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Soul-Searching from Democrats on Immigration
File this jointly under “Better Late Than Never” and “We Told You So.” Liberal columnist Peter Beinart, writing in The Atlantic, has written a piece suggesting that the Democratic party needs to re-learn old lessons about the perception of immigration in America, to acknowledge that immigration does actually have costs, that those costs are disproportionately borne by one of their historic constituencies, and cultural assimilation (the old “melting pot”) is a vital component of a comprehensive immigration platform. He even says, effectively, that the liberal abandonment of principles it claimed to hold merely a decade ago was a key factor in the victory of Donald Trump. One wonders whether anyone on his side will heed his advice.
In 2005, a left-leaning blogger wrote, “Illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone.” In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that “immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants” and that “the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear.” His conclusion: “We’ll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants.” That same year, a Democratic senator wrote, “When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.”
The blogger was Glenn Greenwald. The columnist was Paul Krugman. The senator was Barack Obama.
So begins Beinart’s delving into what the Democrat party espoused 10 years ago. He recounts the rapid shift in rhetoric, and how it was in no small part fueled both by lobbying from the tech sector and by a myth that Latin-American immigration especially would produce a demographic wave that would obviate any white resistance to change. He’s mildly critical of the lobbying (he seems to favor the results but consider the effort tainted by “big business”) but very critical of the underlying assumptions of the demographic argument on the grounds that it entirely missed how it put poor whites (a group he considers a historic Democrat constituency) directly in competition for wages and government assistance with the immigrants. He is also critical of the Democrats’ abandonment of immigration enforcement for fueling the perception that all Latin immigrants must certainly be illegal. At several points Beinart queries why the Democrats abandoned enforcement both in rhetoric and in practice.
Where Beinart is most solid, though, is in his criticism of the Democrat multiculturalism obsession. By repeatedly downplaying assimilation by and of immigrants, by ignoring how slowly current immigrants are learning English (and thus also ignoring the importance of even having a main language), and by consistently browbeating native-born Americans with the “otherness” of immigrants, Beinart is one of the few liberal columnists who acknowledges that has both stoked the nativism liberals irrationally fear, but served as a barrier to immigrants and the native-born coming to terms with each other. He calls for a return to the melting-pot, and a return to rhetoric that emphasizes the commonalities we all share as human beings living in America.
In 2014, the University of California listed melting pot as a term it considered a “microaggression.” What if Hillary Clinton had traveled to one of its campuses and called that absurd? What if she had challenged elite universities to celebrate not merely multiculturalism and globalization but Americanness? What if she had said more boldly that the slowing rate of English-language acquisition was a problem she was determined to solve? What if she had acknowledged the challenges that mass immigration brings, and then insisted that Americans could overcome those challenges by focusing not on what makes them different but on what makes them the same?
Earlier in the piece, in the buildup to his main argument on assimilation, he makes a surprising point (emphasis mine):
[S]tudies by the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and others suggest that greater diversity makes Americans less charitable and less willing to redistribute wealth. People tend to be less generous when large segments of society don’t look or talk like them. Surprisingly, Putnam’s research suggests that greater diversity doesn’t reduce trust and cooperation just among people of different races or ethnicities—it also reduces trust and cooperation among people of the same race and ethnicity.
Greater diversity reduces the bonds of trust even within groups, not just between? This is hardly surprising to me as I’ve long argued that the diversity flail so often wielded by the Left is predicated on the very notion of creating distinct groups and driving wedges between them.
Beinart, however, does have several key weaknesses in his work. For one, he entirely attributes immigration perception problems to whites, as if black Americans do not have their own issues with immigration, and that their acquiescence to continued high immigration is to be taken for granted. This is a glaring void in his piece. Secondly, he treats immigration as a moral issue, particularly family reunification, a policy that is widely known to have been extensively abused and gamed. It seems as though Beinart thinks that America has a moral obligation to accept all comers, and he uses that belief to take a variety of cheap pot-shots at Trump, calling his policies “brutal” at one point without actually discussing them. Beinart must take his readers’ proclivities for granted. Finally he of course shows the usual liberal tendency to suggest economic redistributionist solutions to the costs of immigration, though to be fair he admits such solutions leave much wanting.
