Anti-Immigration Democrats Fuck Off

Offer the public a different vision, cowards.

Guess who. (Photo: Getty)

Repellent Texas governor Greg Abbott is using his state’s southern border as a tool to goad the federal government into a fight over immigration. Oh my goodness! Still? How can that be, after the Democrats in Washington boldly outflanked the Republicans by putting everything they wanted into an immigration bill, which the Republicans in Congress then refused to pass at the behest of Donald Trump? Quite surprising that the most shameless gutter racist politicians in America would risk being exposed as somewhat hypocritical, no?

For the purpose of this discussion, and all political discussions going forward, we are going to stipulate the fact that the Republicans will do evil things and lie as a matter of course. That is why the discussion will focus on what the Democrats should be doing. The normal Republican position on immigration is very simple: Racism. “We hate immigrants because they are brown, and poor, and then we will layer a little dubious economic protectionist reasoning on top of that,” is what you will always get from Republicans on this. The only real variations are how veiled or unveiled the racism is. In 2024 (and really for the entire period since 2015), the racism status has been: Not Veiled At All.

That is and has been and will be the right wing’s approach to immigration. Imagining that you can catch Republicans in some sort of worthwhile “gotcha” about their reasoning on this issue displays the same sophistication as a cat trying to catch a laser pointer. It is not possible. It is a waste of time. Racism will always create its own post-hoc justifications. The question to think about is: What alternative vision of immigration should be put forward in the political arena, besides that one?

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Horseshoe theorists, who can sometimes be insane and sometimes not, enjoy nothing more than pointing out various policies that Democratic voters tolerate or even enthusiastically support under Democratic administrations that would make them scream with outrage during a Republican administration. On the issue of immigration, this dynamic is very true. If you just punched up the White House’s immigration budget proposal fact sheet with more thunderous language and worse grammar, it could easily come from the Trump administration. More cops! More DHS! More CBP! More ICE! More war on drugs! Arrrrr! In the face of a nonstop barrage of Republican fear mongering over an “invasion” at the southern border, the Democratic Party has made a calculated decision to simply co-opt most of the bareknuckled border enforcement policies that Republicans are calling for. Watching the majority of national Democratic politicians in DC crowing about how they had “negotiated” a bipartisan immigration bill full of everything the Republicans wanted—and then smugly charging Republicans with insincerity when they didn’t pass it—made me want to throw up on my shoes. Or actually, on the shoes of those Democrats. You are not as brilliant as you think, you jellyfish-hearted thumb suckers.

Why do Democrats feel so comfortable throwing immigrants under the bus for political purposes? Because they do not care about immigrants. Immigrants don’t vote and Democrats are therefore happy to throw them, en masse, onto a fire, in the name of other priorities. When you think about this basic fact, and then also think about the fact that immigrants are human beings, you start to realize that the separation of the two parties on issues of human rights is not as wide as you might have imagined.

We live in a two party system and there will be two primary views put forward to the public regarding immigration. Currently those two views are “Kick the dirty immigrants out at gunpoint!” and “Kick the nice immigrants out, because we care.” From the perspective of the human beings who are the immigrants, you can see how the fine distinction may get lost. From the perspective of voters, this dynamic suffers from the same flaw that every neoliberal effort to co-opt Republican positions does: Anyone who thinks that this position makes sense will naturally tend to go for the clearest and strongest version of it, which is the version that Republicans are putting forward. It is callous, inhumane, and politically dumb.

Here is an alternate vision of the issue of immigration: “America is a nation of immigrants. Almost all of us came here from somewhere else. Immigrants risk so much to come here because they are seeking freedom and opportunity—in other words, the American dream. We welcome them with open arms. They are our brothers and sisters. They are the future of this country. They are, as a group, people who believe in American values. Their presence here will make America stronger. We will do what we need to do to ensure that that happens smoothly.” See how this vision is different than “We don’t want the CBP to do mass armed raids as much as Trump does but fundamentally we want their budgets at the same levels?” Immigration is not an issue to triangulate. Immigration, in the context of American politics, is at its core a moral question: Are immigrants humans with the same value as all of us, or not? Because the answer is “yes,” it is not possible to “win” this issue by simply moderating or smoothing down the level of hostility towards immigrants. The public must be given a competing vision of how to think about immigration, and that vision must be moral, and positive, and hopeful, and one that we can be proud of as humans. As with most exercises in moral imagination, an easy starting point for finding this vision is to think of yourself as an immigrant. (Which, if you go back a little ways, you are.) You are a person with the same hopes and dreams as everyone. All you need is a hand up. All you need is a little understanding, a little help, the tiniest bit of encouragement, and you will make your own way. This should be the political conversation inside of the Democratic Party. The cowardly and very common tendency to fold on moral issues like this in the face of polls is the primary reason why few Americans of any political persuasion look to the Democratic Party for moral leadership on anything.

