Iowa representative Steve King is receiving a torrent of criticism right now for tweeting, in support of controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders, “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”
There’s a potentially charitable way of interpreting the tweet, but the criticism—including some pointed rejoinders from other GOP colleagues—is understandable. And, naturally, Democrats are somewhere around DEFCON 2 in their response to King’s remarks.
Setting aside King’s tweet, the alarm is interesting because it highlights how the immigration debate is driven largely by controversy rather than substance. This isn’t a criticism of the media for covering the outrage, and both parties have provided them plenty of material with some over-the-top rhetoric. But this, combined with previous instances of rhetorical outrage on both sides of the aisle—Trump’s attacks on an Hispanic judge and a Gold Star immigrant family, and Democrats’ unhelpful suggestions that racism is driving Trump’s immigration policy—serves the interests of Democrats.
For example, there are at least concrete aspects to Trump’s immigration policy, be it building a wall, his latest immigration executive order, or his suggestion that we adopt a system similar to Canada’s. On the other hand, I have no idea where national Democrats stand in terms of what they would like to see in a comprehensive immigration policy. Unfortunately, we’re not discussing competing policy visions. Instead, we’re debating tossed off tweets by a congressman known for making intemperate remarks, just like we talked about Judge Curiel, Khizr Khan, and the imagery of Trump’s executive order on travel—”This is not who we are“—instead of the basis for it.
Even though Trump has been clumsy in addressing the immigration issue, he has been forcing a national conversation on it. And yet Democrats are still refusing to be pinned down on the question of whether the current system of unchecked mass immigration should be limited, and how it should be done. When the immigration story of the day is not about this but about Steve King, Democrats won’t be pressed for an answer.
They might have a tough time settling on one. When Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2008, she ran to the right of Obama on immigration—she was against giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. But when she ran last year, Clinton was not just in favor of providing millions of immigrants a pathway to citizenship, as well as giving them driver’s licenses—she wanted illegal immigrants to be eligible for Obamacare, and presumably Obamacare subsidies.
However, if you were paying attention, Hillary Clinton’s immigration policy, while fuzzy on a lot of the specifics, didn’t dismiss issues such as enforcement and border security, either—e.g., “It will treat every person with dignity, fix the family visa backlog, uphold the rule of law, protect our borders and national security, and bring millions of hardworking people into the formal economy.” As recently as 2012, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine said that illegal immigrants should be forced to identify themselves and pay a fine that would go toward enhancing border security. That sounds perilously close to Trump asking Mexico to pay for a wall.
There’s a lot going on here. It appears border security is either a Democratic point of agreement with Republicans to build upon, or it is a pressure point the GOP can use against Democrats as they are caught up pandering to constituencies that have opposite views on immigration.
If immigration reform was such a priority, Democrats could have passed it in Obama’s first term, but they chose not to. Right now, it looks as if Democrats are simply using the immigration issue to agitate parts of their base for political gain. To be fair, this strategy is not unique to Democrats. The GOP approach to Obamacare was largely the same: agitation without adopting a formal plan that they could be held accountable for supporting. (And given the GOP goat rodeo over Obamacare replacement plans, now we know why this strategy was appealing.)
However, immigration reform and immigration restrictions split the Democratic coalition in a way that Republicans never had to worry about. The GOP base was always pretty united against Obamacare, but a lot of Democrats can’t afford to alienate Trump voters—of the 25 Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2018, 13 are from states Trump won or narrowly lost.
It’s not only smart political strategy for Republicans to demand Democrats to define and defend a set of immigration policies they propose as an alternative to Trump’s plans, it’s more honest. We can debate actual policies, instead of Twitter outbursts. Honest debate over competing visions also—don’t laugh!—creates the conditions for compromise. Trump says he wants to cut deals, and it’s to Democrats’ advantage to test that proposition.
