Immigration
time bomb about to explode on GOP Census report headlines overlook why foreign-born favor the left
by Garth Kant, 12/30/14
WASHINGTON – A creeping revolution is underway
that’s stealthily altering the very core of America and the ideals for which
its ancestors fought and died in freedom’s cause.
The phenomenon is leading the country toward
embracing the very thing President Thomas Jefferson abhorred: ever-bigger
government.
And it’s coming from a seemingly harmless policy
many Americans embrace.
Legal immigration.
The numbers don’t lie. The U.S. is experiencing
an immigration explosion never before seen in its history:
- According to U.S. Census
numbers, immigration averaged only 195,000 per year from 1921 through 1970.
- With the change in immigration
law in 1965, immigration levels skyrocketed from an average of 250,000 to
one million a year.
- The number of foreign-born
persons in the U.S. has
doubled from 1990 to 2010, almost
tripled since 1980, and quadrupled since 1970.
- As of the last census in 2010,
40 million immigrants were in the U.S.
- Forty-million immigrants is
about 13-percent of the total U.S. population of 320,009,000 the
Census Bureau estimated on Jan 1, 2014.
- A recent report from the Congressional
Research Service
indicated the foreign-born population may increase by another 27.4 million
people by 2022, climbing from 40.8 million in 2012 to 58.3 million after
ten years.
Republicans have been up in arms over President
Obama’s executive action to provide amnesty for five million illegal
immigrants. But mostly overlooked have been the even greater changes to the
country caused by an unprecedented and decades-long spike in legal immigration,
compounded by illegal immigration.
After the release of new
population projections by the U.S. Census Bureau earlier this month, most
headlines focused on the news
that whites will become a minority of Americans by 2044, when they will account
for 49.7 percent of the population; Hispanics will be 25 percent; blacks will
be 12.7 percent; Asians will be 7.9 percent; and 3.7 will be multiracial.
But the numbers only say what is happening, not
why – and how the real story may not be the color of the immigrants’ skin but
the content of their politics.
Researchers at the Center for Immigration Studies,
or CIS, and the Eagle Forum say the data show immigrants tend to favor big
government and vote Democratic, and that has numerous and significant ripple
effects.
The key factors, according to their analysis:
- Current high levels of legal
immigration are not the historic norm
- What matters isn’t race but the
politics of countries of origin
- Immigration is changing the
country to favor more big government
- Democrats are using immigration
to increase their power
High level of immigration not the historic norm
Most Americans appear to believe today’s
immigration numbers are par for the course, historically. But the numbers
actually reflect dramatic change since the 1930s, propelled by a crucial change
to immigration law in 1965. The result has been an immigration explosion
unlike anything America has ever experienced. A graph of the numbers over
the years vividly illustrates just how different today’s astronomical
immigration levels are from the historic norm.
Traditionally, the United States allowed relatively few immigrants
to legally enter the country, with the exception of two great waves. During the
first wave in the 1880s, almost six-million immigrants entered the country. The
second wave hit a peak of 8.7 million a little more than 100 years ago. Today’s
immigration level dwarfs the previous historic peaks and is ongoing and
ever-increasing.
Why is immigration to America booming? Analysts
point to the dramatic changes made in immigration policy in 1965 when President
Lyndon Johnson signed the Hart-Cellar Immigration Bill into law. According
to Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration studies, or CIS, the 1965
changes unwittingly ushered in a new era of mass immigration.
Admission to the U.S under the old system
depended mostly upon an immigrant’s country of birth. Seventy percent of
immigration slots were reserved for those from the United Kingdom, Ireland and
Germany, and mostly went unused.
That quota system (established in 1921 and most
recently modified in 1952) was abolished in 1965, along with other various
nationality criteria. Family reunification became the most important criterion
for entry into the country. It was the first time relatives of American
citizens were given higher preference than those with special job skills.
Camarota said the
changes were not meant to increase or decrease immigration. In fact. proponents
repeatedly
denied the law would lead to a
large and sustained increase in immigration. The law was portrayed as an
extension of the civil rights movement in America, leveling the playing field
for applicants.
Camarota told WND the reason immigration levels
began to rise so swiftly after 1965 was due to a large extent on unintended
consequences, which Democrats would later learn to use to their advantage.