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The sight of several white people on a roundtable panel on a Sunday talk show talking soberly about how we need to keep immigrants out is enough to make me fucking scream. Motherfucker, your people came here from Ireland! And your people came here from Germany! And your people came here from Italy! And all of them were spat upon and treated as scum by the racist people who were already here, and that lasted for a while until they at last became integrated enough into society to become racists themselves, against the next generation of immigrants. Watching successive generations of people from different nations fall into this chasm of angry nationalism is, you have to admit, a little frustrating. America is a fantastic machine for taking in all the people of the world, and making them despise all the other people of the world.

Does high immigrating pose material challenges to America? Sure. It requires resources to take people in and give them food and housing and education and help them to find stability and to become hardworking taxpayers like everyone else. But this is an issue of logistics, not of morality. In the long run, as economists know well, immigration is healthy for a country. The government may spend money at first to help people get on their feet, but those people will settle here and raise families and have jobs and become part of a growing population and thriving economy. It is one thing to focus our national political conversation on the tactical question of how best to help immigrants integrate into American society, and it is another thing to focus our national political conversation on how to keep immigrants out. Shifting the Overton Window to the former would not only allow us to have a more humane approach to this issue, but it would also prevent an incalculable amount of racism from flowering in mainstream discourse. All of the details of immigration policy are downstream from this focus. The focus is what we need to change. The only party that can do that is Democrats. They are failing, mostly, I think, out of cowardice, and also because if you say to a Democratic US Senator, “All humans are family and we must treat them as such,” that Senator will not regard you as a serious person.

All humans are family and we must treat them as such. All of the very real difficulties involved in doing that are the questions that politics should be concerning itself with. It is true that, if you want to, you can avoid all of those difficulties by asserting instead that all other people are enemies who need to be on another side of a wall. But then you have become a monster. It’s not worth it.

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Also

As a self-employed writer I must continually write things, or starve. Most recently, I wrote for The Nation about how union-busting is the path that leads progressive organizations to the dark side. I also wrote a piece for Defector on the St. Patrick’s Day fights at Madison Square Garden. (More of my boxing writing for Defector can be found among the detritus here.) Finally, I urge you all to pick up the latest issue of In These Times magazine for a cool surprise.

The UK publication Unherd ran a nice review of my book yesterday. The excruciating process of writing a book has driven home to me the fact that I need to make a point of speaking up about other good books to read. If you are interested in the things I usually write about, here are two other new books you may enjoy: Wall Street’s War on Workers by Les Leopold, and Poverty for Profit by Anne Kim. Read good books!

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Book Tour

My book about the labor movement, “The Hammer,” is now available for purchase wherever books are sold. I am traveling the country talking about the book and the movement and frankly it is great and I love meeting you, the readers, who have a lot of interesting things to say. Thank you to everyone who came out to the event on Monday in Philly with Kim Kelly. I will be in New Orleans TOMORROW, with fellow labor writer Sarah Jaffe. Come see us! Upcoming events:

• Thursday, March 21: New Orleans, LA—At Baldwin and Co. Books, 6 pm. With Sarah Jaffe. Free tickets are here.

• Wednesday, March 27: Boston, MA— At the Northeastern College of Professional Studies at 101 Belvidere Street. 6:30 pm. Free tickets are here.

• Tuesday, April 9: Sacramento, CA—At Capital Books. 6 pm. Event details here.

• Monday, April 15: Los Angeles, CA—At Stories LA, 7 pm. In conversation with Adam Conover.

• Sunday, April 21: Chicago, IL— “The Hammer” book event and Labor Notes Conference after party at In These Times HQ, 2040 N. Milwaukee Ave. 5 pm.

There is nothing better than talking labor, my peoples. Hope to see you out there.