Immigration, the Republicans, and the End of White America

7/27/2019 Immigration, the Republicans, and the End of White America

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Last June the U.S. Census disclosed that non-white births in America were on the vergeo surpassing the white total and might doso as early as the end o this year. Such an

event marks an unprecedented racial watershed inAmerican history. Over the last ew years, various

demographic projections rom that same agency andindependent analysts have provided somewhat uc-tuating estimates o the dateperhaps 2042 or 2037or 2050at which white Americans will become aminority. Tis represents a remarkable, almost un-imaginable, demographic change rom our countryo the early 1960s, when whites accounted or over85 percent o the population and seemed likely to re-main at that level indenitely.

Many years o heavy oreign immigration havebeen the crucial element driving this transormation,but even i all immigrationlegal and illegalwere

halted tomorrow and the border completely sealed,these demographic trends would continue, althoughat a much slower pace. oday, the median age oAmerican whites is over 40, putting most o them pasttheir prime child-bearing years. Meanwhile, Ameri-cas largest minority group, the rapidly growing popu-lation o Hispanics, has a median age in the mid-20s,near the peak o amily ormation and growth, whileboth Asians and blacks are also considerably youngerthan whites. In act, since 1995 births rather than im-migration have been the largest actor behind the neardoubling o Americas Hispanic population.

As in most matters, public perceptions o Americasracial reality are overwhelmingly shaped by the imag-es absorbed rom the national media and Hollywood,whether these are realistic or not. For example, overthe last generation the massive surge in black visibilityin sports, movies, and V has led to the widespread

perception o a similarly huge growth in the blackraction o the population, which, according to Gal-lup, most people now reckon stands at 33 percent orso o the national total. Yet this is entirely incorrect.During the last hundred-plus years, American blackshave seen their share o the population uctuate bymerely a percentage point or two, going rom 11.6percent in 1900 to 12.6 percent in 2010. By contrast,ve decades o immigration have caused Asian Amer-icansrelatively ignored by the news, sports, and en-tertainment industriesto increase rom 0.5 percentin 1960 to 5 percent today, ollowing the een-old

rise in their numbers which has established them asAmericas most rapidly growing racial group, albeitrom a small initial base.

Tese national changes in racial distribution havebeen quite uneven and geographically skewed, withsome parts o the country leading and others lagging.For example, during the 1970s when I was a teenager

Politics

Ron Unz is publisher ofTe American Conservative. He

thanks Razib Khan for his assistance in gathering the state

demographic and election data and running the resulting

correlations.

Republicans and theEnd of White AmericaWhat immigration means for the GOPand our national prosperitybyR on U n z


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growing up in the Los Angeles area, that city and thesurrounding sprawl o Southern Caliornia consti-tuted Americas whitest region, about the only largeurban agglomeration whose racial character approxi-mated that o the country as a wholearound 85 per-cent whiteand my own San Fernando Valley area in

particular exemplied the popular image o suburbanpicket ences and lighthearted Leave It to Beaveramily comedies. Yet during the two decades that ol-lowed, Southern Caliornia underwent an enormousimmigration-driven demographic transormation,creating a new Los Angeles which was almost 80 per-cent non-white and a surrounding region in whichwhites no longer held even a mere plurality.

Tis sweeping racial shi, involving the movementor displacement o over ten million people, might eas-ily rank as the largest in the peacetime history o theworld and is probably matched by just a handul o

the greatest population changes brought about by war.Te racial transormation in Americas national popu-lation may be without precedent in human history.

Republicans as the White Party

It is a commonplace that politics in America is heavilyinuenced by race, and these enormous demographicchanges since 1965 have certainly not gone unnoticedwithin the political world. For decades, white votershave tended to lean Republican while non-whites

have been strongly Democratic, so the swily allingratio o the ormer to the latter has become a sourceo major concern, even alarm, within the top ranks othe GOP, which received a sharp wake-up call whengigantic Caliornia, traditionally one o the most reli-ably Republican states, suddenly became one o the

most reliably Democratic.During the mid-1990s there was a powerul straino thought within conservative and Republican circlesthat the best means o coping with this looming po-litical problem was to reduce or even halt the oreignimmigration that was driving it. But aer several yearso bitter internal conict, this anti-immigrationistaction lost out almost completely to the pro-immi-grationist camp, which was backed by the powerulbusiness lobby. As a result, the Republican Party man-tra became one o embracing diversity rather thanresisting it and ocused on increasing the Republican

share o the growing non-white vote. Former Presi-dent George W. Bush, strategist Karl Rove, and Sen.John McCain have been the most prominent advo-cates o this perspective.

Rove invested huge resources in maximizing BushsHispanic numbers in 1998 during his easy exas gu-bernatorial reelection campaign and achieved consid-erable success, persuading some 40 percent or moreo local Hispanics to vote the Republican ticket thatyear, a major shi o political loyalties. Tis later al-lowed him to tout his candidates excellent Hispanicrapport in national GOP circles, which was an im-

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portant actor in gaining him the presidential nomi-nation in 2000. Although Bushs national Hispanictotals were much less impressive in the 2000 race,and the vast unds he invested in a quixotic attemptto carry Caliornia were totally wasted, Rove and his

allies redoubled their eorts during the 2004 reelec-tion campaign, and buoyed by the continuing patri-otic aermath o the 9/11 attacks, largely succeeded.Although the percentages have been much disputed,Bush seems to have carried somewhat over 40 percento the Hispanic vote nationwide in 2004, although hewas once again trounced in Caliornia.

Part o the Bush/Rove political strategy was to takea leading role in passing a sweeping immigration-reorm measure, aimed at legalizing the status omany millions o (overwhelmingly Hispanic) illegal

immigrants, easing the restrictions on uture legalimmigration, while also tightening border enorce-ment. Leaving aside policy matters, the political the-ory was simple: i the Republican Party changed thelaws to benet Hispanic and other immigrants, thesegroups and their children would be more likely to

vote Republican, thereby helping to solve the GOPs

demographic dilemma. Rove endlessly pointed to 40percent as the necessary GOP level o uture Hispanicsupportscore above that number and political vic-tory was likely, score much below it and deeat wasnearly assured. Although this precise quantitativetarget was obviously intended or rhetorical eect, itdoes seem to represent the dominant strain in con-

servative thinking, namely the need to combine astrong white vote with a solid minority o Hispan-ics and Asians, thereby allowing the Republicans tosurvive and win races in an increasingly non-whiteAmerica. (Meanwhile decades o ruitless eorts toattract a signicant share o the black vote would bequietly abandoned.)

