In Which I Strongly Take Issue with Matthew Yglesias on Immmigration

I have been reading what Matthew Yglesias has to say on what policies Democrats should take on immigration if they come to power again (assuming such a thing is even possible), and while he makes some worthwhile points about the problems Democrats would face, I cannot agree with his prescription.

It does seem that Democrats have learned an important lesson -- the US must control its borders.  Certainly I believe that Biden made a huge unforced error in abandoning Trump's "Remain in Mexico" policy for asylum seekers and instead letting anyone in who made an asylum claim.  It appears to be consensus among Democrats that if we ever come to power again, we should keep Trump's policies on closing the border, but not on internal enforcement, or on legal admissions.  

Yglesias makes a reasonable point in saying that these things are not as separate as we might thing.  The number of people seeking to come here is, after all, related to the sort of reception they can expect.  He reasonably points out the the reason illegal border crossings were relatively low during the Obama presidency was that unemployment in the US was high, so not many people were coming here looking for work.  But tanking your economy to deter immigration is not a winning proposition!  He does, nonetheless, approve of Obama's overall approach to deportation -- push out new arrivals and deport people arrested by local authorities for non-immigration offenses who turn out also to have immigration violations.  This met with opposition by immigration activities because people were being deported for quite minor non-immigration offenses, and to deportation of people who were only arrested but not convicted.  Sanctuary jurisdictions stopped reporting arrests to federal authorities.

He is also convincing in discussing the problems with Biden's asylum policies.  The plan was to admit Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan asylum seekers who applied from abroad to show that largescale admissions could be done in an orderly fashion, and also in hopes that his policies would be supported by the generally Republican Cuban, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan communities in the US.  The problem was that (1) this happened only after extensive border chaos and so the admissions were lumped together in most people's minds and (2) giving legal status to recent arrivals that was denied to people who had been living and working in the US for many years was mightily resented by long-term bur unauthorized residents and their citizen relatives/friends/neighbors, who supported Trump at least partly over these resentments.  (Cue the leopards eating faces jokes).  He is also somewhat persuasive in arguing that any time you give legal status to people who come here illegally, you encourage more people to come here.

So what does Yglesias suggest?  I find his proposal appallingly short-sighted and wishy-washy.  It is, in effect, to return to an informal policy of non-enforcement.  Don't actually reverse Trump's massive expansion of ICE, just repurpose it to border enforcement and crime fighting.  Don't give anyone here a legal status, just quietly stop internal removals except as part of criminal investigations.

The problem here is obvious.  I think Yglesias seriously underestimates how difficult it will be to reign in an organization of racist thugs who like beating up on brown people and have been give the clear message that they are above the law.  And if we assume that it is possible for Democrats to come to power, then presumably power will also return to Republicans again some day.  What is to stop Republicans from pushing Yglesias' argument to its logical conclusion.  If giving unauthorized immigrants a legal status just encourages more illegal immigration, doesn't the same apply to non-enforcement?  Or really, to any humane policy at all?  What is to stop the next Republican administration from repurposing federal law enforcement back to mass deportations and proclaiming that only relentless harassment and persecution and ever truly deter illegal immigration.  Given just how vicious and lawless our immigration enforcement has become, I don't see how we can stop sort of large-scale structural reforms to prevent a recurrence.  In short, I belong to the feed ICE into the wood chipper faction.

Yglesias makes an analogy to the Democratic base's opposition to the war in Iraq.  Democrats could only run against the war in Iraq by assuring voters that they were nonetheless tough on terrorism.  He urges Democrats to seek a more humane immigration policy while convincing voters they are tough on crime -- for instance, by insisting on deportation for any crime, no matter how minor, or by arguing that involving the regular police in immigration enforcement makes crime victims and witnesses afraid to come forward.  And he points out -- correctly -- that although Trump is currently under water on immigration, it remains his strongest issue, and the issue that the public is most likely to trust Republicans over Democrats.

I would make a different Iraq War analogy.  The planes hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  GW Bush spend much of 2002 dealing with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which actually did harbor the hijackers and refused to turn over their backers.  He invaded Iraq early in 2003, expecting a quick and easy victory.  The decision to invade was broadly, though not universally, popular among a population still angry and traumatized by the 9/11 attack.  As it became clear that invading Iraq was not leading to a quick and easy victory, but to a long, grinding insurgency, the war started losing popularity.  But it did not become unpopular overnight.  In 2004, the war was losing popularity, and the Democratic base was eager to run on opposition to the war, but the war was still not a priority with the general public.  In fact, a survey taken of voters supporting Bush in 2004 found that their top concern was "moral" issues -- in particular, opposition to gay marriage.

GW Bush's popularity began to slide soon into his second term but not, at first, because of the war.  The first issue to really hurt him was his attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005.  Next came his poor management of Hurricane Katrina, also in 2005.  It was only in 2006 that war-weariness became the leading issue to most voters.  It remained the leading issue in 2007, only to be eclipsed in 2008 by the economic crisis.  And by now it is settled wisdom that the Iraq War was a mistake, and to have supported it is seen as seriously discrediting.

In other words, public opinion is not fixed and immutable.  Trump's immigration policies may be only a minor liability for him now, and a bigger liability for Democrats, but we are still in the first year of his presidency, and who knows how public opinion may shift in the face of continuing outrages.