The front of the New York Times Week in Review is dominated by business columnist-reporter David Leonhardt's "The Border And The Ballot Box," his slanted essay on anti-immigration crusades then and now. The accompanying drawings give the debate the feel of a prison camp, with Americans as prison guards and potential illegals as prisoners, and the archive illustrations on the jump page include a drawing of a burning church, bearing the caption:
Anti-Catholic -- Burning of St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church in Philadelphia, 1844. As immigration soared, so did nativist reaction.
Another archive illustration is captioned:
Anti-Chinese -- An illustration of a massacre published in Harper's Weekly, 1885. Chinese laborers were attacked by white coal miners.
Get the hint? If you are against illegal immigration today, you are akin to "nativist," violent, racist mobs from over a century ago.
Throughout the long piece, Leonhardt blithely refers to anti-immigration movements, without bothering to clarify that what most protestors oppose is illegal immigration, not immigration per se.
On June 7 of last year, a bill to overhaul the nation's immigration system -- a bill supported by President Bush and the Democratic leaders of Congress -- died in the Senate. It died mostly because of grass-roots opposition, and its downfall appeared to serve as an announcement of the issue's new political potency. For much of 2007, immigration seemed certain to play a dominant role in the 2008 presidential campaign.
....
The backlash even had a familiar feel to it. In the last few decades, the country has experienced its fourth great immigration wave. Each of the other three -- in the 1850s, 1880s and early 1900s -- also caused a political reaction, the first and most famous being the rise of the Know Nothing movement. History looked as if it would repeat itself, albeit in a milder form, this year.
And so it has. It's just that the lessons of the past aren't quite what they first appeared to be.
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There is, however, one more historical parallel to consider: as a political matter, immigration probably won't go away on its own. The anti-immigration movements of the past may not have created presidents, but they did change the country. The Chinese Exclusion Act helped cut the immigration rate by more than 40 percent at the close of the 19th century. The Nativist movement of the 1910s and 1920s had even more success passing laws to reduce the flow.
Unlike those earlier immigration waves, the current one includes a large number of illegal immigrants, which creates its own political dynamic. The subject also plays into the economic anxiety of today that stems from decades of slow wage growth and is now aggravated by the possibility of a recession. Perhaps most important, this immigration wave could turn out to be the biggest of them all. Last month, the Pew Research Center reported that the percentage of Americans born overseas would break a century-old record sometime before 2025, if current trends continued.
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It's hard, in fact, to see how a single 2008 Republican candidate benefited from anti-immigration rhetoric. All the while, Mr. McCain's campaign bus was being followed around the early-voting states by a white van called the "Amnesty Truth Express." Outside his Florida headquarters in West Palm Beach, a few days before he won the primary that established him as the clear front-runner, the van displayed a sign reading, "McCain Equals Amnesty."
How could Mr. McCain's resurgence happen only six months after Americans deluged members of Congress with phone calls opposing an immigration bill that would have provided a path to citizenship for many people in the country illegally? And how could it happen when several states, including Arizona and Colorado, have recently implemented laws to make life harder for these immigrants? The country's previous backlashes offer something of a guide.
Check out Leonhardt's loaded language:
The Nativist reaction of the early 20th century started with a similar virulence. In the aftermath of World War I, "there was just this fear that millions of people were going to pour in," said Mae Ngai, a Columbia University historian. "You could read the discussion from the 1910s and think you were looking at something from today, if you just took out ‘Italians' and put in ‘Mexicans' "
Anti-immigrant sentiment probably did help Herbert Hoover beat Al Smith -- a Catholic, like many immigrants at the time -- in 1928. But after Congress overwhelmingly passed new immigration restrictions in 1924, the main political fight over immigration occurred not between the parties, but within the Democratic Party, with those who wanted to embrace the Ku Klux Klan battling those who did not. Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the latter group.
Mr. Rauchway, the historian, argues that the ultimate failure of anti-immigrant politics is part of a larger failure of class-based politics in the United States. Running against the rich -- or the poor -- has rarely worked in this country. Instead, immigrant-bashing has been most successful when it tapped into broader racial fears, as it did in both the 1850s and the 1920s. Notably, the economy was booming in the '20s.
