The GOP's Immigration Dilemma

For its political survival, the Republican Party must court the Hispanic vote. Totally shut out among black voters and badly defeated among Hispanics, the GOP is having a hard time finding enough white voters to overcome the deficit. With blacks and Hispanics casting one vote in four, a Republican must win two-thirds of the white vote to have a shot at 51 percent in the average election.

And the situation will only get worse for the Republican Party. The Hispanic population, which swelled from 7 percent to 12 percent of the U.S. population in the past 10 years, is forecast to grow to 18 percent by the end of the decade. If they continue to vote Democrat, the GOP will run out of white people — and face death as a political party.

Only by taking the bold and dramatic step of providing amnesty to illegal Mexican immigrants can the GOP, at a stroke, become competitive among Hispanic voters. This legislation, the equivalent for Hispanics of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for blacks, holds the potential to reposition an entire slice of the electorate and move Hispanics to the Republican Party.

But, at the same time, the Republican Party needs to hang on to its base of angry white men who largely oppose immigration — and illegal immigration most of all. They are the base that insisted on English-only initiatives in the 1980s and 1990s, battled to cutoff aid to illegal aliens, and demanded a halt to bilingual education.

How are Republicans to reach out to Hispanics while appeasing their truculent base?

President Bush has already taken the lead in pulling the Republican Party back from the issue precipices on which it was dancing. By stopping Republicans from opposing bilingual education or affirmative action, and by demoting English-only initiatives to the bottom of the party’s agenda, he has moved mightily to strengthen GOP outreach to Hispanics.

But it is his amnesty proposal for illegal Mexican immigrants that holds the real hope for his party to avert demographic extinction.

The key to resolving the Republican dilemma of having to choose between outreach to Hispanics and alienating its Anglo political base is to condition amnesty with good citizenship requirements.

Republicans should offer conditional amnesty to Mexican illegal immigrants. Here’s the deal: If you want to stay in the United States, you must enroll in a good-citizen program. The immigrant has to agree to become functionally literate in English within two years, work for six of the next eight quarters and pay taxes to FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) for each of these quarters — no off-the-books work — and avoid arrest for 24 months.

At the end of the two-year period, those who meet the requirements would become citizens in good standing, eligible to vote and participate in civic life. Those who refuse to enroll or who fail the meet the requirements would face deportation. If the program works, it can be expanded to other categories of illegal immigrants.

Polling shows that most voters, even among the GOP base, are willing to forgive the illegality of their arrival if these Mexican immigrants show a willingness to earn their legal status in America. The compromise has the contractual opportunity/responsibility formula that sold so many of Clinton’s programs and that lies at the core of the highly successful welfare reform program. By asking something in return for giving something, the resulting transaction acquires a moral impetus that it sorely needs to win national support.

At the same time as the Republicans offer the olive branch to illegal Hispanic immigrants, they must use this year’s review of immigration statutes to close down immigration from nations that sponsor or harbor terrorists — including even such so-called allies as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. By closing one spigot as they open the other, Republicans can master the political hat trick of reaching out to Hispanics while appeasing their political base.

Otherwise, the GOP will go the way of the Liberal Party in Great Britain, to the political grave.

Otherwise, the GOP will go the way of the Liberal Party in Great Britain, to the political grave.

I think that the surest way to send the Republican Party to the fate of the Liberal Party would be to follow this advice. There are a great many things that can be done to increase the Republican share of minority votes, without undermining the basic characteristics of the American population. What Morris does not grasp is that this is not a matter of a few leaders cutting a deal, and expecting their dutiful followers to go along. Those imagined as followers will not go along. (See Politics 2001--Lessons 2000.)

I do, of course, believe the problem needs to be faced. But facing it is not compromising the character of any group, nor of the Republic. We need, obviously, to stem the tide of immigration. We are rapidly becoming very much overcrowded in the major population centers of America. We do not need to expand for the sake of expansion. Future wars will be more dependent upon technology than numbers, and we can, of course, allow in a few geniuses, if we need to, to take employment in our technology driven enterprises.

We secondly need to tighten qualifications for the suffrage. Universal suffrage in America today is already becoming a failure. It won't do to keep thinking that the reality is some sort of unmentionable. Those images of the terminally senile, being told how to vote by the Gore team. The protests in the Florida streets. The college students bragging about their multiple voting in Wisconsin. The herding of non-English speakers to the polls in the Southwest. Someone needs to take a stand. If the Republicans do so without rancour or nastiness, but calmly, with reasoned arguments, that stand alone would garner the overwhelming support of the American mainstream. (No, not on day one. After the media do their week or so of around the clock screaming against the reactionaries, they will suddenly realize that the common sense of not allowing people to vote who do not understand the functions of the office being filled, may not appeal to them; but that it will begin to make sense to the public.)

I also continue to insist that the best way to reach members of minorities is in the posture of a people proud of their own traditions, ready to treat their neighbors old and comparatively recent as the case may be with respect, but without apology. That the true key to getting along with others has always been the basic American way. We treat you with respect. We expect respect back. Government: It is not a problem solver; merely a protector and enabler. The reason that minorities are anti-Republican is that we have allowed the Democrats to corrupt many of their members by a bidding war for favors, an application of the idiotic idea that Government should be a problem solver. We need to bury that idea--not only for the poor, but for everyone, including the giant Corporations that get in trouble.

For those who do not understand what I mean by an "enabler," please read Article I, Section 8 & 10, and Article IV of the Constitution, and consider just what the real purpose of the limited but carefully listed powers given to the Feds are really all about. They are setting up a framework where you and I can be responsible for our own pursuit of happiness, with stable money, stable measures, communications, protection of invention, etc.; with the Government not solving our personal problems, but there to prevent the corrupt or stupid from giving us unnecessary new ones.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

Morris is pretty insulting about the "truculent base" of "angry white men," and I'm not so sure he's right. Republicans were a major influence behind the immigration restrictions of the 1920s, yet they managed to do alright among Italian-Americans in later years. Not so well for a long time with Eastern Europeans or Irish. It was the dynamics of intergroup relations that influenced what happened. Where other groups (Irish, Jews, English, Blacks) had great power in the Democratic party, many Italians found the GOP and its support for family values appealing, at least in the Northeast. Where Hispanics and other groups come into sharp conflict, or where other groups have control of the Democratic machine, you may see the GOP pick up some support. Where Hispanics are the largest minority group, they will naturally align themselves with the Democrats to secure their power. Also, Hispanics or Latinos are such catch-all terms. These dynamics will also work within such large groups.

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