Some interesting light is shed on the immigration issue by a Pew Research Center report issued this month.
Democratic and Republican voters tended to be in agreement on immigration issues from 1994 (the beginning of Pew’s time series) to 2006. When given the choice of a positive view (immigrants “strengthen the country because of their hard work and talents”) and a negative view (immigrants “are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing and health care”), Americans were pretty evenly split starting from 1998 to 2007. And, in partisan terms, there was little difference between Democrats and Republicans during this period.
That reflects the two parties’ presidential figures at the time. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both looked with favor on immigration generally, as did major presidential candidates. Al Gore and John McCain both spoke out explicitly on this issue, and I don’t recall any candidates opposing current levels of immigration, with the rule-proving exception of Patrick Buchanan, who left the Republican race in 1999 and ran in the general election as an independent and got 0.43 percent of the vote. Nor were there members of Congress, at least so far as I can recall, who raised serious questions about immigration. Attempts to reduce low-skill immigration in the 1990s, as recommended by the commission appointed by Bill Clinton and headed by former Rep. Barbara Jordan, did not result either in major legislation or in a serious political movement.
Then came major attempts in 2006 and 2007 to pass versions of what we continue to call comprehensive immigration legislation, including legalization of illegal immigrants. The 2006 bill, supported by George W. Bush, Edward Kennedy John McCain, passed the Senate but was not brought to the floor in the Republican-majority House. The 2007 bill was defeated in the Senate — in part because the new majority leader, Harry Reid, bobbled the procedure and in part because a promising freshman senator named Barack Obama supported amendments which Kennedy said were “poison pills” that would cost the bill needed Republican support.
Two things changed after 2007. Immigration from Mexico essentially stopped, as the Pew Hispanic Center has documented, and the consensus on immigration between Republican and Democratic voters unraveled. The percentage of Republicans who said immigration strengthened the nation stayed even, 34 percent in 2007 and 35 percent in 2016. But the percentage of Democrats who agreed increased from about 40 percent in 2007 to 78 percent in 2016. Immigration had become a highly charged partisan issue, and even more so after the passage of the so-called Gang of Eight bill in the Democratic-majority Senate in 2013 and the refusal of the Republican leadership to bring a comprehensive immigration bill to the floor of the House in that year or since.
In that state of opinion, Donald Trump’s anti-immigration stance tends to split Republicans, with at least a sizeable minority against him, and to unite Democrats against him. Similarly, in 2016 a majority, 59 percent, of Republicans favored legalization of illegals who met unspecified “certain requirements” — a proportion similar to that among Republicans in primary exit polls even in states carried by Trump — while 88 percent of Democrats favor that position. Again, Republicans split, Democrats pretty much united.
So does it make sense for Republicans to emphasize an issue which splits them and unites Democrats, or to nominate a presidential candidate who does so? Doesn’t seem so.
What Republicans could do is to reframe the issue by calling for a change in immigration laws, replacing their current heavy preference for extended family reunification with a preference for high-skill immigrants. Such laws have served our Anglosphere cousins Canada and Australia well. Republican candidates like Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush have made proposals that move in that direction and Ted Cruz’s positions are not inconsistent with the idea. But any such initiative would presumably be moot, at least for 2016, if Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination.
