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 remlinologists
who have examined the data tell me that Paul Gigot's column in last
Friday's Wall Street Journal, entitled "Alien Notion,"
was almost certainly a lightly coded attack on me and on Peter Brimelow,
the author of the immigration-skeptic book, Alien
Nation. (Alien Notion, Alien Nation, geddit?)
Deploring the
reluctance of some Republicans to endorse President Bush's proposal
to grant amnesty to illegal Mexican immigrants, Mr. Gigot blamed
sinister "advice from British transplants, the same folks who
turned the Tories into a minority. As Grover Norquist quips, "they
haven't assimilated yet" to America's pro-immigrant culture."
I suppose I
might conceivably take offense at the first gibe since the only
political campaign in which I have been involved was Margaret Thatcher's
1987 campaign — which resulted in a Tory majority of 101. One likes
these little things to be remembered accurately. But I am considerably
mollified by the reflection that, since I have been living in the
U.S. since 1988, my baneful influence over the Tories must have
been exercised by some sort of occult remote control.
As for Mr.
Brimelow, I imagine he is as flattered to be credited with preternatural
powers as I am. He has been living in North America continuously
since the late sixties. Yet in that time, from his eyrie in Forbes
magazine, he has apparently been able to manipulate the Tories across
the Atlantic into destroying themselves politically. Quite a feat-even
more remarkable than Mr. Bush's father's number on the GOP.
How did he
do it? Mr. Gigot has helpfully hinted at the terrifying explanation:
A magus of Mr. Brimelow's status naturally never bothered with immigrating
to the U.S. like any respectable illegal. No, Mr. Gigot tells us
that he was transplanted here — just like the pod people in Invasion
of the Body Snatchers. Alien Nation indeed!
Paul, stay
awake! Be vigilant! Who knows what you and Grover might find yourselves
believing if once your eyelids droop? You might even begin to distinguish
between a culture that is "pro-immigrant" and a culture
that favors "open borders" immigration; between admiring
hard-working and decent people from abroad on the one hand and thinking
that their interests should be elevated above the welfare of low-income
fellow-Americans on the other; between an immigration policy that
strengthens America and one that balkanizes it.
Similar questions
might also addressed to those Republican strategists whom Mr. Gigot
praises for advising President Bush that he needs to legalize the
status of illegal Mexican immigrants in the U.S. in order to win
the next election. They maintain, apparently, that Mr. Bush needs
to lift his 35 percent of the 2000 Hispanic vote to 40 percent in
the 2004 election in order to win. And they advise that the way
to do that is to make immigration easier by, among other measures,
a "guestworker" program that would allow illegal aliens
to obtain residency, citizenship and voting rights.
Where shall
I begin?
In the first
place, the Hispanic vote in 2004 will be about six percent of the
total electorate. To gain an additional five percent of six percent
of the electorate would increase Mr. Bush's share of the total vote
by 0.3 percent. A similar increase in his share of the white vote
would increase his electoral total by about 4 percent — giving him
a clear majority of the popular vote.
Of course,
in a democracy political parties have a moral obligation to seek
votes from all groups. But no party is under an obligation to woo
all groups equally. The Democrats, for instance, concentrate on
winning Black votes — and they succeed to the point where minorities
and labor unions are now the Democratic party's base. They won more
than nine out of ten Black votes in the last election.
Republicans
have lost ground among their own base, namely white voters, in the
last decade. They have been made morally ashamed of seeking to win
elections mainly with white votes to the point where Republican
strategists like Rich Bond and Ralph Reed actually disclaim any
desire to do so. Yet if they could lift their 54 percent in the
2000 election to the 59 percent Mr. Bush's father gained in 1988,
they would win electoral landslides. An amnesty for illegal aliens,
however multiculturally appealing, is unlikely to help them achieve
that.
Indeed, it
might not even help them with Hispanic voters who are a tough call
for the GOP in any event. A new report from the authoritative Center
for Immigration Studies by two political scientists, James Gimpel
and Karen Kaufmann, points out some electoral facts about the Hispanic
electorate that seem to have escaped GOP strategists:
- Democrats
lead Republicans in party identification in every Hispanic national
group by margins ranging from 21.5 percent (Salvadorans) to 57.6
percent (Dominicans.) The sole exception is Cubans among whom
a once-solid GOP lead, now only 6 percent, is rapidly declining.
- Contrary
to GOP predictions, Hispanics become more Democratic both with
increasing education and the longer they remain in the U.S.
- Also contrary
to GOP hopes, even though Hispanics do move rightwards to the
GOP as their incomes rise, the Democrats retain a 10 percent lead
even among Hispanics earning more than $100,000 a year.
And high levels
of Hispanic immigration are making the situation worse for the GOP
every day. For new immigrants, being poorer and more amenable to
policies that favor labor unions and the welfare state, lean much
more than their American cousins to the party advocating such policies,
namely the Democrats. Legalizing another three million such voters,
as the amnesty implies, would weaken the GOP still further.
In the face
of such discouraging evidence, Mr. Gigot diverted from his pursuit
of dangerous British transplants to defend Mr. Bush's amnesty on
two grounds.
The first is
that Hispanic voters, like Italian voters, will gradually become
more Republican over time. As the evidence collected by Gimpel and
Kaufmann underscores, however, there is more optimism than strategy
here : for there is no evidence that a significant percentage of
Hispanic voters is "in play."
And his comparison
with Italian voters omits a significant fact: Italian voters, like
the Poles and Irish, gradually switched from Democratic to Republican
sympathies during the period of strict immigration control that
lasted from the early twenties to the mid-sixties. The fact that
there was almost no net immigration in those years made assimilation
much easier since Italian cultural ghettoes were not being constantly
reinforced by the arrival of new Italian-speakers. Italians therefore
assimilated, and short of joining the military, voting Republican
is about the most assimilated thing an immigrant can do. If there
had been regular amnesties for illegal Italians, they might be a
mainstay of the Democratic coalition still.
Mr. Gigot's
second argument was that since the Hispanic electorate will grow
anyway the GOP should woo them for the long term. That is reasonable
enough in itself. But where he stumbles is that he simply assumes
Hispanic voters all favor an open door immigration policy, etc.,
like so many clones of Grover and himself.
Many Hispanics
do, in some polls most — but they are the same Hispanics who identify
strongly with the Democrats and would never pull the GOP lever.
As Gimpel and Kaufmann point out, the Hispanic voters who lean to
the GOP tend to favor less immigration, "English immersion"
programs rather than bilingual education, an "American"
identity over a hyphenated ethnic one, and so on.
So a policy
such as an amnesty for illegal immigrants, far from winning Hispanic
votes, is likely to dispirit the GOP's natural Hispanic supporters
and depress the party's turnout among Hispanics — and indeed in
all ethnic voting groups including whites.
Is there anything
to be said in favor of the political effects of an amnesty? Well,
it wins President Bush favorable comment from liberal newspapers,
liberal ethnic pressure groups such as La Raza, Democratic politicians,
and the usual suspects. But he might like to ponder carefully on
exactly why that is. So might Mr. Gigot.
Editor's note: This piece is based on a column that
originally ran in the Chicago Sun-Times.
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