Posted on 02/03/2014 5:22:03 AM PST by SeekAndFind
People come to America because it is a remarkable oasis of freedom, prosperity, and opportunity. Conservatives recognize that the principal reason for our unique abundance is our constitutional restraint on the power of government. As Thomas Jefferson said, “In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
Maintaining this system requires the public to support limited government. In a new report, Eagle Forum details how immigration is fundamentally changing the electorate to one that is much more supportive of big government.
By itself, the annual flow of 1.1 million legal immigrants under the current system will create more than 5 million new potential voters by 2024 and more than 8 million by 2028. Congressional Budget Office projections indicate that under the Senate Gang of Eight’s S.744 bill, the total additional potential voters would rise to nearly 10 million by 2024 and 18 million by 2028. The influx of these new voters would reduce or eliminate Republicans’ ability to offer an alternative to big government, to increased government spending, to higher taxes, and to favorite liberal policies such as Obamacare and gun control.
There is nothing controversial about the report’s conclusion that both Hispanics and Asians, who account for about three-fourth of today’s immigrants, generally agree with the Democrats’ big-government agenda. It is for this reason that they vote two-to-one for Democrats.
The 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey found that 62 percent of immigrants prefer a single, government-run health-care system. The 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study found that 69 percent of immigrants support Obamacare. Pew also found that 53 percent of Hispanics have a negative view of capitalism, the highest of any group surveyed. This is even higher than the 47 percent among self-identified supporters of Occupy Wall Street.
The Pew Research Center has also found that 75 percent of Hispanics prefer a “bigger government providing more services,” and only 19 percent prefer a smaller government. Pew also reported that 55 percent of Asians prefer “bigger government providing more services,” and only 36 percent prefer a smaller government. So it’s no surprise that in 2012, 71 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of Asians voted for Obama.
Even Republican emphasis on patriotism and national sovereignty is likely to alienate many immigrants. A Harris poll found that 81 percent of native-born Americans believe our schools should teach students to be proud of being American, compared with only 50 percent of immigrants who had become naturalized U.S. citizens. Only 37 percent of naturalized citizens (compared with 67 percent of native-born citizens) think our Constitution is a higher legal authority than international law.
While it seems that much of the Republican-party leadership has not actually looked at the policy preferences of immigrants, everyone else who has looked at the polls comes to the conclusion that significant majorities of immigrants and their children are big-government liberals. The New York Times’ Washington bureau chief admitted last year that “the two fastest-growing ethnic groups — Latinos and Asian-Americans — are decidedly liberal.” As University of Alabama political scientist George Hawley observes, “Immigrants are well to the left of the American public on a number of key issues.” He also makes clear that “liberalizing immigration will liberalize the U.S.” Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute points out that it “is not immigration policy that creates the strong bond between Hispanics and the Democratic party, but the core Democratic principles of a more generous safety net, strong government intervention in the economy, and progressive taxation.”
Immigration in general — not race — is the issue. The limited data for other immigrants — including Europeans and Muslims — indicate that they, too, generally hold views well to the left of the average American voter. In fact, as discussed in our new report, for reasons largely outside the control of conservatives, immigrants and their children gravitate to left-wing parties in almost all Western countries. The problem for conservatives is not race or ethnicity but immigration as such.
Another important conclusion of our report is that there is no evidence that amnesty or inviting more immigration will produce Republican votes and abundant evidence that it will produce more Democratic votes. After Ronald Reagan signed the 1986 amnesty, George H. W. Bush received only 30 percent of the Latino vote in 1988, seven percentage points less than Reagan in 1984.
Those supporting a big increase in legal immigration point to the successful assimilation of Great Wave immigrants (roughly 1880 to 1920). But that wave was followed by a slowdown of immigration from the 1920s to the 1960s, which allowed newcomers to assimilate, learn our language, and adapt to our unique system of government. Also, Great Wave immigrants arrived before the rise of the grievance industry and identity politics. Moreover, it still took decades before a significant share of these immigrants moved into the Republican column. In the meantime, Great Wave immigrants and their children provided much of the political support necessary to pass and sustain both the New Deal and the Great Society.
It is also the case that the Republican party’s continued support of mass immigration, let alone the increases in the Gang of Eight bill, is contributing to alienating the Republican base, at least 4 million of whom stayed home in 2012.
