karl Rove thought passing immigration reform and broadening the GOP base might still be possible. A bipartisan Senate bill cosponsored in 2006 by Ted Kennedy and John McCain provided a viable framework for comprehensive reform that would include more border enforcement, a guest-worker program, and a path to citizenship for illegals already in the country.
The immigration polls varied widely based on how questions were phrased. But any survey that presented the option of allowing illegal workers to remain here—and earn legal status by meeting certain requirements—garnered an