But does this political strategy actually make anysense? Or are there ar more eective and more plau-sible paths to continued Republican political success?Although almost totally marginalized within Repub-lican establishment ranks, the anti-immigrationist

wing o the conservative movement has maintaineda vigorous intellectual presence on the Internet.Over the years, its agship organ, the VDare.comwebsite run by Peter Brimelow, a ormer NationalReview senior editor, has been scathing in its attacks

on the so-called Rove Strategy, instead proposing acontrasting approach christened the Sailer Strategy,aer Steve Sailer, its primary architect and leadingpromoter (who has himsel requently written orTe American Conservative). In essence, what Sailerproposes is the polar opposite o Roves approach,which he oen ridicules as being based on a mixtureo (probably dishonest) wishul thinking and sheerinnumeracy.

Consider, or example, Roves o-repeated mantrathat a Republican presidential candidate needs to winsomething approaching 40 percent o the national

Hispanic vote or have no chance o reaching theWhite House. During the last several election cycles,Hispanic voters represented between 5 and 8 per-cent o the national total, so the dierence between acandidate winning an outstanding 50 percent o that

vote and one winning a miserable 30 percent wouldamount to little more than just a single percentagepoint o the popular total, completely insignicantbased on recent history. Furthermore, presidentialraces are determined by the electoral college maprather than popular-vote totals, and the overwhelm-ing majority o Hispanics are concentrated either in

solidly blue states such as Caliornia, New York, Il-linois, and New Jersey, or solidly red ones such asexas and Georgia, reducing their impact to almostnothing. Any Republican earul o a loss in exas orDemocrat worried about carrying Caliornia wouldbe acing a national deeat o epic proportions, inwhich Hispanic preerences would constitute a triv-ial component. Pursuing the Hispanic vote or itsown sake seems a clear absurdity.

Even more importantly, Sailer argues that once wethrow overboard the restrictive blinkers o modernpolitical correctness on racial matters, certain as-

pects o the real world become obvious. For nearlythe last hal-century, the political core o the Repub-lican Party has been the white vote, and especiallythe votes o whites who live in the most heavily non-white states, notably the arc o the old Conederacy.Te political realignment o Southern whites ore-shadowed by the support that Barry Goldwater at-tracted in 1964 based on his opposition to the CivilRights Act and that constituted George Wallaceswhite-backlash campaign o 1968 eventually becamea central pillar o the dominant Reagan majority inthe 1980s.

Karl Rove endlessly pointed to 40 percentas the necessary GOP level o Hispanic

support. Score much below that numberand deeat was nearly assured.



In many cases, this was even true outside theDeep South, as the blue-collar whites o MacombCounty and other areas surrounding overwhelm-ingly black cities such as Detroit became the blue-collar Reagan Democrats who gave the GOP a near

lock on the presidency. While the politics o racialpolarization might be demonized in liberal intel-lectual circles, it served to elect vast numbers o Re-publicans to high and low oce alike. George H.W.Bushs Willie Horton ad and Jesse Helmss WhiteHands ad have been endlessly vilied by the me-dia, but they contributed to unexpected come-rom-behind victories or the candidates willingto run them. And in politics, winning is the onlymetric o success.

Sailer suggests that a very similar approachwould work equally well with regard to the hot-

button issue o immigration and the rapidly grow-ing Hispanic population, arguing that the votes othis group could be swamped by those o an angrywhite electorate energized along racial lines. Hecites Pete Wilsons unexpected Caliornia guber-natorial reelection victory in 1994 as a perect ex-ample. Deeply unpopular due to a severe statewiderecession and desperately behind in the polls, Wil-son hitched his candidacy to a harsh media cam-paign viliying illegal immigrants, and although hisHispanic support plummeted, his white supportsoared to an equal extent, giving him a landslide

victory in a race the pundits had written o andsweeping in a ull slate o victorious down-ticketRepublicans. Sailers simple point is that individualwhite votes count just as much as Hispanic ones,and since there are vastly more o the ormer, at-tracting these with racially-charged campaignthemes might prove very politically productive.

An additional act noted by Sailer is that the racialdemographics o a given region can be completelymisleading rom a political perspective. As men-tioned earlier, Hispanics and other immigrants tendto be much younger than whites and much less likely

to hold citizenship. Tereore, a state or region inwhich whites have become a numerical minority maystill possess a large white supermajority among theelectorate. Once again, todays Caliornia provides atelling example, with Hispanics and whites now beingabout equal in numbers according to the Census, butwith whites still regularly casting three times as many

votes on Election Day.Te Sailer analysis is ruthlessly logical. Whites are

still the overwhelming majority o voters, and willremain so or many decades to come, so raising yourshare o the white vote by just a couple o points

has much more political impact than huge shisin the non-white vote. As whites become a smallerand smaller portion o the local population in moreand more regions, they will naturally become ripeor political polarization based on appeals to their

interests as whites. And i Republicans ocus theircampaigning on racially charged issues such as im-migration and armative action, they will promotethis polarization, gradually transorming the twonational political parties into crude proxies or di-rect racial interests, eectively becoming the whiteparty and the non-white party. Since white votersare still close to 80 percent o the national elector-ate, the white partythe Republicanswill endup controlling almost all political power and couldenact whatever policies they desired, on both racialand non-racial issues.

Many might nd this political scenario quite dis-tasteul or unnerving, but that does not nec-essarily render it implausible. In act, over the lastcouple o decades, this exact process has unoldedin many states across the Deep South, with electedwhite Democrats becoming an increasingly endan-gered species. Each election year, blacks overwhelm-ingly vote or the black party, whites overwhelm-ingly vote or the white party, and since whites areusually two-thirds or so o the electorate, they almostinvariably win at the polls. Although Republican

consultants and pundits make enormous eorts tocamouage or ignore this underlying racial reality, itexists nonetheless.

