Democrats abruptly reverse their pose on illegal immigration

By Chris Powell

With Governor Lamont playing a big part, Democrats across the country have abruptly reversed their posture on illegal immigration, moving from support or indifference to indignant opposition and blaming Republicans for the problem.

In national television interviews the governor said immigration policy should be much stricter, Democrats had been slow to face the problem, and President Biden should close the Southern border. The governor added that he had offered the president the use of the Connecticut National Guard for securing the border but the president had declined.

Then Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat who had been co-chairing bipartisan negotiations in the Senate over border security legislation, denounced Republican senators for not supporting the bill the negotiations produced. Republican senators, Murphy charged, want continued chaos at the border to help the campaign of the likely Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump. 

The reply of Republican senators was more relevant. They noted that the proposed legislation didn’t secure the border at all — that it would have continued to allow at least 5,000 illegal crossings per day, hastened work permits for many illegal immigrants, and greatly increased issuance of visas. The Republican senators also noted that the president is already fully authorized by law to close the border to illegal immigrants and has failed to do so, and that his administration has even sued to prevent Texas from obstructing illegal crossings with razor wire. 

That is, the legislation wasn’t border control at all. It was just cover for still more illegal immigration.

But those details were not as widely reported as Murphy’s demagogic injection of Trump into the issue. Murphy and other Democratic leaders consider the former president’s name to be a powerful epithet that closes any inconvenient discussion. Most major news organizations concur and cooperate.

If the Democrats were sincere President Biden would immediately stop illegal and asylum-claim crossings at the southern border as he already has the power to do. He would approve Texas’ own efforts. Murphy’s bill would be stripped of its loopholes. Illegal immigrants convicted of crimes would be promptly deported. 

But what prompts the Democrats’ change in pose?

Most observers figure it’s because public opinion has turned overwhelmingly against them on immigration and the issue is likely to prevent the president’s re-election. But there may be other reasons, like a calculation that illegal immigration has been so vast recently that, regardless of the results of this year’s elections, illegal immigrants now are sure to determine the country’s political future.

This is not just because Democrats think they eventually they can achieve voting rights for non-citizens. More so it’s because under current U.S. census policy — set by Biden, who reversed the Trump administration’s policy — non-citizens are to be counted for congressional redistricting. 

Since most of the 6 million or so people who have entered the country illegally or with bogus asylum claims in the last several years have been settled “temporarily” in cities, which are heavily Democratic and will provide the non-citizens with welfare benefits for a long time, the next round of redistricting will create at least 15 more solidly Democratic districts in the U.S. House of Representatives at the expense of all other districts. This will assure long-term Democratic control of the House and sharply reduce the chances of electing Republican senators in states with large cities.

This will also increase the number of sure Democratic votes in the Electoral College, which chooses the president.

The country was built on immigration and few people claim that it’s bad in itself.

No, the objections are about immigration’s current nature, uncontrolled — the admission of far more people than the country can screen for security and health risks, assimilate into a secular and democratic culture, shelter amid a disastrous shortage of housing, pacify amid an explosion of urban crime, employ at decent wages amid a faltering economy, and school amid the collapse of public education.

How are such concerns addressed by Murphy and other Democrats? Hardly at all, and then only with epithets: Racism! Bigotry! Trump!

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 Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net) 

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