The Immigration Divide that Truly Is
Columnist Barton Swaim is to be admired for trying to bridge the impasse between MAGA Republicans and Democrats regarding fair, decent, and effective immigration policy at our nation's southern border. His earnest plea to bind up our political wounds and heal the immigration divide slide him into a sinkhole of magical thinking, however.
Barton claims that Trump's confidant, adviser Stephen Miller, goes too far in ramming through immigration policy that shuts U.S. borders to dark-skinned migrants. Pushing Miller's tough policies to the periphery, Swaim mentions in passing this pasty-faced despot but once in his commentary.
Swaim accepts the fact that most right and left-wing politicians are still at each other's throats over what immigration policy is good for our country. They obliterate opponents' convictions. What takes over is ugly partisanship in which harsh disagreement devolves into a crusade to exterminate alternative viewpoints.
Swaim believes that beneath this morass of demonetization arises a growing group of Democrats and Republicans who want to cooperate on immigration policy. "Majorities believe that asylum seekers should apply for entry outside the U.S.," declares Swaim, "and that illegal aliens who have worked and committed no crimes over the course of many years should merit some path to citizenship."
Such flighty musing floats a dreamy mental fog around it.. Two compelling realities make it certain the immigration divide among voters will, alas, last.
First, although President Trump quietly instructs Stephen Miller to shelve the verbal flash-point "mass destruction" and talk publicly about deporting "criminals such as rapists and murders," Trump's past actions speak another language of racist hate.
Most Americans have never come to grips with the fact that in 2024, starting in June, President Biden's policy worked to control the border. Congress presented a partisan plan in January 2024 for constructive border reform. Biden adopted much of this plan. Trump flatly rejected it. His aim was and still is to close the border to "inferior immigrants."
Biden's changed border policy, some borrowed from the MAGA playbook, created a significant decrease in illegal border crossings after June, 2024.
Second, MAGA's picking on migrants as detriments to white American culture is not a recent political reality. It has worked for the Republican Party during the last 50 years.
During the 1970 midterm elections, preceding Richard Nixon's run for a second term, "tricky Dick's" popularity caved. Key aides Patrick Buchanan and Lee Atwater devised a plan to dull Nixon's demonetization of political enemies by putting a positive spin on it, dubbed "positive polarization." The GOP started harping against "others," who they caricatured as shiftless, against law and order, and dangerous because they migrated from anti-American scum territories.
Buchanan, in a memo to President Nixon, warned, "We are in a contest over the soul of the country now, and the decision will not be some middle compromise -- it will be their kind of society or ours." That is, whites pitted against non-whites to save America.
Swaim is wrong, imagining this MAGA blood identity will dissolve with a transfusion of partisans working on common ground with Democrats for immigration reform.
Barton claims that Trump's confidant, adviser Stephen Miller, goes too far in ramming through immigration policy that shuts U.S. borders to dark-skinned migrants. Pushing Miller's tough policies to the periphery, Swaim mentions in passing this pasty-faced despot but once in his commentary.
Swaim accepts the fact that most right and left-wing politicians are still at each other's throats over what immigration policy is good for our country. They obliterate opponents' convictions. What takes over is ugly partisanship in which harsh disagreement devolves into a crusade to exterminate alternative viewpoints.
Swaim believes that beneath this morass of demonetization arises a growing group of Democrats and Republicans who want to cooperate on immigration policy. "Majorities believe that asylum seekers should apply for entry outside the U.S.," declares Swaim, "and that illegal aliens who have worked and committed no crimes over the course of many years should merit some path to citizenship."
Such flighty musing floats a dreamy mental fog around it.. Two compelling realities make it certain the immigration divide among voters will, alas, last.
First, although President Trump quietly instructs Stephen Miller to shelve the verbal flash-point "mass destruction" and talk publicly about deporting "criminals such as rapists and murders," Trump's past actions speak another language of racist hate.
Most Americans have never come to grips with the fact that in 2024, starting in June, President Biden's policy worked to control the border. Congress presented a partisan plan in January 2024 for constructive border reform. Biden adopted much of this plan. Trump flatly rejected it. His aim was and still is to close the border to "inferior immigrants."
Biden's changed border policy, some borrowed from the MAGA playbook, created a significant decrease in illegal border crossings after June, 2024.
Second, MAGA's picking on migrants as detriments to white American culture is not a recent political reality. It has worked for the Republican Party during the last 50 years.
During the 1970 midterm elections, preceding Richard Nixon's run for a second term, "tricky Dick's" popularity caved. Key aides Patrick Buchanan and Lee Atwater devised a plan to dull Nixon's demonetization of political enemies by putting a positive spin on it, dubbed "positive polarization." The GOP started harping against "others," who they caricatured as shiftless, against law and order, and dangerous because they migrated from anti-American scum territories.
Buchanan, in a memo to President Nixon, warned, "We are in a contest over the soul of the country now, and the decision will not be some middle compromise -- it will be their kind of society or ours." That is, whites pitted against non-whites to save America.
Swaim is wrong, imagining this MAGA blood identity will dissolve with a transfusion of partisans working on common ground with Democrats for immigration reform.