The question of who is allowed to come into our country has taken center stage over the past couple of weeks, thanks to popular vote loser Trump’s (don’t call it a) Muslim travel ban. Nevertheless, the broader questions relating to immigration remain vitally important—both comprehensive reform that would address the status of existing undocumented immigrants, and the basic question of how we should structure our immigration policy going forward.
On the latter, we got a proposal this week from Republican Sens. Tom Cotton and David Perdue aimed at cutting legal immigration in half, a proposal they claim will prop up wages for those already here by reducing the number of lower-skilled immigrants. Early indications out of the White House are that the Trump administration—in particular President Bannon—is also inclined to significantly limit the number of legal immigrants.
Such a stance could potentially appeal to large numbers of working-class Americans, both on economic grounds and on the basis of the fears some express about the effects of continued, large-scale immigration. Those of us who support a more robust, welcoming approach to immigration face a real challenge.
On the economic argument, Eduardo Porter recently laid out the case for the large positive effects of immigration on the American economy, citing a study that found native-born Americans reaped a gain of $50 billion thanks to immigration taken in total—i.e., including the undocumented—in the years from 1990 to 2010.
But what about the effect on lower-income workers specifically? Most economists find a negligible or perhaps small positive impact from immigration to the U.S.—even the scholar generally considered the most critical of immigration’s effect on workers found that it reduced the wages of those born here who didn’t complete high school by about 3 percent. As Porter suggested, increasing the earned income tax credit would be a far smarter way of addressing whatever negative effects immigration might be having on lower-income workers than would slashing immigration numbers across the board—which would cost our country a great deal.
Making the economic argument for immigration is vital, but it’s not enough. Bryan Resnick has summarized a wide array of research on how white anxiety about demographic change affects political attitudes. Specifically, that anxiety offers “power to politicians who implicitly or explicitly stoke [it.]” From the first words he spoke as an official presidential candidate, Trump has done exactly that.
To push back, pro-immigration rhetoric must emphasize over and over that immigrants not only want to integrate, but that they—and this includes Latino immigrants—are integrating right now. The benefits offered by diversity are limited if it is not accompanied by integration, by a coming together of the native-born and the newly arrived. Immigration advocates absolutely believe this, but our challenge is to convince more of the skeptics that we share, in broad terms, a desire for a society that is both diverse and unified around shared ideals and participation in a common culture—a society that also allows for people to maintain ties to their ancestral or other cultures and identities even as they embrace their shared Americanness.
Trump’s hateful insults and fear-mongering about rapists coming from Mexico are the bluntest of tools, but even some of those who dismiss that kind of language are nonetheless afraid of finding themselves outsiders in the country they grew up in. The people who have these fears are not all evil, unredeemable, or even deplorable. They are often older people, people who have trouble understanding unfamiliar accents (I watched my own grandmother be unable to get help over the phone on more than one occasion). Rather than dismiss them, we can have empathy and try to understand how they feel.
When we advocate for immigrants and in favor of immigration, if we can reassure and calm these anxieties—without abandoning progressive values or the actual positions that would best solve the problems we face—we might just be able to win more support. You can call that pandering or you can ask why progressives should have to concern ourselves with the feelings of people who express opinions that aren’t especially welcoming of diversity, and which may even reflect ugly prejudices. I’d call it trying to win votes.
Will we win all of them over? Of course not, but that’s not a realistic goal. Just ask yourself where our country might be on immigration four years from now, and then imagine where we might have been if we’d been able to win over, say, 78,000 people in, say, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity (Potomac Books).