The generally liberal views of today’s immigrants do not mean they are bad people. Most immigrants are hard working and love their families, and many are religious. Many hard-working Americans not of recent-immigrant origin who are devoted to their families also want to expand government. Nevertheless, platitudes about immigrants’ being hard working does not make them conservatives when it comes to the size and scope of government.
While Republicans should do a better job of outreach, immigrants’ generally liberal views should not be trivialized as something that can be overcome by the right 30-second TV or radio ad or by running candidates with Asian or Hispanic backgrounds. These may help, but the political values and preferences of the immigrant community are sincerely felt and not easily changed.
Conservatives should appeal to immigrants without sacrificing our principles. One way to do this is to argue that defeating the Gang of Eight bill, with its amnesty and doubling of legal immigration, would benefit the nearly 60 million American citizens (many of them immigrants) who are not working. If employers really are having trouble finding workers, the private-enterprise solution should be to raise the pay! A tight labor market is the best anti-poverty program. A reduction in immigration would also take pressure off our already overloaded health-care system and schools, and it would facilitate the assimilation of immigrants already here.
Our new report makes clear that for conservatives, there is no issue more important than reducing the number of immigrants allowed into the country each year. If legal immigration is not reduced, it will be nearly impossible for conservatives to be successful on the issues we care about.
If the Republican party is to remain a party that is conservative and nationally competitive, it must defeat amnesty and any proposed increases in legal immigration. Further, we must work to significantly reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country from the current level of 1.1 million a year. There is nothing inevitable about immigration. The level and selection criteria can be changed by Congress.
Looking at the political motivation of the groups pushing higher immigration and amnesty, it’s obvious that the Democrats promote large-scale immigration because it produces more Democratic votes. If the Republican party is to remain conservative and nationally competitive, it must defeat amnesty and proposed increases in legal immigration.
— Phyllis Schlafly is the president of Eagle Forum.
Mass migration without a Welfare State has been good for the country. I would not be here if it was not for the mass migration of the late 1800s. The issue, as always, is mass migration coupled with a bunch of free government benefits. It is what will destroy us. America is broke and yet we not only continue the spending binge, we are telling more people to join the party on out credit card.
It’s legal immigration, Stupid. Phyllis Schlafly reveals the elephant in the room. The Dems don’t need amnesty or illegal aliens to become the permanent majority party. The future Dem voters are coming thru the front door to the tune of about 1.1 million a year.
It will be interesting to the see the sobering disappointement of the "electorate" when expectations of ever expanding government collide with painful economic realities. Our colossal debt will soon bring about national economic calamity and hardship. The die is cast. Its just a matter of time.
When there is no more money for big government, the freebies are cut back, and there is widespread deprivation, some will be forced to recognize that socialism always ends in failure.
Its going to be a painful lesson.
We don’t need mass immigration with or without the welfare state.
Because we are the US of A, we have the opportunity to pick-and-choose immigrants from all over the world (or even none in we prefer). But instead of choosing the best and the brightest, let's take in millions of barely literate Third Worlders because after all that's where our new entrepreneurs and inventors and industry pioneers will come from.
Hear Hear, RF....Pick people who want to be citizens ....not just grab money and go home...
Not always so.
The first “progressive” push 100 years ago (that resulted in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th Amendments) were the result of allowing in hordes of Catholics, who formed the backbone of the union movement in the US, then started the zealotry for abortion and women’s issues.
Catholic-majority countries have been basket cases since the French Revolution, everywhere around the world. The more Catholics we allow into the country, the larger the welfare rolls will become, and the more leftwards our political “center” slides.
Exactly.
And we had immigration down to a pretty comfortable level... until the Catholics decided they were tired of being repressed and Teddy Kennedy pushed through the immigration act in 1965. Then the floodgates were opened and we’ve been going downhill ever since.
We were bringing in 250,00 to 300,000 a year from 1924 to 1965. Then the Immigration Act of 1965 was passed to make the population of the US look more like the rest of the world. It was part of the Civil Rights movement and really wasn't caused by Catholics.
What do you think led to a welfare state and destroyed America?
The original Americans are still voting largely as they were 150-200 years ago, look at the immigration battles of a 100 years ago and you will see that conservatives are facing the same thing they always have from the left working to import immigrants who lean in their direction.
The American left has always promoted Catholic immigration, just as they are in modern times, for instance the 1965 bill.
