Democrats' Achilles Heel: Immigration!

“When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” 

 From Donald Trump’s successful first Presidential campaign.

The issue was the dominating rationale behind Brexit. It defines Victor Orbán’s Hungary’s demand for ethnic purity, it brought the first fascist government to power to Italy, underlines the significant gains in the French accorded to right-wing Marie Le Pen’s in recent parliamentary elections which denied President Macron from the majority he needed, and has even taken traditionally liberal and open Sweden to a new level of limiting immigration. Unlike the United States, which is effectively a nation of immigrants, Europe’s underlying demographic vectors are primarily long-standing ethnic, cultural and religious. But for waves of immigrants fleeing wars, starvation and climate change, their desperate move into European nations runs counter to these country’s historical past.

While the United States includes 13.7% of its citizenry as foreign born, Sweden is now reaching past 20%, based on the greatest per capita acceptance of refugees in Europe. Fear of losing their culture plus having to absorb masses of people whose language, education and cultural background make them clear outsiders, is now plaguing Swedes. After a clear shift to the right in Sweden’s September elections, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, now that nation’s the largest party, are about to shepherd in a new body of immigration laws, moving away from an open door to a more restrictive short-term residency for asylum seekers, extended only based a set of qualifying parameters.

Make no mistake, if there is a hot-button American issue where Democrats can be unseated, it is also immigration. This notwithstanding that the current immigration nightmare was ripped into massive dysfunction by the Trump administration – slamming the immigration courts, cutting funding, engaging in clearly unlawful policies and restrictions that only brought massive waves of undocumented aliens to our borders (some, legitimate asylum seekers; 675,000 cases have yet to be heard)… many of whom were pushed back to wait in horrid camps in Mexico, wasted funding on a border wall that could never solve the problem, preferring litigation to problem-solving. The Biden administration has not done much better, but now the Republican Party is blaming the Democrats for all things wrong with undocumented and asylum-seeking aliens, no matter who caused it.

This posture is particularly galling given that a right-wing Republic congressional bloc has opposed every immigration reform measure introduced by any president since Reagan (who presided over the last meaningful immigration reform… in the mid-1980s). Even Republican presidents seeking reform were rebuffed by that bloc. But Republicans, searching for an issue, have discovered that a whole lot of Americans do not care about humanitarian concerns, that US demand for narcotics and a willingness to “allow” (wink-wink) American made guns to bolster the cartel violence that drives that migration simply does not matter, and that our need for educated STEM workers (needed to stay competitive) does not move the needle.

These desperate immigrants (and even thoroughly qualified migrants, if they are not White Christians), many asylum seekers and even economic migrants, are cast as taking away our jobs (not remotely a sustainable position given our profound worker shortage), or are labeled as criminals as noted in the excerpt from a Trump campaign speech. We need them to harvest our crops, to take jobs that American workers will not accept at any price and to support our economic stability. We need an expanded guest-worker plan, a clearer path to permanent residence (with as many logical restrictions as necessary), and a properly funded immigration service.

But despite the Republican culpability in creating the immigration nightmare we face, ambitious president-wannabes like governors Ron DeSantis (Florida) and Gregg Abbott (Texas) are happy to ignore the truth, fabricate what they think voters want to hear, engage in stupid and even illegal usurpation of federal jurisdiction, for grandstanding and self-help. GOP governors send “troops to defend our border” or create dramatic photo ops by lying to asylum seekers to lure them into bus rides or flights where they are promised non-existent jobs and residency in blue states. Forget that blue California already receives the largest segment of these migrants.

While Democrats plot the response to GOP grandstanding, from possible criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits, and no matter how immoral and wrong such GOP efforts are, ignoring this rising tide of emotion could tank Democratic chances during the mid-terms and the 2024 presidential race. It remains the single biggest issue that plagues the Dems, even beyond inflation and the culture wars.

So, what should the Democrats do? First, admit there is a big problem that is now a Democratic Party priority to solve. They need to tag those Republicans for their mistaken efforts in the past and demand that the public elect Democrats in sufficient numbers to implement a desperately needed statutory reform legislation. They need to acknowledge that we cannot allow a flawed system to pump more immigration-seekers into the United States without a mechanism to reduce those admitted and fix the system for a modern era. “We need Congress to give us the tools to deal with this massive immigration quagmire!” should be the rallying cry. No more roadblocks from Republicans in Congress who have stopped every attempt at immigration reform for over three decades! Or they can limp along with the same failed system that Donald Trump handed them.

I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes the obvious seems elusive to those politicians who simply want their way…. or chaos.