By contrast, appeals or white support based onracial cohesion would be almost total nonstartersin 95 percent white Vermont or New Hampshire, orin many other states o the North in which the localdemographics still approximate those o the countrythat overwhelmingly supported the Civil Rights leg-islation o the 1960s. But todays national white per-centages are much closer to those o 1960s Alabamaand Mississippi, where whites ought that legislation

tooth and nail on racial grounds. And as the nationsoverall demography continues its inexorable sliderom that o Vermont to that o Mississippi, will whitepolitics move in that same direction, especially i giv-en a push?

Now I think a strong case can be made that such aprocess o deliberate racial polarization in Americanpolitics might have numerous adverse consequencesor the uture well-being o our country, sharply di-

vided as it would become between hostile white andnon-white political blocs o roughly equal size. Butgiven the extremely utilitarian mentality o those who



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practice electoral politics or a living, the more impor-tant question we should explore is whether it wouldactuallywork, purely on the political level. Might thisstrategy o racial polarization be applicable across thecountry as a whole?

Non-Whites and Blacks

Consider an interesting datapoint. It is certainly truethat the over the last century those states with thesmallest white majorities have generally had nameslike Mississippi, South Carolina, and Alabama, andthese have exhibited a very distinctive brand o whitepolitics and race relations. But the least white stateo all has actually projected a very dierent culturalimage.

Whites were a minority in Hawaii at the time ostatehood and have always been so, with the relativenumbers o whites and Asians shiing somewhatbased upon the various ows o migrants. Further-more, the original white colonists and plantationelites historically had had a quite conicted rela-tionship both with the Native Hawaiian populationwhose leadership they supplanted and also with thelarge numbers o Japanese, Chinese, and other Asianworkers originally imported as impoverished planta-tion laborers.

Yet although the local Republican Party has gen-

erally skewed toward the 25 percent o the popula-tion that is white, while the Democrats have beenmore popular among the majority Asians, thestates reputation has overwhelmingly been one oeasygoing race relations, a high degree o intermar-riage, and a complete lack o vicious political con-ict. Ideologically, Hawaiis white minority seemsto think and vote much more like the racially lib-eral residents o 95 percent white Vermont thanas members o a racially polarized minority bloc,locked in endless political struggle with its non-white opponents.

Perhaps Hawaii is just a unique case, being a chaino small tropical islands located thousands o mileso the mainland and heavily dependent upon tour-ism or its economy. But there is an additional exam-ple. Aer Hawaii, the state with the next lowest whitepercentage throughout most o the 20th century wasNew Mexico, with the number o whites uctuatingat around hal the total depending upon the ebbs andows o the white and Hispanic populations, beoreeventually alling to 40 percent in 2010.

And although New Mexico hardly possesses Ha-waiis enormously positive social imageit is mostly

rural with a small economyit has also never devel-oped the reputation o being a boiling racial caul-dron, with whites and Hispanics locked in a bitterbattle or power. Mention New Mexico and thepopular images that spring to mind probably revolve

around UFOs, vistas o great natural beauty, andgovernment research laboratories, not longstandingracial conict.

Tese examples lead to the suspicion that thehistory o bitter racial politics across most o theDeep South may represent less a conict o white

vs. non-white than one o white vs. black, and thisseems quite plausible. Aer all, slavery and its legacyhave or centuries constituted the deepest woundin American society, provoking a bloody Civil Warwhich cost the lives o almost one third o all whiteSouthern men o military age. Te history o black/

white racial relations is arguably the single most sig-nicant element in American political history, so weshould hardly be surprised i it continues to heavilyinuence the politics o numerous states and cities,including those outside the South.

By contrast, although relations between whitesand various other groupsAsians, Hispanics, andAmerican Indianshave sometimes been hostile oreven violent, these conicts have never been nearlyas long nor intense and are more like the oen con-tentious relationships between various white ethnicgroups. As our schoolbooks endlessly emphasize,

black/white relations do indeed constitute a uniqueaspect o American history.

hese alternate hypotheses about the underlyingsources o white political behavior may be ex-plored empirically by examining the electoral dataacross the 50 states. Like it or not, todays RepublicanParty does indeed constitute the white party, draw-ing almost all o its national votes rom whites, whilethe Democratic Party serves as the mixed party,with roughly comparable support rom whites andnon-whites. Tereore, white support or Republi-

cans, particularly at the national level, may serve asa reasonable proxy or a states apparent degree owhite racial consciousness, whether implicit or ex-plicit.

Under the Sailer Hypothesis, white alignmentwith the Republicans should be heavily inuenced bythe white share o the population, with the residentso lily-white states exhibiting little racial conscious-ness, while those living in states in which whiteshave slender or non-existent majorities would tiltmuch more heavily Republican. A second possibilityto consider might be called the Hispanic Hypoth-



esis, in which the heavy inuxo Hispanic immigrants, bothlegal and illegal, pushes whitestoward the harder-line Repub-licans; since the vast majority

o todays Hispanics come roma relatively recent immigrantbackground, a states overall His-panic population can be used asa good approximation or thisindependent variable. Finally,there is the Black Hypothesis,in which the long history oblack/white racial conict is as-sumed to be the primary actor,and the percentage o blacks inthe local population is what gen-

erally inuences white politicalbehavior.For the sake o simplicity and

to minimize the conoundingimpact o local political issuesand personalities, the easiest out-put variable to examine would bethe percentage o the white votethat supported the Republicanpresidential ticket over the last 20years. On a population-weightedbasis, the correlation results or elections rom 1992

through 2008 across the 50 states are as shown in thechart at right.Te results seem conclusive. Te correlations be-

tween the Hispanic percentage o each state and whitevoter preerences are approximately zero or all presi-dential elections, implying that the presence o largeHispanic populations appears to have virtually no im-pact upon white political alignment, either one wayor the other.