But again, where Beinart is absolutely correct is on the issue of assimilation:
Liberals must take seriously Americans’ yearning for social cohesion. To promote both mass immigration and greater economic redistribution, they must convince more native-born white Americans that immigrants will not weaken the bonds of national identity. This means dusting off a concept many on the left currently hate: assimilation.
Whether the Left will pay any attention to this is doubtful, at least in the short term. Judging by the way they have ignored Camile Paglia’s similar warnings vis. Men and Women, I suspect they will continue to devour their own rather than question their core assumptions of human nature. But it is encouraging that at least some on the Left are starting to notice that years of divisive diversity rhetoric and policy are actually making things worse for all parties, not better. It’s not like we haven’t tried to tell them this too.
Published in Immigration
Beinart, however, does have several key weaknesses in his work. For one, he entirely attributes immigration perception problems to whites, as if black Americans do not have their own issues with immigration, and that their acquiescence to continued high immigration is to be taken for granted.
The Democrats have long taken black voters for granted. I believe the black voters might be starting to wake up to this. It’s heartening that he even wrote what he did, though. Maybe he’s starting to realize, as I did when I left the Left all those years ago, that their stated agenda is never their real one. Their “concern” for immigrants is merely a disguise for their real agenda, which is the goal of changing the demographics of this country irreversibly.
This is a good line… especially the bolded. Those words share the same root.
I don’t deny there’s a certain amount of diversity in thought and dna that gives strength, but it has its limits. At some point it stops being a positive and becomes an outright negative.
I don’t know about absolutely. It seems to me that his concern is with the electoral prospects of Democrats, and nothing else. That would suggest: assimilate until it’s too late for native-born to complain.
Beinart is toast. The Left has made multiculturalism into a singular choice, binary versus racism. Listen to your children; every group is now a race. Race is no longer about skin color or physical characteristics; gender, country or region of origin, religion, sexual orientation, sexual preference, native language, physical handicap, mental deficiency – people who share any one of these characteristics comprise a race. My youngest, a college senior, and I have this argument regularly when I say something politically incorrect. Racist is always the allegation. I recently watched a 30ish woman park her minivan, complete with HP plate, in a handicapped spot and sprint into the grocery store. I commented that she must be mentally deficient (I may have used a different term) and I was labeled a racist. I pointed out that the woman was Caucasian and hardly handicapped but my daughter defended her. I pointed out that she sprinted into the store, hardly indicative of a handicap, but I was accused of being judgemental and “not a doctor.” So I pulled out the big gun: “What if Uncle Timmy (crippled with rheumatoid arthritis) needed that handicapped spot?” I got the “Harrumph” meaning that our conversation was becoming painful. I gave up.
This is an interesting contrast to Bret Stephens’ NYT “satirical” piece that produced a couple of threads here. Stephens, being a distinguished graduate of the Wall Street Journal/Chamber of Commerce Institute of Cheap Labor, suggested that we look at the socio-economic contributions of immigrants vis a vis nonimmigrants, and concluded (wink wink) that we should unload the nonimmigrants. The points raised by Beinart about societal cohesion and the need for a reasonably unified country were not mentioned.
Beinart lost me when he claimed that Democrats care about the native born poor. The Democrats’ contempt for the non-minority poor is well documented, and is (IMO) the primary reason Donald Trump is President right now.
And like Right Angles, I suspect it won’t be long before minorities realize they’re being taken for granted as well.
I don’t believe Beinhart claimed that Democrats cared about the poor. He said the poor are a traditional constituency of the Democrat party.
If he claimed that Democrats cared about the poor, that would be obviously ridiculous. But they still want their votes.
They care about them as voters, not people.
“America’s immigration system, in other words, pits two of the groups liberals care about most—the native-born poor and the immigrant poor—against each other.”
Ah. My mistake. I can’t believe he actually said that. What an outrageous statement.
The scary thing is, I honestly think he believes it.
Beinhart is not stupid. And I think he’s sincere. But still, I think you may be right. I find that incredible.
Of course they won’t listen. Political parties don’t have constituencies – they have voting blocks. Parties exist to serve their political membership and those who profit from those politicians. It came as no surprise to the Democrats that they lost the working-class white vote. What came as a surprise was that the working-class white vote still mattered. That’s OK though. Their plan to build an unbeatable voting block from dependent blacks and socialist-leaning immigrants is still working, even if a little more slowly than expected. They only way they’ll be able to lose a national election a decade from now is if whites start voting as a block they way other races do. Of course we all know that for whites to vote as a block would be racist, so the odds of that happening are even lower than the odds of the Dems listening to Beinhart.
