fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Moderate Restrictions

Ross says: Americans want border security and they want a lower immigration rate; what they don’t want is to feel like they’re being asked to vote for “Operation Wetback, Part II.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there are any Republican politicians who actually believe in the moderate-restrictionist position.  Instead, there are politicians who make restrictionist […]

Ross says:

Americans want border security and they want a lower immigration rate; what they don’t want is to feel like they’re being asked to vote for “Operation Wetback, Part II.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there are any Republican politicians who actually believe in the moderate-restrictionist position.  Instead, there are politicians who make restrictionist promises they don’t intend to keep in the hopes of keeping the yahoo vote appeased, and politicians who sound like, well, yahoos themselves.

One of the reasons why there are no (or virtually no) Republican politicians who believe in a “moderate restrictionist” position is that such a position presupposes that a stronger restrictionist position is essentially a “yahoo” view that must receive some lip service, but never under any circumstances should it dictate policy.  In other words, to hold the “moderate” position is to take for granted that the people most energised by the issue, the voters who are most likely to make your immigration position an important basis for their vote, are cretins who must be kept under control, which means that there is no political advantage in holding the “moderate” position when you can adopt a more “hard-line” view that you have no intention of supporting in meaningful legislation.  The average GOP House member knows that he will get no credit for taking a more “moderate” position and will suffer a backlash if he appears to “soften” on immigration.  Also, there are few people the politician could turn to in the conservative movement who would want to help his “moderate” position, since the debate long ago broke down into globalist/capitalist defenders of mass immigration in all its forms (for whom existing restrictions are the problem), opponents of illegal immigration and a relatively smaller, but vocal, bloc of opponents of most or all forms of immigration.  In theory the “enforcement-first” bloc, the second on this list, is the “moderate restrictionist” position, but as matter of intra-party politics the pro-amnesty forces have pushed together enforcement-first and all other restrictionists and deliberately try to obscure the differences between all positions to their right.     

Symbolic border fence bills (such as the one the President signed in ’06) are perfect for such politicians, since it sends the message back home that you are appearing to take a strong restrictionist position, all the while knowing that the bill is pure symbolism and even if constructed will be insufficient in the absence of greater internal enforcement.  It’s rather like Republican politicians who intervened in the Schiavo case to get credit for their allegedly staunch pro-life convictions, but who otherwise do little or nothing substantive on matters of life.  There are no political advantages from what might be called a “moderate pro-life” position, and obviously there are no penalties for making pledges on an issue that are never kept.  The old logic of “where are they going to go?” applies to pro-life voters just as it does to restrictionists.  Knowing that these voters will always come back to the party in the end, Republican pols have every incentive to use absolutist rhetoric and essentially do nothing after the election, except for the occasional symbolic gesture (“pardon Compean and Ramos!” they cry).

However, it all depends on how you define the “moderate restrictionist” position.  Was the Pence compromise bill an example of a “moderate restrictionist” view?  In the view of most restrictionist activists and voters, the Pence plan was an unacceptable compromise and was seen as little more than delayed amnesty.  All of this relates to a basic lack of trust in the political class.  Supposing that there is a “moderate” position that could satisfy most restrictionist voters’ concerns, anything that seems to water down or weaken a “hard-line” position at this point appears to these voters to be a kind of trick.  Washington’s general neglect of immigration policy for the last two decades has created intense distrust, and the insistence by supporters of amnesty that they do not support amnesty (as Bush and McCain keep insisting to this day) reinforces that distrust and strips all compromise plans, including Mike Pence’s, of all credibility.  Pence also insists that his plan has nothing to do with amnesty, but having been lied to for years these voters are in no mood for the subtleties of guest-worker schemes (which they would regard as basically unworkable and unenforceable anyway). 

To overcome this credibility gap, Republican pols have to stake out very strong restrictionist views to reassure voters who will cease to trust them if they are seen to move very much at all towards a “moderate” position.  This dynamic is reinforced by the tendency of genuinely open borders and pro-immigration advocates within the GOP of denouncing any restrictionist position that goes beyond “securing the border” as bigoted.  Even if a “moderate” position existed that could conceivably address the concerns of restrictionists, no one would want to risk going out into the middle of the no man’s land between the WSJ and the establishment and the rank-and-file restrictionists, because they know they would take heavy fire from both, have very few allies and endanger their re-election over what a “moderate restrictionist” is likely to regard as a second-tier issue anyway.  In other words, if you are inclined to take a “moderate” position on restricting immigration, you probably aren’t concerned about it enough to risk the political suicide that adopting a “moderate” position would entail.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here