On the Scene: The Issue Is Immigration

AN OCTOBER survey of New York City residents—hardly a hotbed of reactionary sentiment—found that 63 per cent of respondents considered immigration levels to be too high. A month earlier 43 per cent of Californians surveyed could not identify a single benefit of immigration, legal or illegal.

With evidence mounting that immigration is going to be the sort of political issue in the Nineties that welfare fraud and school busing were in previous decades, the Republican leadership—which for more than two decades has prided itself on being in tune with the concerns of the “silent majority”—has recognized that it must take a stand. However, the Republicans have failed to grasp exactly what the new concerns are. Republican leaders have convinced themselves that what really upsets the public is illegal immigration and that, in their confusion, Americans are lumping legal immigrants together with border-crashers. Moreover, many Republicans have bought into the Wall Street Journal argument that immigration is an economic boon. Consequently, the party’s approach to immigration has been to couple a get-tough stand on illegal immigration with a dogged insistence that high levels of legal immigration are good for the country.

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Ira Mehlman

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AN OCTOBER survey of New York City residents—hardly a hotbed of reactionary sentiment—found that 63 per cent of respondents considered immigration levels to be too high. A month earlier 43 per cent of Californians surveyed could not identify a single benefit of immigration, legal or illegal.

With evidence mounting that immigration is going to be the sort of political issue in the Nineties that welfare fraud and school busing were in previous decades, the Republican leadership—which for more than two decades has prided itself on being in tune with the concerns of the “silent majority”—has recognized that it must take a stand. However, the Republicans have failed to grasp exactly what the new concerns are. Republican leaders have convinced themselves that what really upsets the public is illegal immigration and that, in their confusion, Americans are lumping legal immigrants together with border-crashers. Moreover, many Republicans have bought into the Wall Street Journal argument that immigration is an economic boon. Consequently, the party’s approach to immigration has been to couple a get-tough stand on illegal immigration with a dogged insistence that high levels of legal immigration are good for the country.