By contrast, the evidence or apparent black/whiteracial conict being the driving orce that promptswhites to vote Republican seems very strong: the

correlations between the size o the black populationand the degree o white GOP support range rom0.43 to 0.70, with a mean o 0.55, being both quitesubstantial and very consistent over time.

Te data regarding the Sailer Hypothesis is bitmore interesting, with the correlations between astates overall non-white percentage and white Re-publican alignment being small but noticeable,ranging between 0.14 and 0.31, with a mean o 0.20.However, we must remember that a considerableraction o Americas non-whites are blacks, with theratio declining rom around hal in 1992 to about

one-third by 2008, and obviously the strong black

correlations impact the non-white result. In act, theSailer Hypothesis curve closely tracks the weightedaverage o the Hispanic and Black Hypothesis curves,the dierence being mostly due to Americas smallbut growing Asian population. Tus, any Sailer E-ect in white voting patterns appears almost entirelydue to the black portion o the non-white populationand is thereore merely a statistical artiact.

In many respects, this conclusion merely consti-tutes a quantitative conrmation o the conven-tional political wisdom, which stretches back or

many decades. For example, in the aermath o thesuccessul Reagan Revolution o the 1980s, promi-nent journalists Tomas and Mary Edsall publishedthe widely praised Chain Reaction, which empha-sized the underlying racial actors promptingAmericas political realignment, and several simi-lar books appeared around the same time, nota-bly Peter Browns Minority Party. Numerous otherauthors had earlier made the same general pointabout the politics o the white backlash vote inthe 1960s and 1970s, the era o urban unrest andorced busing.

0.80

0.70

0.60

0.50

0.40

0.30

0.20

0.10

0

-0.10

-0.20

-0.30

Presidential Election Year

1992 1996 2000 2004 2008

CorrelationwithWhiteSupportforRepublicanTicket

Black Hypothesis

Sailer Hypothesis

Hispanic Hypothesis

White Voting Behavior in Presidential Elections



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In recent years, the Republican Party has grownquite embarrassed over these roots o its modernpolitical rise and has thereore made considerableeorts to downplay such underlying racial actorsrelative to more innocuous issues such as supportor low taxes or small government or patriotism oreven traditional religious values, and this sustainedeort to rewrite history partly accounts or much

current amnesia. But the data speaks or itsel.Tere is another, more subtle reason why somany o Americas political elites and pundits tendto miss the clear signs o this obvious racial rela-tionship, and it becomes apparent when we exam-ine the scatterplot distribution o these electionresults or the most recent 2008 presidential vote,including the 50 states and also the District o Co-lumbia. (Scatterplots or the previous presidentialelections look very similar.) Te results or the indi-

vidual states mostly ollow the sort o distributionwe would expect or a strongly correlated result, but

there is one huge exception: white voting patternsin D.C. constitute an enormously strong outlier. Bya wide margin D.C. is simultaneously more heavilyblack than any state while also having whites whoare the most liberal and Democratic in their votingbehavior.

D.C.s population is much smaller than that onearly all states, so including it in our weighted cor-relation calculation would have only slightly shiedthe results. But in the real world o todays central-ized political culture, the world o politicians andmedia pundits and political journalists, D.C. ranks

as a colossus in mind share, playing a huge role inshaping ideological perceptions and thereore carry-ing a weight probably greater than that o Calior-nia or exas, or perhaps even both combined. Andunder such a mind-share weighting, that single citylled with a population consisting almost entirely oblacks and very liberal whites serves to substantiallymask elite perceptions o the stark racial dynamics

that inuence political ideologies almost everywhereelse in the country.

An Anti-Immigration Backlash

Let us consider the political implications o thesestriking results. Since the large-scale presence o non-black non-whitesprimarily Hispanic and Asianimmigrant groupsdoes not seem to produce muchwhite political cohesion along racial lines, the contin-ued growth o these populations can hardly represent

a potential boon or the Republican Party. Meanwhile,harsh Republican rhetoric or policies that target thesegroups would naturally tend to drive them into thearms o the Democrats. Under such a scenario, theGOP loses millions o non-white votes without gain-ing any white votes in exchange, resulting in politicaldisaster.

A perect example o this danger may be ound inthe recent political history o Caliornia, whose hugesize and heavily immigrant population render it auseul testbed or the nation as a whole. During theour decades rom 1950 to 1990, Caliornia supported

Black Percentage of Local Population

2008RepublicanShareofWhitePre

sidentialVote

80

60

40

20

0 10 20 30 40 50

Alabama

Oklahoma

Arkansas

Tennessee

N.M.

Neb.

Mont.

N.D.W. Va.

IndianaNevada

Missouri

Idaho

Pa.N.J.

Ohio

Wis.

Colo.IowaMaine

N.H.Mass.

Conn.

Ill.

Mich. N.Y.

Florida

Louisiana

Mississippi

Georgia

South Carolina

Ore.Wash.

Vermont

R.I.

Hawaii

Maryland

District of Columbia

Minn.

Calif.

Kan.Ariz.

Texas

North Carolina

Delaware

Virginia

South Dakota

Wyo.

Alaska Kentucky



the Republican presidential ticket almost without ail,going Democratic only during Lyndon Johnsons un-precedented 1964 landslide. Te state was consideredas solidly Republican as Wyoming or Idaho, and thehuge number o electoral votes it carried combined

with the enormous expense o contesting them estab-lished it as the anchor o the GOP presidential strat-egy, leading to the widespread notion o a Republicanlock on the White House.

Although Hispanic and Asian numbers had beengrowing steadily or years, their support or Repub-licans had been growing as well, and by the early1990s, a GOP candidate could regularly expect toreceive around one-third or more o the Hispanic

vote and hal that o the Asian. For example, PeteWilsons narrow 1990 gubernatorial victory over Di-anne Feinstein, which signicantly relied upon his

criticism o racial quotas, was achieved with 53percent o the white vote, 47 percent o the Hispanicvote, and 58 percent o the Asian vote according tothe prestigious Caliornia Field Poll used by the NewYork imes, though others placed his ethnic totalslower.