One factor that drove the numbers was family
sponsorship. Once immigrants could sponsor family members the immigration population
grew. In turn, there were more people who could then sponsor more relatives,
leading to a geometrical growth of immigrants.
CIS found another factor was the expansion of
supposedly temporary provisions in the 1986 amnesty law and another expansion
in 1990 that increased such things as foreign students and guest workers. The
increased interaction between Americans and foreigners in the county led to
more people who could marry, and a further expansion of sponsorships.
Politics of countries of origin
According to researchers, the difference in
today’s immigrants is they largely come from countries with systems of
government much more rooted in social-welfare philosophy than America.
“Basically, they like big government. They like
Obamacare, gun control, they like rich paying more taxes, more environmental
regulations. As citizens, they generally vote for the party with that
orientation,” explained Camorata.
That’s backed up by a comprehensive
study by Phyllis Schlafly’s
Eagle Forum, based on a compilation of census data and surveys including
the Pew Research Center, the Pew Hispanic Center, Gallup, NBC News, Harris
polling, the Annenberg Policy Center, Latino Decisions, the Center for
Immigration Studies and the Hudson Institute.
The Forum’s survey found “most immigrants come
from countries where the government plays a larger role in the economy and
society. Their support for expansive government is reinforced by liberal elites
in immigrant communities and the liberal urban areas in which so many settle.”
According to the study, 71 percent of voting-age
Hispanics and 9 percent of voting-age Asians were either foreign born or had at
least one foreign-born parent, and the data showed those voters skewed heavily
to the left.
For instance, “Pew Research Center has found
that 55 percent of Hispanics have a negative view of capitalism, the highest of
any group surveyed. Pew also found that 75 percent of Hispanics prefer a bigger
government providing more services, as do 55 percent of Asian-Americans. This
compares to just 41 percent of the general public.”
“While the general public was divided in 2012 on
Obamacare, 66 percent of Hispanics support it; and three times as many Asian
Americans had a favorable opinion of the program as had an unfavorable opinion
of it.”
Additionally, contrary to assertions by many
Republican politicians who favor amnesty, the research showed most immigrants
were not socially conservative.
For example, U.S.-born Hispanics and Asians
tended to support abortion and gay rights, while foreign-born Hispanics and
Asians were divided.
The study concluded, “more importantly, polls
show that immigrants and their children do not vote for candidates based on
social issues. Polls indicate that Republicans’ social conservatism does not
particularly help or hurt them with voters in immigrant communities.”
The survey also found Hispanics and Asians were
not alone in their liberalism, as the data for other immigrants, including
Europeans and Muslims, indicated they also had views to the left of the average
American voter.
The same pattern was discovered in all Western
democracies, with immigrants and their adult children strongly favoring leftist
parties.
Immigration is changing the country to favor
more big government
The Eagle Forum study’s key conclusion is that
immigration is changing the country’s politics by moving the electorate to the
left:
“Because immigrants and their adult children
overwhelmingly favor big government, there is no issue more important for
conservatives than reducing the future number of legal immigrants allowed into
the country each year. Otherwise, legal immigration will continue to add
millions of liberal voters every decade, making it extremely unlikely that
conservatives will be successful on all the issues they care about.” With
Hispanics and Asians now accounting for the bulk of immigrants, their views on
the role of government have become increasingly relevant.
Camarota told WND
another reason why immigration is such a boon to the Democrats is that it
transforms society in ways that makes their arguments heard all the more sympathetically.
One obvious factor is that mass immigration from
poor countries significantly increases the number of poor in America, and the
poor tend to vote Democratic. “One third of all the children in poverty today
are in immigrant families. So, you have a much larger low-income population,
especially children,” noted Camorata.
That leads to liberal arguments for greater
government programs that even independents and moderates might find appealing. “People
naturally say, ‘Well, we’ve got to do something about it; those families
obviously need help.’”
