Posted on 08/31/2015 7:26:20 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Conservative luminaries have been warning that Donald Trump poses a threat to the Republican party and to the political future of conservativism. Charles Krauthammer has called him “political poison.” Fred Barnes says Trump has “made the GOP’s future dicey.” George Will thunders characteristically that “every sulfurous belch from the molten interior of the volcanic Trump phenomenon injures the chances of a Republican presidency.”
All this may be true. Trump is indeed a braggart who goes out of his way to antagonize people — not a winning approach in electoral politics. And he’s shown little real commitment to conservative principles — or principles of any other kind, for that matter.
But Trump is not the long-term problem faced by the Right. Ramesh Ponnuru’s assurance regarding Trump that “this too shall pass” may be underestimating Trump’s staying power, but at some point he will pass.
But if mass legal immigration is permitted to continue, the Right is finished regardless of what Trump does or says.
If the federal immigration program continues to operate at its current pace — about 1 million green cards issued per year — it will create nearly 15 million potential new voters over the next two decades, disproportionately liberal, as I will explain below. If Senator Rubio and the rest of the Republican establishment had gotten its way and the House had passed Chuck Schumer’s bill, the number of these potential new voters minted by mass immigration by 2036 would have been more than double that, over 32 million.
What are the likely political leanings of these millions of voters imported by Congress and the president? Conservative immigration romantics imagine them to be natural Republicans, having a right-winger inside just waiting to burst out, if only they’re welcomed with open arms.
Unfortunately, a mountain of survey research gives us no reason to believe that to be the case. Put simply, immigrants and their adult children are disproportionately big-government liberals who vote heavily Democrat because that party’s policies accord with their own views and interests.
This conclusion isn’t based on tendentious survey questions or a one-off poll that doesn’t reflect true views. Rather, survey after survey after survey after survey hammers the point home: Immigration increases the electoral power of the Left.
Let’s look at just a sprinkling of the findings (examine them in more detail in a comprehensive review of immigrant policy preferences published by Eagle Forum). The 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey found that 62 percent of immigrants supported government health insurance, as opposed to 45 percent of the native-born. The 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study found 58 percent of immigrants supported affirmative action, versus 35 percent of natives.
The Pew Research Center found in 2011 that Hispanics (mainly immigrants or the children of immigrants) had the most negative view of capitalism of any group polled — more negative even than self-identified supporters of Occupy Wall Street.
Pew also found that 75 percent of Hispanics preferred a larger government providing more services to a small one providing fewer; the figure for the public at large was just 41 percent. It’s true that support for bigger government is lower among the adult grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants, at “only” 58 percent. But not only is even this figure disturbingly high, it’s not clear that it tells us anything about the grandchildren of today’s immigrants — their grandparents arrived at least half a century ago in a very different America.
Same with gun rights. Pew found that just 29 percent of Hispanics favor protecting gun rights over controlling guns, compared with 57 percent of non-Hispanic whites. The polling firm Latino Decisions reports that significant majorities of Hispanics support background checks for gun purchases, establishing a national database of gun owners, limiting the capacity of magazines, and a ban on semi-automatic weapons. Natural Republicans?
Environmentalism? The National Asian American Survey in 2012 found that 60 percent of people of Asian origin (overwhelmingly immigrants and their adult children) prioritize environmental protection over economic growth, versus 41 percent of the general public. A 2010 L.A. Times-USC poll found that both Hispanics and Asians are significantly more concerned about the environment than whites in California (who are themselves quite liberal on environmental issues).
What about social issues? That’s where many of the immigration romantics’ hopes lie — after all, aren’t Hispanics Catholic and more family-oriented? Unfortunately, it turns out that immigrants are not especially conservative on social issues. They’re divided on issues such as abortion, stem-cell research, and gay marriage in ways that are similar to the general public. On abortion, Hispanics are indeed somewhat more conservative than the general public, but Asians are more liberal; among the native-born in both groups (mostly children or grandchildren of immigrants), opinions move substantially to the left.
So immigrants are not especially conservative on social issues, but even the modest differences that do exist with the general public have little political salience. The Public Religion Research Institute, the National Asian American Survey, and others suggest that Hispanics and Asians are less likely to base their votes on social issues than are non-Hispanic whites. As the Eagle Forum report summarized, “Republicans’ social conservatism may not be a significant liability with Hispanic and Asian voters; but it is unlikely to win them much support either.”
Democrats understand that continuing mass immigration spells the end of small-government conservatism. Eliseo Medina, who is, along with Frances Fox Piven and others, a top functionary in the Democratic Socialists of America and a former official in the Service Employees International Union, has acknowledged that mass immigration “will solidify and expand the progressive coalition for the future.”
All this makes perfect sense. The problem is not that immigrants suffer from some kind of moral failing; plenty of native-born Americans hold these same views. Rather, they tend to come from countries where government plays a larger role than here; they tend to settle in urban areas with left-wing political cultures; and they disproportionately benefit from liberal policies such as expansive welfare and affirmative action. It’s actually surprising that there are immigrants who are not left-wing — and there are a lot, just not enough to prevent mass immigration from undermining conservatism’s prospects as a national force.
Part of the solution to this problem is found in the final item in Trump’s immigration plan: “Immigration moderation.” Downsizing the federal immigration program would give us a breather, improving the job prospects and reducing welfare dependency, not only of the native-born but also the immigrants already here. Republican efforts at recruiting in immigrant communities might have a chance of catching up to the rapid growth that will take place even without immigration.
Note that better control over illegal immigration — walls, mass deportations, whatever — isn’t going to fix this. Most immigration is legal immigration, and that’s where change is most needed.