But all o this permanently changed ollowingWilsons harsh 1994 reelection campaign, whosetelevision ads relentlessly scapegoated Hispanic im-migrants or the states terrible economic woes. Al-though his words were careully chosen in lawyerlyashion to distinguish between legal and illegal im-

migrants, his message was perceived very dier-ently, and his loudest grassroots activist supporterscertainly made no such distinction. Moreover, theresounding Caliornia Republican landslide that re-sulted soon emboldened the newly established Re-publican majorities in the U.S. House and Senate toocus on passing anti-immigration legislation, whichthus placed legal Asian immigrants in the same po-litical crosshairs.

As a direct consequence, Republican supportsharply dropped among Hispanics and Asians andhas never really recovered. Moreover, the immigra-

tion battle rightened and energized many tradition-ally apolitical Hispanics into nally naturalizing andregistering, and during the 15 years that ollowed,their share o the state vote more than doubled to 22percent, severely compounding the blow to Repub-lican prospects.

Te consequence was that gigantic Caliorniaalmost as populous as exas and New York com-binedsuddenly switched rom being the strong an-chor o every Republican national campaign to beingthe equally strong anchor o every Democratic one.In the years that ollowed, the large GOP congressio-

nal delegation was decimated and the powerul stateRepublican Party, which had once propelled Nixonand Reagan to national leadership, was reduced tonear irrelevance.

Consider the interesting case o Howard Ahman-

son, long one o Caliornias wealthiest politically-active Evangelical Christians and during the early1990s routinely described by the media as a centralpillar o the Christian Right within the RepublicanParty. In a prescient 1993 letter to Commentary, hewarned o the rising tide o anti-immigrant senti-ment in conservative circles and expressed a con-cern that Republicans would doom themselves ithey drove away these socially conservative voters,perhaps losing them or generations, just as previousRepublicans had done with Italian and Irish immi-grants a century earlier. Te Caliornia Republicans

completely ignored his warning, with the politicalconsequences already noted.In Ahmansons opinion, todays Caliornia GOP

has shrunk to the point where it now representsonly the most dogmatically taxophobic elements othe state. Meanwhile, the Democrats have expandedso much that they usually incorporate both sideso almost every political divide: business and labor,whites and non-whites, the rich and the poor, lib-erals and conservatives. Tis inclusiveness certainlyextends to the staunchest socially conservative vot-ers, since it was the overwhelming support o Cali-

ornia non-whites that deeated gay marriage at theballot box in 2008. And these days Howard Ahman-son is a registered Democrat.

Tere is no logical contradiction between thepowerul backlash o Caliornia whites against im-migrants 20 years ago and the apparent lack o suchpolitical sentiments today. In the early 1990s, thestates demographics had just undergone a periodo very rapid change, and middle-class whites werenaturally earul and alarmed about the consequenc-es o these changes and the possible behavior o somany millions o new immigrants rom such dier-

ent backgrounds, especially in the immediate aer-math o the deadly Rodney King riots. Tis le themeasy targets or political demagoguery. But aer aew years had gone by, most whites concluded thattheir new neighbors seemed like pretty reasonablepeople, not too dierent rom themselves, and racialconcerns dropped to the lower levels o most publicopinion surveys, usually ranking below jobs, hous-ing, healthcare, and sometimes even trac.

Similarly, most Hispanic and Asian newcomershave developed perectly amicable relations withtheir white counterparts, but still remain deeply



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suspicious o the Republican Party, whose lead-ers had spent several years deaming and attackingthem. Such ethnic suspicions might occasionallybe overcome by a particularly unusual Republicancandidate, as we saw in the case o worldwide lm

superstar Arnold Schwarzeneggerhimsel a heav-ily-accented oreign immigrantwho managed towin a couple o landslide victories. But they provedenormous barriers to more typical Republican can-didates, who began each statewide campaign withwhat amounted to an automatic ten or 15-point de-cit at the polls and almost invariably lost as a result.

Tis can be seen in the details o the most re-cent Caliornia election cycle. As the only statewideRepublican oceholder and a wealthy Silicon Val-ley entrepreneur, Insurance Commissioner StevePoizner was assumed to have a lock on his partys

gubernatorial nomination and naturally attractedthe support o all major segments o the GOP ap-paratus. But then ormer eBay CEO Meg Whitman,an utter political neophyte but with a billion-dollarortune, decided to enter the race and immediatelybecame the darling o the partys mercenary estab-lishment, given the bottomless unds she promisedto spend on her campaign. Outmatched nancially,Poizner was orced to reocus on right-wing pri-mary voters, and as a highly opportunistic ellow,he decided to ride the national tidal wave o anti-immigration ears then sweeping across the coun-

try and make it the centerpiece o his campaign,eventually spending $25 million o his own moneyon the eort.

Te result was that he lost the primary by 40points. When you run as an immigration hard-liner, spend $25 million on your race, and lose by40 points among the hard-core conservatives whodominate Republican primaries, youre clearly sell-ing the dog ood that dogs just wont eat. Tese days,anti-immigration candidacies in Caliornia possessabout as much resonance as anti-papist candidaciesin Massachusetts.

Aerwards, Whitman went on to spend an aston-ishing $180 million in her campaign, nearly all o ither own money, and in a year eaturing an enormousnational backlash against career politicians lost in alandslide to ormer Governor Jerry Brown, who hadalmost continuously been an elected ocial or a po-litical candidate or the previous 45 years. Meanwhile,the best nationwide year or Republicans in two de-cades saw their Caliornia party lose every statewiderace, mostly by wide margins. Such is the dismal po-litical legacy that Pete Wilson bequeathed to his mostunortunate local successors.

Now consider the likely political uture o a statesuch as Arizona, ground zero o the most recentnational anti-immigrant backlash by nervous whites.A severe recession and rapidly changing demograph-ics had alarmed Arizona voters, many o them elderly

retirees rom elsewhere, leaving them vulnerable towild rumors o a huge immigrant crime wave, in-cluding beheadings and kidnappings, almost all owhich was complete nonsense. As a result, harshanti-immigrant measures were passed into law, andtheir mostly Republican supporters won sweeping

victories among an electorate that is today roughly80 percent white.