"As it becomes less and less acceptable to be racist," Mr. Rauchway said, "immigration is not going to be as politically effective."
(Image courtesy of The New York Times and Bettmann/Corbis)
—Clay Waters is the director of Times Watch, an MRC project tracking the New York Times.
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We shouldn't be surprised
March 3, 2008 - 15:45 ET by dscottWe shouldn't be surprised at this yet another change in tactics, for months now the MSM has been silent as not to interfere with the Dem primaries, you noticed how little either Clinton or Obama has spoken of it since the flap in with NY license option for illegals? Now that we are getting closer to the general election, the only way to defend the Dems is to innoculate the illegal immigration issue with accusations of race hatred or calling nationalists - nativists.
The Dems are extremely weak and vulnerable in this area given the problems their policies result in: flooding the market with unskilled labor causing unemployment for those who have a right to work here and depressing the wages for the rest who do have jobs in this category. Had it not been for the illegals many unskilled jobs would be getting $10/hr, i.e. the living wage the very same libs carp about. With 7.5 million people unemployed it is indefensible to advocate illegal workers displacing native workers. Worse yet, this results in millions of people having draw upon the social programs, good for Dems bad for the poor and bad for the federal and state budgets. In short, the advocacy for illegal immigration by liberals demonstrates how incompetent they are when it comes to leadership and planning.
It also demonstrates the liberal knack for focusing on the wrong part of the problem, the real problem being the failure of those countries south of the border to promote business activity to employ their citizens. Apparently, it's not the foreign governments responsibility to care for their own, the US is supposed to provide welfare for everyone at the rich people's expense of course. <sarcasm> Enabling corruption and incompetence is the Dem motto of government. It doesn't matter that they are raiding the SS trust fund to do it either.
Lord Sidious / Darth Vader 2008 Long Live the Empire! Come to the Dark Side, it is your Destiny.
NYT is pro illegal
March 3, 2008 - 16:00 ET by well99Unlike the NYT I am
I guess me and the NYT have nothing in common.I am for legal immigration.There is a difference.Edit ..first cup of coffee.
anti-driver?
March 3, 2008 - 15:56 ET by Mica the MagnificentI believe every person should have a valid drivers license before operating a motor vehicle.
Does that make me anti-driver?
What the hell's the difference?
Apparently it does. I
March 3, 2008 - 17:48 ET by motherbeltApparently it does.
I commented in the other thread about "nativists".. We can't even argue against illegal immigration, because the minute we do, we're challenged to prove that we are not racist, xenophobes.
..I'm just worn out. We have lost the battle. Might as well just throw open the doors, let 'em all come in....forget green cards, just stamp "citizen" on their foreheads as they come across, give them a Democratic voter registration card, and a voucher to call a taxi to take them to the polls
It should also be pointed
March 3, 2008 - 16:09 ET by Warner Todd HustonIt should also be pointed out that today no Mexicans are being beaten or hanged, no Muslims are having their schools or Mosques burnt to the grounds and no immigrant is being kept out of public offices.
So, to use past anti-immigrant strife and compare them to today is the worst kind of calumny.
In a nation with 300
March 3, 2008 - 16:20 ET by dscottIn a nation with 300 million people, there is the ever so slighest chance that some dufus will provide the necessary confirmation bias needed to satisfy the accusation. You can bet in the next month the MSM will have all the proof necessary to proclaim America is racist and in need of Obama or Clinton to bring sanity and equality to the masses. I mean haven't they been whipping their own rank and file for months for their supposed racism or gender bias in the primaries?
"Can't we all just get along?" Rodney King
Lord Sidious / Darth Vader 2008 Long Live the Empire! Come to the Dark Side, it is your Destiny.
however
March 3, 2008 - 20:43 ET by UndercoverConservativebuildings are being burned, towns and neighborhoods terrorized, and people killed...by the hordes making up illegal *gangs*.
FBI and law enforcement statistics will show that any "racially motivated" violence this time is perpetuated by the *new* people, *not* the "nativists.
besides, I don't remember hearing about 12 million Italians or Russians or Poles or Irish in a decade (or eight million the decade before) sneaking in across borders without anyone knowing they were there. I don't remember reading in history classes of schools forced to teach in Italian or Russian or Polish. I can't even find reference to voting pamphlets being printed in Italian, German, Russian, Polish or Irish either.