“However, if there is one man who can take the most credit for the 1965 act, it is John F. Kennedy. Kennedy seems to have inherited the resentment his father Joseph felt as an outsider in Boston’s WASP aristocracy. He voted against the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, and supported various refugee acts throughout the 1950s.
In 1958 he wrote a book, A Nation of Immigrants, which attacked the quota system as illogical and without purpose, and the book served as Kennedy’s blueprint for immigration reform after he became president in 1960. In the summer of 1963, Kennedy sent Congress a proposal calling for the elimination of the national origins quota system. He wanted immigrants admitted on the basis of family reunification and needed skills, without regard to national origin. After his assassination in November, his brother Robert took up the cause of immigration reform, calling it JFK’s legacy. In the forward to a revised edition of A Nation of Immigrants, issued in 1964 to gain support for the new law, he wrote, “I know of no cause which President Kennedy championed more warmly than the improvement of our immigration policies.” Sold as a memorial to JFK, there was very little opposition to what became known as the Immigration Act of 1965.”
Exactly, I'm amazed at how "illegal" is used by some conservatives, even by some freepers, to derail immigration discussion.
The 1965 Immigration Act was pushed by the Left period. Jews, Catholics, Asians, blacks, etc. They wanted to remake America to look like the rest of the world. And some Reps joined them.
"Born of liberal ideology, the 1965 bill abolished the national origins quota system that had regulated the ethnic composition of immigration in fair proportion to each group's existing presence in the population. In a misguided application spirit of the civil rights era, the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations saw these ethnic quotas as an archaic form of chauvinism. Moreover, as Cold Warriors facing charges of "racism" and "imperialism," they found the system rhetorically embarrassing. The record of debate over this seismic change in immigration policy reveals that left-wingers, in their visceral flight to attack "discrimination," did not reveal the consequences of their convictions. Instead, their spokesmen set out to assuage concerned traditionalists with a litany of lies and wishful thinking.
Chief among national concerns was total numeric immigration. Senate floor manager and Camelot knight-errant Ted Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, assured jittery senators that "our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually." Senator Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, further calmed that august body, insisting "the total number of potential immigrants would not be changed very much." Time has proven otherwise. Average immigration levels before the 1965 amendments took effect hovered around 300,000 per annum. Yet 1,045,000 legal immigrants flooded our cities in 1996 alone.
Senator Hiram Fong, R-Hawaii, calculated that "the people from [Asia] will never reach 1 percent of the population." Even in 1965, people were willing to admit that we have a reasonable interest in not being inundated by culturally alien foreigners, and it was considered acceptable to say so on the floor of the Senate. Try that today, even as a supposed conservative! (Asians currently account for three percent of the population, and will swell to near 10 percent by 2050 if present trends continue.)
The only remaining Congressman who had voted on the 1920s quotas, Representative Emanuel Celler, D-New York, insisted, "There will not be, comparatively speaking, many Asians or Africans entering this country." Today, the number of Asians and Africans entering this country each year exceeds the annual average total number of immigrants during the 1960s.
Whether the 1800s or the 1900s, or the 2000s.
The American left has always promoted Catholic immigration, just as they are in modern times, for instance the 1965 bill.
Even here, go to the Catholic threads and try to get the supposedly pro-life, conservative, Catholics to agree with you about ending immigration.
Even you in your quoted text, left out this part. The part most relevant to the post you were responding to, post 13.
What was JFK’s and the left’s reasons? They were the same they had been since at least the mid 1800s as they needed a new kind of American that would help them create unions and get a socialist, central authority, oriented voter.
“”Roman Catholics had the twin motivations of still-evolving social justice doctrine and the potential windfall of a mass influx of co-religionists from Latin America. “”
The Asians voted for Obama in 2008 because McCain called them gooks (or so they thought). They voted for Obama again in 2012 out of affirmative action, unwillingness to admit mistakes, Obama's pandering (Steven Chu was the worst secretary of energy ever but waited to quit until after the election), and general anti-white racism.
I don't see all those circumstances repeating again. Maybe some but not all. I would not lump Asians with Hispanics.
Motivated by parochial self-interest, the pro-mass immigration, open borders, amnesty advocates have formed a powerful coalition including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, labor union leaders, the Catholic Church and other national church leaders, ethnic and racial groups, “moderate” Republicans, and the Democrat Party. The common thread that unites these groups is power, money, and the prospect of increased constituencies, even at the expense of our long-term national interests and survival.
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