But buried near the bottom o a single one o theinnumerable New York imes articles analyzing Ari-zona politics was the seemingly minor and irrelevantact that almost hal o all Arizona schoolchildren

are now Hispanic. Meanwhile, according to Censusdata, over 80 percent o Arizonans aged 65 or olderare white. A decade or more rom now it seems likelythat Arizona whites and Hispanics will enjoy per-ectly good relations, and the ormer will have longsince orgotten their current immigrant scare. Butthe latter will still remember it, and the once mightyArizona Republican Party will be set on the road tooblivion.

Even in a rock-solid Deep South Republican statelike Georgia, Hispanics have now grown into a re-markable 10 percent o the population, up rom al-

most nothing in the early 1990s, and represent aneven larger share o younger Georgians. So unlessthe local Republican Party can somehow greatlyenhance its appeal to the 30 percent o Georgianswho are black, the current wave o anti-immigrantlegislation may prove highly problematical ten or 20years down the road.

Tis pattern highlights a central dilemma acedby todays Republican leadership. In states or regionsexperiencing heavy waves o non-white immigra-tion, the partys white conservative base tends togrow alarmed, and any particular sparkan eco-

nomic downturn, a brutal crime widely publicizedby the mediacan lead to an explosion o racialhostility. At that point, thoughtul Republican can-didates are aced with the choice o either ollowingthis populist appeal to immediate victory, oen at-tracting the crossover support o large numbers oDemocratic or independent voters in the process, orgritting their teeth and opposing it.

I they take the ormer approach, temporary elec-toral victories, no matter how sweeping, almostinvariably become long-term disasters in politicalalignment. But i they take the latter stance, they sac-



rice the sort o immediate opportunities that tendto gure very high in the minds o most politicians,and even risk losing primaries to harder-line rivalswith shorter horizons or ewer scruples.

Since the Democratic Party is already so heavily

inuenced at the national level by non-white votersand pro-immigrant activists, local Democrats possesslittle leeway on this sort o issue, and any candidateswho might consider adopting a populist anti-immi-grant platorm would quickly nd themselves black-listed by the party leadership, quite possibly becomingRepublicans at the end o a bitter ideological divorce.

But when we consider the case o Caliornia andthe numerous other states that now appear to be ol-lowing along that same demographic trajectory, cer-tainly including the Republican anchor state o exasin which whites recently became a minority, todays

high levels o immigration seem to be orcing the Re-publicans into a very dicult strategic position, notnecessarily over the next ve or six years, but over thenext ten or 20. Is there any way they can somehowescape this racial trap, perhaps by curtailing immigra-tion? Moreover, can such a proposal be justied onanything other than political grounds?

Our Population Ponzi Scheme

Tis obviously leads into the endlessly contentious

topic o immigration, and whether or not todays highlevels provide benets that outweigh their problems.Tere are ew subjects so likely to provoke angry emo-tions in political circles, as well as sweeping ideological

justications, personal vilications, and actual claimsthat have no basis in reality. Furthermore, this is oneissue in which individuals quite requently eel com-pelled to take one position publicly while very clearlyholding the opposite belie in private; and such dishon-esty seems to occur in both directions o the debate.

Many o the leading actors driving populist opposi-tion to immigration, such as perceptions o high crime

rates or anti-white ethnic hostility, seem completely in-correct. As I demonstrated in a 2010 article, all availableevidence indicates that most immigrant groups tendto have approximately the same crime rates as whiteAmericans o a similar age, or perhaps even a bit lower.Similarly, there is overwhelming evidence that todaysimmigrants want to learn English, gain productiveemployment, assimilate into our society, and generallybecome good Americans at least as much as did theirEuropean counterparts o a century ago.

Te notion that masses o non-white immigrants,legal or not, will turn our cities into violent battleelds

or support ethnic separatist movements which shatternational unity are total absurdities, and the people whobelieve such claims are ools. And as we have seen aboverom the accumulated voting data o the last couple odecades, aer a brie transition period, whites and non-

white immigrant groups seem to coexist perectly well,or at least as well as did the various white ethnic groupson the East Coast 50 or 60 years ago.

However, the act does remain that Americas cur-rent immigration levels are extremely high, not merelyrelative to the 40-year pause between 1925 and 1965,but even relative to the previous peak reached duringthe early years o the 20th century. Over the last de-

cade, the ow o immigrants has oen hit a million ormore per year, a rate that would have seemed almostunimaginable during the immigration controversyo the early 1990s, when Peter Brimelow warned oAmerica becoming an Alien Nation in his alarmistbook o that title. Te number o oreign-born Ameri-cans has doubled in the last 20 years, while almost a

quarter o all American children today have at leastone oreign-born parent, nearly matching the levelreached during the absolute height o European im-migration a century ago.

Te result o all this has been a quite remark-able rate o national population growth. Duringthe early 1970s, when environmental concerns,such as depletion o resources and overpopulation,became leading causes among the liberal intelli-gentsia, Americas population was a little over 200million, and growth was rapidly diminishing, withbirth rates alling to replacement levels ollowing

the end o the postwar Baby Boom. But soon a-ter those activists declared victory and moved onto new and varied ideological causes, populationgrowthdriven almost entirely by immigrants andtheir childrensuddenly started up again, withnumbers reaching unprecedented levels: 250 mil-lion in 1990, 275 million in 2000, and well over300 million today. A couple o years ago, urban-de-

velopment expert Joel Kotkin published Te NextHundred Million, a book in which he trumpetedthe likely act that the American population wouldreach 400 million within about 30 years. Does an

The notion that masses o non-white

immigrants will turn our cities intoviolent battlefelds is a total absurdity.



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eventual billion inhabitants o the 50 states nowseem utterly impossible?

Such rapid and massive population growth isound nowhere else in the developed world and israre even among the more successul developing

countries. Te European nations, Japan, and Chinaare all approximately stable in their populations, andin most cases are projected to undergo some declinein the near uture. Even crowded Mexico, long the

leading source o anti-immigrationist dystopiannightmares, saw total ertility rates drop to replace-ment levels a ew years ago, as increasing levels oafuence and education permeated the population.

