Immigration Reform Redux - Part I

Wednesday morning the New York Times broke the story that the Obama administration is resuscitating immigration reform as an issue for this coming year. Most will remember that this issue captured the public attention during the 2006 midterm elections, when it was discussed largely in the context of national security. After reform legislation flamed out in the Senate, the issue went away. Now the issue is being brought up again, this time in an economic context.

There are two major forces at work here: politics and economics. The economic repercussions of immigration reform are tremendous. If successfully implemented, the U.S. could experience an economic boom mirroring those that followed previous economic booms. Alternately, it could saddle large portions with depressed wages and huge tax burdens needed to support an influx of unskilled workers. Politically, it is a land mine field. Catering to one voter group can create repercussions in other groups, and the current economic environment has made immigration a charged issue for many Americans. This two-part article takes a look at the political and economic issues underlining the immigration debate.

Political

Pundits have suggested that this recent restart of immigration reform is a pre-emptive strategic strike by the White House, who is worried that a lingering recession and a bailout-weary populace will hand them defeat in the 2010 midterm elections. The Hispanic electorate is very much up for grabs, and could provide an effective hedge against a Republican resurgence.

In the months leading up to the 2006 midterm election, political insiders on both sides of the aisle began teeing up immigration as one of the hot-button issues. For many in the Republican base, the issue was red meat, evoking powerful emotions around domestic security and cultural/economic preservation. For Democrats, the issue seemed like an opportunity to appeal to one of the fastest growing voter groups in the country. For President Bush, it provided a rare opportunity to act as bi-partisan cheerleader, and he attempted to leverage his declining political capital to push comprehensive immigration reform through Congress. The bill would have granted amnesty to existing immigrants, provided for guest worker program, but it also would have provided for increased border security and the construction of additional fences. After two tries, the bill finally went down in 2007, failing to pass cloture and reach the floor for a full vote. The breakdown of the vote highlights how this issue cuts across party and geographic lines (click here for a map).

* Author’s note: I had a front row seat to this issue. At the time I was working in local government in San Antonio, where the percentage of the population that is Hispanic is well north of 50%, the issue had particular prescience. One of the most hotly contested races in the country was the race between Democrat Ciro Rodriguez and incumbent Republican Henry Bonilla. In a close race, Rodriguez defeated Bonilla, who was the lone Mexican-American member of the House Republican caucus. Bonilla came out in support of tougher border measures, while Rodriguez supported amnesty. The race was extremely ugly, with each candidate trying to he was more Hispanic than the other. In the end, Rodriguez was able to portray his opponent as “Henry Vanilla”, an out of touch aristocrat who had lost touch with his cultural roots.

The stakes could not be higher. Hispanics represent the fastest growing part of the electorate, adding over 4 million eligible voters between 2000 and 2007. Hispanic voters now represent ~10% of the national electorate, a number that will continue to grow. The Pew Hispanic Center projects that by 2050, nearly 30% of the population will be Hispanic, and that Hispanics will constitute 60% of the total growth in U.S. population during that time period. The electoral impact will likely be lessened by the fact that most of the growth will be concentrated in areas that are already highly Hispanic, meaning that heavily Hispanic areas will become more Hispanic. Dispersion patterns have increased markedly (see graphic below), but the growth still remains concentrated in border states like California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, as well as in the historical immigration hubs of Chicago, New York and Miami. Nevertheless, if one party manages to emerge as the party of choice for Hispanic voters, it could set in place a congressional realignment that holds for decades, similar to the way the New Deal created a coalition of blue-collar democrats that held together for more than 50 years.

At the same time, the influx and political ascendancy of a new electoral group will put a strain on the parties’ existing relationships with other voting groups. Southern Republicans and Midwestern Democrats, representing largely white populations, are already seeing the effects of cultural resistance to an emerging hispanic social identity that contrasts sharply with the dominant cultural identity of white America. This cultural clash is further heightened by a persistant language gap. In urban areas, African-Americans find themselves increasingly competing with hispanic immigrants for low paying jobs, and are resentful of the perceived downward pressure on wages. This is a familiar pattern in the U.S., where the strongest resistance to new immigrant classes usually comes from those groups at the bottom of the economic structure, who are forced to compete with these new entrangs for jobs.

Navigating this shift can be tricky. Richard Nixon’s so-called “Southern Strategy” was a highly effective response to the Democrat’s successful capture of the black vote in the 1960’s. While the Democrats gained near unanimous support from the black electorate, in doing so it lost a huge chunk of white voters. Over time, Democratic dependency on the urban black vote tied it to a variety of fiscal and social positions that alienated voters in western states, paving the way for the famous Red/Blue state construct that brought Republicans into a decade of power. The emergance of Barack Obama helped break that cycle, but if Democrats attempt to reconstruct the Black/Democrat relationship with the Hispanic electorate, they could re-create the same problem for themselves again.

On Monday, the Review will post the second half of this issue, focusing on the economic issues underpinning the immigration debate.