Camorata noted, as mass immigration dramatically
increased the number of low-income workers, there was more pressure to expand
specific government programs. “People say, ‘We gotta help them. Let’s increase
the value of the earned income tax credit. Make sure all their kids can get
Medicaid.’ That’s exactly the way its played out politically over the last 25
years all these low-income workers with kids. ‘Let’s expand Head Start,
let’s have universal pre-K, let’s make sure everyone can get WIC and SNAP (the
programs that replaced food stamps), Medicaid, those kinds of things.”
Camorata maintained that the need for government
assistance is one reason that even the immigrants who may have socially
conservative views do not vote conservative. He cited the examples of New York
and San Francisco, “probably two of the most heavily immigrant-settled places
in the country and they vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party. They
(immigrants) can be opposed to everything from handing out condoms to gay
marriage to subsidized abortion and it doesn’t bother them (to vote for
Democrats.)”
“They can be enthusiastic Democrats right
alongside the most extreme elements of the liberal social agenda of the
Democratic Party. So, what they’re telling us is, these are issues they
generally don’t care about or agree with,” and that socially conservative
issues do not really resonate with immigrants. Camorata believes Republicans
compound the problem by convincing themselves otherwise.
Even though many conservatives believe, based on
the weight of their arguments, they can persuade immigrants to move to the
right, Camorata said experience suggests otherwise. “People who leave New York
state because of its oppressive regulations and so forth, when they get to
North Carolina, they vote for those same policies.”
Camarota does believe voters in the rest of the
electorate could be persuaded that legal immigration is a severe problem. “If
Republicans were to explain why it’s problematic for taxpayers, why it’s making
the country so much more densely populated and how that impacts their standard
of living, what it means for American workers, there’s no question the public
would respond.”
He insisted he Republicans could use the
explosion of immigration issue against the Democrats, “But rather than
persuading people it will lead to a more liberal agenda, they choose instead to
please the electorate.”
Additionally, he notes, the time to make that
argument is running short, because the legal immigration population is three
times bigger than illegal immigrants, and a good portion of them vote. And soon,
he predicts, so will those who are currently illegal immigrants.
Democrats are using immigration to increase
their power
The Eagle Forum study succinctly concludes that
Democrats understand immigration is an electoral bonanza for liberalism.
While finding most Republicans reluctant to
directly address the partisan implications of mass immigration, “Democrats have
been quite open about how much immigration is improving their ability to win
elections by importing massive numbers of liberal voters.”
The report cites Eliseo Medina, a top official with both the
Service Employees International Union and Democratic Socialists of America, as
explaining how the expansion of the Democrat electorate through immigration
“will solidify and expand the progressive coalition for the future.”
Even though the study claims mass immigration
tends to harm those the Democratic Party traditionally has claimed to want to
help, such as less-educated workers and minorities, “Immigrants’ liberalism
often reflects self-interest, as many benefit from affirmative action and
welfare.”
Camorata illustrated that with the real-world
example of the health-care debate. “What was one of the chief justifications
for Obamacare? Thirty-five million people without health insurance, and that
number’s up 15 million since 1990. See what I mean? It’s really, really helpful
to have all those low-income people, all those uninsured people, when you want
to make an argument for more expansive government. And, the beauty of it is,
you also increase the number of voters who are sympathetic to that argument.”
He described how the government uses the Current
Population Survey primarily to get data on who doesn’t have health insurance,
and the survey asks whether a person is an immigrant and when he or she came to
America.
Camorota said that makes it very easy to
calculate the impact of immigrants and their children on the total uninsured
population. And for the last decade-and-a-half, two-thirds to three-quarters of
the growth of the uninsured has been immigrants and their children.“It is
perfectly accurate to say that the nation’s health insurance crisis is being
directly driven by its immigration policy.”
When did Democrats realize mass immigration was
a leftist boon that could be exploited at the polls? “By the 1980s, people in
the Democratic Party realized what was happening. Prior to that, they weren’t
sure how the immigrants were going to vote. But then I think they realized
these were people who largely were in need of public services.”
Compounding the situation, establishment
Republicans have supported amnesty and mass immigration in a perhaps quixotic
effort to woo foreign-born voters away from Democrats.
A case in point is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush,
the first Republican to indicate he will run for president in 2016.
“I think there’s a compelling case that if we want to be young and
dynamic again, we have to make legal immigration easier than illegal
immigration, that we control our borders, that we enforce the laws, but that we
embrace our immigrant heritage and allow this country to take off,” said Bush
recently in an interview.
