America On the Precipice by Richard North Patterson
VI. Making America Hate Again: The Weaponization of Whiteness
B. The Republican War on Non-White Immigration
The convoluted history of non-white immigration – particularly from Central and South America - is, as of now, far uglier than the millennium augured. For that ugliness, we can thank the Republican base and its tribune.
First, it is well to reprise a simple truth: if inflation was the first cause of Biden's defeat, “broken borders" was the next.
Ironically, the GOP helped create them. Because congressional Republicans repeatedly resisted immigration reform, we never passed legislation to update legal immigration; deal with undocumented migrants here in America; protect innocents like the Dreamers; and, critically, reestablish the secure borders due any sovereign country.
That said, the Biden administration failed to adequately address the dysfunction at our southern border. That's on them, and in 2024 it mattered.
But this issue has a much longer history, and goes far deeper. That is crucial to understanding how his race–based demonization of non-white immigration serves his twin ambitions – to destroy the rule of law and turn America into an autocracy.
1. The GOP's Traditional Support of Hispanic Immigrants
A century ago we had a highly restrictive quota system, aimed at preserving America as white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. The one exception was revealing. We had no restrictions for immigrants from the western hemisphere: then, as now, America needed Mexican workers.
Through the millennium, business-friendly Republican officeholders strongly supported this flow of inexpensive non-white labor. Rejecting anti-immigrant rhetoric, they praised immigrants for seeking a better life for themselves and their families, thereby personifying the American dream while contributing to our growth and prosperity.
This included undocumented immigrants – whose children, George H.W. Bush argued in a 1980 presidential debate, should be allowed to attend public school. Thus the paradigmatic Republican hero of that century, Ronald Reagan, opposed building a border wall and supported amnesty for the undocumented. Accordingly, in 1987 Congress passed an immigration act that tightened border security, but accorded an estimated 2.7 such immigrants the opportunity to gain legal status.
Giving his last speech as president in 1989, Reagan praised immigrants who made America "a nation forever young, forever bursting with new ideas.” For Republicans, hospitality to newcomers from Latin America - legal or not - seemed more or less settled.
The generally benign attitude continued through the first decade of the new century. Advocating immigration reform with the support of Senator John McCain, in 2004 President George W. Bush expressed sympathy for "undocumented workers… who seek only to earn a living [but] end up in the shadows of American life.”
But Bush’s proposed legislation failed, albeit narrowly. Within the base, fear of non-white immigrants was swelling.
2. Trump's Exploitation of Anti-Immigrant Fury
As the decade ended, this resistance to immigration animated the Tea Party movement’s embrace of border security – fueled by racial and economic resentment and the fear of Islamic terrorists stemming from 9/11. In turn, Republican politicians began fearing their voters.
This was epitomized by Marco Rubio. In 2013, Rubio helped lead a bipartisan group of senators whose comprehensive immigration reform bill included a path to citizenship for the undocumented. To his apparent surprise, the Republican base erupted in anger.
When his legislation passed the Senate, a chastened Rubio did not appear with his colleagues at the triumphant press conference that followed. Four months later, he publicly opposed his own bill’s passage in the House.
The bill never became law, condemning America to the present immigration nightmare. But Rubio’s about-face came too late to placate the GOP electorate. When he ran for president in 2016, irate primary voters doomed his chances.
They had found their champion - Donald Trump.
From the first speech of his campaign - when he denounced Mexican immigrants as murderers, criminals, rapists, and drug peddlers and promised to build his totemic wall - Trump trafficked in racism and xenophobia replete with loathing for non-white immigration. But for his exploitation of white America's deepest fears, Trump could not have captured the presidency.
As president, he scorned non-white immigrants from "shithole countries” like Haiti, El Salvador, or various African states. He claimed that Democrats were organizing caravans of illegal migrants so that they could vote in 2018. His campaign released an ad asserting that Democrats were "complicit in all murders by illegal immigrants.” By election year 2020, Trump had recast undocumented immigration as "an invasion” - a charge repeated over 2000 times on Facebook.
The damage Trump did to migrants - and to our national character – was far more than rhetorical. Trump adopted a "zero tolerance" policy toward undocumented immigrants, inflicting on their families a family separation policy - cruel in itself –made irreparable by the absence of any system for tracking nearly 3000 separated children. Without any consideration of their circumstances, he mindlessly barred refugees from seven Muslim nations, while arbitrarily excluding countries with whom he did business.
Further, Trump summarily expelled refugees seeking asylum from prosecution or violence; peremptorily deported unaccompanied minors; closed immigration offices; stripped immigration judges of their authority to release asylees from detention; and cut annual refugee admissions by over 80% - thereby excluding refugees from the slaughterhouse in Syria. By invoking the pandemic to suspend green cards, he froze most legal immigration, while erasing pending visas for families and diversity entrants.
By 2020 Trump had done all he could to expand his power through hatred and fear. But his 2024 campaign foreshadowed worse to come.
I've read and heard of all the flaws of the Biden administration and Harris campaign as being the cause of our present political circumstances. There were multiple attempts at border reform by the Democrats and there was one that had many Republican proposals that was ultimately rejected by Republican congress. Also the Biden administration was deporting high numbers of undocumented immigrants without the vicious and cruel practices by ICE. I think that the real issue was that the Biden administration did not see the republican party as the significant danger to the country as it is. From my prospective the corruption of all levels of our government has been on ongoing project engineered by mostly conservatives arriving ultimately to where we are now. The SCOTUS is a glaring example of that corruption. They have allowed and fostered misconduct and out right crime. Their decisions have allowed the perversion of congress and allegiance of presidents and who now only serve wealthy interests and many of whom are foreign interests. As a nation we cannot allow ourselves to be a corrupt, backward, undemocratic third world country or a country. I hope we can get back to being the USA that is capable of doing the best science, economic, technological research and rebuild a free and open society.
Thank you again for your excellent article.
Trump has always been rascist, but most of the attack rhetoric seems to have originated with Stephen Miller, who was Trump's speech writer for the 2016 campaign and spoke at rallies for all of Trump's campaigns. He is reportedly the author of most of the executive orders issued during Trump's second term and the person responsible for the increasingly aggressive ICE activities. Trump promised to deport all the criminal illegal aliens, but Miller is driving the deportation of every immigrant, legal or otherwise, or anyone who looks like an immigrant. As you noted, the Republicans previously understood the value of Mexican immigrants, who performed jobs citizens wouldn't touch, worked for substandard wages, and were often treated very poorly. We welcomed them here for years; they became part of our society, and now the Republicans want them to leave. More recently, Trump (Miller) wants to expel people who were offered the opportunity to live here with protected status. (This is reminiscent of how we treated the native American Indians, whom we provided treaties that supposedly safeguarded their interests and broke every one of them.)