Large and growing populations certainly doproduce national benets as well as burdens, andAmericas wide-open interior spaces still provide amuch lower overall population density than smalland crowded European countries. But i our nation-al population trends are so wildly discordant with

those o almost all our international peers, perhapswe should at least question them.

here are obvious reasons or this curious lack onational debate. Te solvency o our Social Se-curity system is buttressed by such rapid populationgrowth, which increases the number o current work-ers relative to retirees. Te housing sectorwhichduring the peak o the bubble became Americaslargest industryis heavily dependent upon popu-lation growth to boost demand. But support or im-

migration based on these arguments amounts toan endorsement o Ponzi schemes in which growthmust continue indenitely in order to maintain thesame benets. And as we have seen in the recent past,Ponzi schemes eventually collapse, usually leavingdevastation in their wake.

Meanwhile, consider the strange continued silenceo the once vocal environmentalist groups, or whommassive housing growth and endless suburban sprawlare hardly cherished dreams. I strongly suspect thatthe dierence between their energetic criticism a gen-eration or so ago and their quiescence today centers

on the matter o race: back then, Americas popula-tion growth was driven almost entirely by the whitebirthrate, while today non-white immigration andthe children o such immigrants are the overwhelm-ing source. And these days in American society, very

ew individualsleast o all the sort o afuent liber-als who ocus on the environmentcare to risk beingbranded with a Scarlet R.

As a prime example o this dynamic, consider thecase o the Sierra Club, one o Americas oldest andlargest environmental groups, which quite naturallyhad always made population growth one o its majorconcerns. During the mid-1990s, a wealthy Caliorniaenvironmentalist, David Gelbaum, himsel the grand-son o Jewish immigrants rom Europe and with aMexican-American wie, grew outraged over the nas-ty racial tone o the political battle unleashed by Pete

Wilson and Proposition 187 and privately pledged$100 million to the Sierra Club on the condition thatit never turn anti-immigration. Tis requirement wasaccepted, permanently silencing that organization.

Even without such explicit inducements, weshould hardly be surprised that liberal, cosmopoli-tan, upper middle class environmentalists wouldbe extremely uncomortable enlisting in a politicalcause typically spearheaded by the sort o loud right-wing populists whom they personally detest as rac-ist rabble. Sometimes strange bedellows do nd itextremely dicult to share the same bed.

Meanwhile, many other powerul lobbies withinour political system derive important real or per-ceived benets rom endless population growth. Temassive inow o oen impoverished and desper-ate immigrants tends to weaken unions and drivedown working-class wages, thereby increasing cor-porate prots, a slice o which is then rebated backto the campaign accounts o the elected ocials whomaintain such policies. Some o the more expan-sively-minded neoconservatives eel that i Americamust establish a hegemonic world empire, it neces-sarily requires a vast population to do so, especially

given their expectation o an inevitable conict withChina. Particular proposals rom some o these in-dividuals carry strong echoes o the decaying LateRoman Empire, with Max Boot, a senior ellow at theCouncil on Foreign Relations, having suggested thatwe should oer automatic American citizenship toany oreigner willing to enlist in the U.S. military.

But i we take a step back and ask ourselves to con-sider the current outcome o all these interlocked pol-icies, we discover a very sorry situation. Te massiveimmigration o the last couple o decades is certainlynot the sole or even the leading cause, but it is an

Immigrants have very high labor-orceparticipation rates and relatively low rateso welare dependency.



important contributing actor. Endless oreign wars,partly made possible by the availability o pliant im-migrant cannon odder, have ruined Americas world-wide reputation and its nances. A gigantic housingbubble, inated by heavy immigration-driven popu-

lation growth, has collapsed, wrecking the Americaneconomy and endangering our nancial system. Andthe extremes o American wealth and poverty havereached levels never previously seen in our society.

Tis last point is perhaps the most signicant, butalso the least oen articulated, given that both politi-cal parties are largely unded by the same nancialinterests.

Te Politics of Rich and Poor

In recent decades, American society has undergone analmost unprecedented concentration o wealth, nowreaching the point at which the top 1 percent possessas much net wealth as the bottom 90-95 percent. Tissame top 1 percent received over 80 percent o the totalincrease in American personal income between 1980and 2005, and that trend has almost certainly acceler-ated since then. Late last year New York imes colum-nist Nicholas Kristo sounded the alarm that Americamight soon reach the extremes o wealth and povertyound in the notoriously polarized societies o Argen-tina and the banana republics o Latin America, then

needed to retract that claim when he discovered thatwe had already long since passed most o those coun-tries in that regard. And in a widely discussed VanityFairarticle, Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitzcharacterized todays America as being a country Othe One Percent, By the One Percent, and For the OnePercent. Tis state o aairs is clearly not benecial tothe less wealthy 99 percent o our society, but he alsopointed out that the obvious potential or social in-stability should deeply concern the more thoughtulmembers o the One Percent themselves.

Furthermore, much o this economic decline has

been absolute rather than merely relative. Adjustedor ination, median personal income has been stag-nant or the past 40 years, and a substantial ractiono the population has seen a sharp drop in its stan-dard o living, a situation almost without precedentin American history. Meanwhile, the costs o numer-ous budget items such as healthcare or higher edu-cation have risen very rapidly, thereby orcing moreand more amilies into what Paul Krugman has char-acterized as a system o permanent debt peonageor what Warren Buett has similarly described as asharecroppers society. As a result, nearly a quarter

o American households have zero to negative networth, and a single unexpected illness or economicsetback can push them to the brink o destitution.

o some extent, this long stagnation in nancialwell-being has been masked by the material benets

derived rom the exponentially growing power o ourelectronic technologies and also by the alse sense owealth temporarily provided by the housing bubble.But with the collapse o the latter, many Americansare nally discovering just how poor they really havebecome. And in many respects, this economic situ-ation seems ar worse in America than in most othe other wealthy countries we have long regarded asour economic peers, so it cannot simply be blamedupon problems o technological displacement or therise o China or global ree trade.