However, his reference to “our immigration
heritage” would seem to be undercut by the Eagle Forum findings that high
levels of immigration are not the historic norm.
Carmorata attributes the common misperception
that immigration levels traditionally have been high to simple ignorance.
“If you were to ask the average Republican or
Democratic members of Congress how many legal immigrants there are, they
couldn’t guess. If you were to tell them there are 30 million legal immigrants
in the U.S., that’s one out of every 10 adults in the U.S. They would be
surprised.”
He also attributed the misconception to
sentimentality.
“Folks remember Great-Grandma from Minsk; she
was a wonderful person. There’s a certain kind of reflexive sentimentality that
is probably very ahistorical that doesn’t reflect the actual impact of those
immigrants, and would be not particularly relevant to the current situation.”
He said, back then the government was spending 4
or 5 percent of the GDP on immigrants at every level of government, whereas now
it is more like 35 percent.
The Eagle Forum study indicated another comment by Bush to be a
common misconception when he said “[I]f we want to be young and dynamic again
we have to make legal immigration easier than illegal immigration.”
The study found, “Immigrants age like everyone
else and their fertility is not that much higher than that of the native-born
population,” citing a “Census Bureau conclusion based on projections done in
2000 that immigration is a ‘highly inefficient’ means for increasing the
percentage of the population that is of working age in the long run.”
The study also cited a 1992 article in
Demography, “the leading academic journal in the field,” which found “constant
inflows of immigrants, even at relatively young ages, do not necessarily
rejuvenate low-fertility populations. In fact, immigration may even contribute
to population aging.”
Another reason often cited as to why
establishment Republicans support amnesty and increased legal immigration is
pressure from corporate interests to provide ever-cheaper labor.
Camarota noted, “I would say there’s a lot of
bipartisanship on immigration. It reflects the stupidity of the Republican
party and maybe the indifference to American workers and taxpayers of the
Democratic Party.”
And, given public misconceptions about
immigration, someone such as House Majority Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, isn’t
politically compelled to oppose amnesty or mass immigration.
However, Camatora is mystified as to why such a
fiscally conservative congressman such as Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., “can’t see
the desire for smaller government is entirely in conflict with mass
immigration.” “Why Ryan can’t see it, I have no idea.”
He notes there is a school of thought in the GOP
that the way to manage mass immigration is with guest workers, but said that
has been proven not to work, historically.
“They think this is a way of getting labor
without letting them vote. Of course, everybody knows, it will result in
large-scale permanent settlement, but the Republicans kind of convince
themselves it won’t.”
“Some people will want to go back, but we also
know that in every single society that’s ever tried to have a guest worker
program from a poor country to a rich country, it’s only resulted in
large-scale, permanent settlement over time.”
He pointed to the experience of France with
North Africans, Germany and Pakistanis and South Asians, Great Britain and its
former colonies and the U.S. with its bracero program with Mexico.
One last factor Camorata noted was that
throughout the Western world immigrants have been largely perceived as racial
or ethnic minorities, and, as progressive or liberal parties perceive
themselves to be the parties of the minorities, immigrants have tended to
gravitate their way.
The Eagle Forum study also concluded,
“Unfortunately, some immigrants are also attracted to the Democratic Party’s
support for identity- and grievance-based politics.”
The ethnic-minority status of most immigrants,
Camarota said, has led Republicans to fear opposition to immigration would be
perceived as bigotry.
He called that fear “palpable” within the GOP,
which leads them to see support for immigration as a way of combating the
bigotry label.
“It allows people like Ryan to say yes I oppose
affirmative action, yes I oppose all those social programs that are heavily
supported by black and Hispanic voters, but I’m not a bigot because I want mass
immigration.”
In conclusion, the Eagle Forum report found “the
factors contributing to immigrants’ liberalism are largely outside of the
Republican Party’s control.”
The only solution, it maintained, was not for
Republicans to embrace immigration but to try and reduce it and to educate
voters about its effects.
Follow Garth Kant @ DCgarth
Source:http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/ticking-time-bomb-about-to-explode-on-gop/