Here’s the dirty little secret the Democrats haven’t figured out – If we’re going to have identity politics, the white guys get to play too.
The problem is that most whites don’t want to play. Hell, I don’t want to play. I’m just conscious of the fact that I may have to.
Forget minorities – I’m not even that keen on most white people.
If you begin with the self-righteous assumption that the only motive for opposing immigration is racial hatred, then you can never have a serious or productive conversation about immigration.
So long as Democrats are stuck in the “they’re racist!” answer to everything, they’re not going to have the capacity for a useful conversation.
Certainly this article is good news to my ears, but I doubt the left will ever work against immigration. They have so much political capital invested in it. All their future voters come from immigration. My only hope is that it’s causing them to lose blue collar voters, and so the pressure may be there to moderate. But look, they opposed the Trump immigration policy from terrorist supporting nations. If they oppose that, they will oppose every limit to immigration. And what’s disheartening is that there is a wing on the right that backs them up.
LOL!
Great post, well written, thanks.
Unfortunately for the Dems, I think they’ve more or less gone off the cliff already, I don’t see them walking back their open borders multi-culturalism mantra. But who knows, if they ever let the grown-ups run their party again, they might see some level of sanity return.
I’m gonna say no, Skip!
Not at all convinced it is satirical. Neo-con bird of a feather Bill Kristol said much the same thing and he wasn’t joking.
I think you have the cause and effect reversed.
The problem, as Beinart has illustrated (though I doubt he realizes the full implications yet) is that when you continually focus on the divisions between groups of people, and especially when you make those divisions the sine qua non of your party and your thinking, you end up with a spider web of competing groups and interests that is increasingly difficult to manipulate or govern. For a skilled troller like Obama, these sorts of divisions can be continuously exploited and used. Hillary was decidedly unskilled in that sort of manipulation as she could never contain her obvious contempt for some of those groups, while Trump showed more obvious talent for that art. The Dems would have to put forward another one as equally skilled as Obama (or at least more skilled than Trump) in order to regain, and especially to keep control of their fractious base.
If they keep running the same playbook of accentuating divisions and inventing class / race / sex struggles, they’ll need increasingly skilled demagogues to pull it off or they will splinter their base entirely. Their party back bench is not so deep that they can afford to take that gamble.
The arrogance of the Dems will prevent them from any effort at self-reflection; the results would be so embarrassing and devastating. So they must continue to blame everyone else for their faulty ideas. At some point they will probably begin to blame even the immigrants, just to protect their positions. It is bizarre, isn’t it?
But Doug, the lady had a handicapped plate — literally the imprimatur of the All-Knowing State. Who are you going to believe: the expertise of the bureaucracy, or your own lying eyes?
No joke: had a former employee who filed for Full Disability because… 15 years after she quit she claimed she was having post-traumatic stress. Ohio’s BWC, being run by idiots and charlatans at the time, gave it to her along with handicap tags.
12 million immigrants speaking language X
–
6 million immigrants speaking language X
_________________________________________________________
6 million fewer people for any immigrant speaking language X to marry and speak language X with.
That’s the only way assimilation has ever happened: lower immigration rates and more inter-marrying. this is not difficult.
And, of course, by doing so gaining control of all the power of government by making the caucasian American a significant minority in this country. It’s not enough that any racial barrier be eliminated so that all people may enjoy the privileges of citizenship equally. The “whites” must be diminished both in self regard and actual ability to influence outcomes.
Good article @skipsul. I had noticed this Beinart piece yesterday. At some point one would think that even lefties have to acknowledge reality. Although I did see Republican Senator from Wi., Ron Johnson, on Wall Street Journal report talking about a new bill he is working on that would enable more immigration into our country. I do not know what his bill encompasses, but somehow it seems Republicans are as slow learners as the Dems.
When I was in residency in Tennessee, I noticed that a huge number of my patients were on disability. I started my own study, by asking each of them what they were on disability for. Around 30% weren’t sure. They would say, “Headaches. Or wait, no, I think it was stress. Maybe back pain? Not sure. Call my lawyer – he’ll know.” Disability is enormous. Huge. I’m not sure how you fix it, without riots in the streets.