In fact, most Irish, Russian, Polish and Irish came thru Ellis Island *legally*. And for the Chinese who were here illegally, many were shipped practically as *slaves* by *their own countrymen*.
So there are a few significant differences between these "great waves of immigration' in the past, and the current invasion.
What's really frightening is, take the 12 million estimated illegals now, and the eight mil or so estimated that were in the last amnesty scam. Now count in their born-in-country "legal" children who are now old enough...compare that to the total number of combat and rear echelon members of the *entire* US armed forces, all branches...
Perhaps Mexico wouldn't mind if we only sent a million able bodied combat soldiers to "do the work Mexicans don't want to do"..that is, eliminate the racist, classist, corrupt Mexican government. It's a hell of a lot less than their 20 million, and they won't even demand welfare or drivers' licenses...
"to call an illegal immigrant an "undocumented alien" is the same as calling a streetcorner drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist".
Grasping at straws
March 3, 2008 - 16:29 ET by SlicksterTo get their last rant in before the new management takes over and kicks them to the curb.
So, Mr. Leonhardt. Is Sen. Harry Reid a racist?
March 3, 2008 - 16:54 ET by Gary HallSo, Mr. Leonhardt, do you see Sen. Harry Reid a racist or a part of some mob? How about, the Father of Earth Day.. how about Barbara Jordan.. JFK? It's not "anti-immigration fervor," Mr. Leonhardt, it's intelligent and good common sense shared by a great many.
Senate majority leader Harry Reid (who in 1993 wanted to reduce legal immigration by 2/3rds and end illegal immigration), D. NV:
The late Rep. Barbara Jordan, D. TX (black congressional caucus member - and chair of Bill Clinton's failed Immigration Reform Commission):
-President John F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants
Former Senator Gaylor Nelson, D., Father of Earth Day:
Mr. Leonhardt. If one is against illegal immigration and out of control legal immigration, perhaps that person is simply a steward of Mother Earth.
Mr. Leonhardt:
You're actually sitting strongly with the majority view of "We the People." You, Mr. Leonhardt, represent an agenda driven very small minority.
Oh, while I'm ranting and
March 3, 2008 - 16:57 ET by dscottOh, while I'm ranting and frothing at the mouth displaying my racism taking a position against illegal immigration, I would like everyone to take note of the Lost Tax Revenue we will be asked to make up for that the MSM and the Dems demand the taxes should be raised. It was a story carried here: on ID Theft by illegals The IRS wanted $60,000 in back taxes from a 7 year old because illegals used his SS number and skipped on withholding. Now multiply that by how many illegals not filing income tax returns. If the SS trust fund collected on $189 billion on wages over 10 years in revenue from mismatched SS#s, then how much tax revenue is being lost via withholding on income from wages???? That $189 billion or $18.9 billion a year represents wages not properly taxed via the income tax withholding system. Does that give you some scope of the problem? These are people not working in the underground economy mind you who pay zero taxes. So around $7/hr you are talking roughly $15k/year wages. That's 1.26 million illegals using SS#s but not filing returns. So if you figure such a person is going to pay about $1k in federal tax you are loosing out on around $1.26 billion a year on withholding, but again we are talking only 10% of the illegals actually paying some tax, the real figure is probably around $13 billion in unpaid taxes a year.
Lord Sidious / Darth Vader 2008 Long Live the Empire! Come to the Dark Side, it is your Destiny.
delete
March 3, 2008 - 17:46 ET by motherbeltdelete
Sounds Like History Teacher
March 3, 2008 - 18:36 ET by roadgeek9Sounds like stuff my liberal/anti-conservative/anti-Bush/anti-war history teacher would say about me.
Whatever...
March 3, 2008 - 18:55 ET by orlandocajunCall me whatever you like, but I want every single illegal alien, and their kids, out of this country until they're invited in.
The next time some
March 4, 2008 - 04:08 ET by CooltomThe next time some politician proposes giving licenses to illegals, somebody should ask him what name the illegal would provide for the ID? His real one? Yea, right...
New York Times
March 4, 2008 - 12:37 ET by PAPA LNYT =ANTI AMERICAN no question about it.
A PROUD AMERICAN