Racism a Reality in Immigration Reform Debate
There's no getting away from the fact that some opponents of immigration reform have racist attitudes toward newcomers.
This isn’t to say that I think — let alone have written — that anyone who disagrees about the need for comprehensive immigration reform or who simply opposes illegal immigration is a racist. I don’t, and I haven’t. Racism is undeniably in the mix of the immigration debate, but it’s not the main ingredient. Besides, it’s not that easy to be called a racist. You have to earn that title. But, believe me, some people really work at it.
It usually starts with a worry about what some consider the inferior stock of the immigrants coming ashore — or crossing the border. The newcomers are poor, uneducated, low skilled, prone to have larger babies, etc. Take your pick.
After all, that’s one way that racism manifests itself — through a sense of superiority on behalf of one group toward another. It can also come through fear or animosity. You’ll find all three flavors in the modern immigration debate.
Some Americans dispute this and continue to insist that race and ethnicity have nothing to do with concerns over illegal immigration. Rather, what has so many people upset, they claim, is that it is – hello? – illegal.
Nonsense. If that were true, the debate over curbing illegal immigration wouldn’t lapse so quickly into talk of limiting legal immigration as well. Nor would it be the case that some of the most vocal organizations on the restrictionists’ side — the Center for Immigration Studies, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA, etc. — have an agenda that includes limiting both legal and illegal immigration. Nor would there be such ugliness, as when conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan wrote in a recent book that the United States was better off in the early part of the last century when most of its immigrants came from Europe as opposed to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Or when former Congressman Tom Tancredo glibly referred to Miami as “a Third World country.”
Some people might refuse to accept it, but there’s a word for that kind of thinking. And, don’t look now, but it ends in “-ism.”
Unlike what goes on in the Obama White House, this isn’t about deflecting criticism or attacking critics. It’s about accepting reality and finding a way to deal with it so we can fix a broken system.