Trump’s antics may well be a short-term problem for Republicans and conservatism. But mass immigration is a systemic threat to their viability. And if it continues, it won’t matter a whit if every Republican candidate speaks non-stop Spanish and takes his immigration-policy cues from Chuck Schumer — conservatism will be toast.
— Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
3rd world ping............
The person you are addressing is part of a decent sized minority on FR that has no clue that LEGAL immigrants vote for the democratic party by about 80%. 8 out of every 10 LEGAL immigrants vote left.
You would think the fact that the Dems are supporting increased immigration and amnesty might give them a clue. That said, the GOPe favors the same thing.
Like you, I have spent years trying to get this simple fact across to the public. I’ve done radio, penned articles, talked to GOP leadership & on & on. American citizens are being removed from their own nation by massive LEGAL immigration & that’s just a fact.
Wow. I can’t believe this got published in National Review.
For all those who contend “I’m not against legal immigration, just illegal immigration”, read it and weep.
Even if we had no illegal immigration, the massive numbers of legal immigrants is killing us—we are importing people who disproportionately love the welfare state and who do you think they will vote for?
Thanks for posting this.
RE: Wow. I can’t believe this got published in National Review.
A lot of FReepers tend to give National Review a bad ( how to put it ) “Review” simply because they will publish viewpoints they don’t like ( e.g. articles critical of Trump ).
The fact is, National Review publishes BOTH conservative and establishment Republican supporting articles.
Screw that. We need to stop all immigration for at least 20 years to sot out what we have.
Immigration is the only issue.
And this article proves that.
Also to understand this even more see Ann Coulter’s new book.
Only Trump is saying the word “deport” illegals. Only Trump will build the WaLL. Only Trump can save America
You are right. they should read Ann Coulter’s new book to get a clue to see that immigration is the only issue that matters now.
“The fact is, National Review publishes BOTH conservative and establishment Republican supporting articles.”
I’ll defer to you on that.
I started reading NR when I was in high school (when I could find it), and started subscribing when I entered college (long ago). Over the years it lost it’s consistently conservative edge. I haven’t had a subscription in many, many years now and very seldom check out its site. After some of their purges of conservative writers and after seeing numerous NR establishment articles posted on FR, I view NR as a mere shadow of its early form.
I agree immigration is the only issue that matters...once you replace the demographics of the nation with a “new people” that situation can never be fixed. It’s over.
RE: National Review purges.
The two main purges I remember are:
ANN COULTER. That was after 9/11 when she wrote this:
“Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war”
The other is JOHN DERBYSHIRE, a British-born naturalized American writer, journalist, mathematician and commentator.
In April 2012, Derbyshire wrote an article for Taki’s Magazine titled “The Talk: Nonblack Version.” The article was a response to reports in the news media of ‘talks’ given by African-American parents to their children warning them against white people. The article, which he couched in terms of purported advice he had given his own children on dealing with African Americans, describes 5% of black people as “ferociously hostile” to whites.
He then advises his readers to avoid settling in black neighborhoods, avoid events that draw large numbers of black people, and refrain from helping black people who seem to be in distress. He also advises white readers to scrutinize black politicians more heavily than white ones, to cultivate friendships with the handful of “intelligent and well socialized blacks” for reasons of public relations, and argued that the average intelligence of black people is lower than that of white people.
Derbyshire’s column immediately provoked condemnation from across the political spectrum.
National Review editor, Rich Lowry, described the piece as “appalling.”
On April 7, Lowry announced that Derbyshire had been dismissed from National Review saying:
“We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways.”
Any more purges you remember?
“Any more purges you remember?”
Joe Sobran, John O`Sullivan?
I briefed and helped Dave Brat after that. We put out over 40,000 robo calls in Cantor's district to expose him on immigration. Cantor was about to release the GOP version of the Dream Act. We also went after Goodlatte, but he backed down.
John O’Sullivan is still connected with National Review.
He is the editor-at-large of the opinion magazine National Review and the Director of 21st Century Initiatives and Senior Fellow at the National Review Institute in Washington, D.C.
Bill Buckley himself fired Joe Sobran for a series of columns that he considered “contextually anti-Semitic” (judge for yourself, Sobran considered communism to be, at least in part, a Jewish phenomenon ).
You can still find Sobran writing for paleoconservative journals such as Chronicles.
In fact Pat Buchanan actually offered Sobran a column in his magazine — THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE ( that Buchanan would offer Sobran a space in his magazines shows how similar their views are in regards to Israel ).
I went over the very same issues you did back in 1995 when something could be done about this in a meeting with Newt who had just become speaker of the house.....the meeting broke down & it ended in a nasty way. Suffice it to say I left that meeting with the understanding that Newt was an open borders guy & favored massive amounts of legal immigration.
He was still lying to the GOP base at the time about cracking down on this issue. As an addendum: I ran into Newt at a GOP get-together several years later, after he lost the speaker-ship, and I let him know in no uncertain terms that he blew the 1994 Republican Revolution...he made an aggressive move toward me, was stopped, and we then engaged in a shouting match which resulted in him trying to spit on me....such is the scum we spent years & money trying to elect to the GOPe.
If you can still find Sobran writing for anyone that would be amazing since he’s been dead for years. O’Sullivan was fired for many years over his immigration stance. He’s back & emasculated concerning the immigration issue.
I believe Joe is now deceased.
Unfortunately that is the heart of the issue. Theses people don’t learn, and as such are behaving not as immigrants but locust.
The only viable 3rd option is to accept our loss of America or the parts they invest and create a new country from the parts we still control. Long term should trump fail this will be the only hope for our future. America will become corrupt and bankrupt like Mexico and Central America for the same reasons.
Perhaps God can create another continent for us to escape to. And this time we’ll spell things out in no uncertain terms.
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