It is perhaps not entirely coincidental that this 40

year period o economic stagnation or most Ameri-cans coincides exactly with 40 years o rapidly risingimmigration levels. Aer all, the concept that a hugeinux o eager workers would tend to benet Capi-tal at the expense o Labor is hardly astonishing, nordoes it require years o academic research into theintricacies o economic theory.

Consider, or example, the case o sel-educatedunion activist Cesar Chavez, a liberal icon o the 1960swho today ranks as the top Latino gure in Americasprogressive pantheon. During nearly his entire career,Chavez stood as a vigorous opponent o immigration,

especially o the undocumented variety, repeatedlydenouncing the ailure o the government to enorceits immigration laws due to the pervasive inuence othe business lobby and even occasionally organizing

vigilante patrols at the Mexican border. Indeed, theMinutemen border activists o a ew years back weremerely ollowing in Chavezs ootsteps and would havehad every historical right to have named their organi-zation the Cesar Chavez Brigade. I think a good casecan be made that during his own era Chavez rankedas Americas oremost anti-immigration activist.

But todays union leaders have grown almost com-

pletely silent on the obvious impact that large in-creases in the supply o labor have on the economicwell-being o ordinary workers. A crucial explana-tion is that or reasons o citizenship and language,the overwhelming majority o immigrants are em-ployed in the private sector, particularly the small-scale non-unionized private sector. Meanwhile,population growth tends to increase the need orteachers, police ocers, reghters, and other gov-ernment employees, thereby beneting the powerulpublic-sector unions that today completely domi-nate the labor movement.



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his relates to another perectly valid criticismraised by anti-immigration activists, namely thatthe net scal impact o many immigrants is substan-

tially negative. Te notion that large numbers o im-migrants and their amilies subsist on welare or thatMexican immigrant mothers oen have ve or tenchildren is sheer nonsense. Immigrants actually have

very high labor orce participation rates and relativelylow rates o welare dependency, while the vast ma-

jority o their amilies stop at two or three children, anumber somewhat higher than that o todays native-born whites but really no dierent rom the typicalAmerican amily during the hallowed 1950s. Andsince, as mentioned earlier, immigrant crime ratesare about average, there is no large additional cost or

police or prisons.Te scal diculty lies not on the expenditure

side but on the tax side. Most immigrants, espe-cially illegal ones, work at relatively low paid jobs,and the various taxes they pay simply cannot cov-er their share o the (extremely inated) costs oAmericas governmental structure, notably school-ing. Furthermore, or exactly this same reason orelative poverty, they receive a disproportionateshare o those government programs aimed at ben-eting the working poor, ranging rom tax creditsto ood stamps to rental subsidies. Immigration

critics have persuasively argued that the currentsystem amounts to the classic case o economicspecial interests managing to privatize prots while

socializing costs, wherein immigrant employersreceive the ull benets o the labor done by theirlow-wage workorce while pushing many o thecostsincluding explicit income subsidiesontothe taxpayers. Obviously, all these same actors areequally true or non-immigrant Americans whoall into the category o working-poor, but the largecontinuing inow o low-wage workers greatly ex-acerbates this basic scal problem.

Immigration and the Political rap

But even i we conclude that our high immigrationlevels represent a serious national problem, is thereany possible solution? Te political reality is thatboth major parties are enormously dependent uponthe business interests that greatly benet rom thecurrent system and are also dominated by disparateideologieslibertarian open-borders and multicul-tural open-borderswhose positions tend to coin-cide on this issue.

As an extreme example o the bizarre ideologicalviews o our current political elites, consider a less-

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publicized element o the immigration reorm planthat President George W. Bush trumpeted during his2004 reelection campaign. Tis provision would haveallowed any oreigner anywhere in the world to legal-ly immigrate to America i he accepted a minimum-

wage job that no American were willing to ll, anutterly insane proposal which would have eectivelytransormed Americas minimum wage into its maxi-mum wage. Naturally his opponent, Sen. John Kerry,saw absolutely nothing wrong with this idea, thoughhe did criticize various other aspects o Bushs immi-gration plan as being somewhat mean-spirited.

Furthermore, while signicant Democratic sup-port or curtailing immigration appears almostunthinkable given the partys internal dynamics, acommitted Republican eortunlikely though itmight bewould seem doomed to ailure due to

the racial aspects o the issue. Republicans wouldimmediately be subjected to withering Democraticattacks in the mediawhether or not these wereair or sincereand as a result would lose mucho whatever remaining non-white political supportthey still retained, while the GOP plan would neverhave the slightest chance o gaining majority supportin Congress, let alone a libuster-proo majority. TeRepublicans would suer massive political damagewithout any possibility o achieving legislative suc-cess, and knowing that, would never undertake theeort. So they dont.

Aer all, even strictly enorcing existing immi-gration laws is almost impossible in our currentpolitical and media climate. Although the press hasrecently highlighted the hundreds o thousands oundocumented residents annually deported underthe Obama administrationand this has sparked asharp political backlash among his pro-immigrantsupporterssuch a number is negligible comparedto the estimated total o 11 million or so. Only themost utterly egregious employers o those workershave ever paid serious penalties, and the dollars in-

volved are usually trivial compared to the economic

benets o ignoring the law. In almost all cases, em-ployer sanctions have amounted to just a (small)cost o doing business. When both worker andemployer have a strong mutual interest in evadinga law, enorcement becomes very dicult and cum-bersome, just as we have seen in the case o our end-lessly violated drug laws.

Even so, attacking the employment side o theequation remains the most eective approach. Vir-tually all immigrants come here or jobs, so elimi-nating government benets would merely serve tourther immiserate millions o amilies, who would

remain in this country regardless. Having immigra-tion agents conduct random sweeps through eth-nic neighborhoods would engender enormous earand anger and also deter immigrants rom report-ing crimes, while constituting a massive violation o

traditional civil liberties. Even building a ence anddoubling the border-patrol would probably have justa small impact across such an enormously long bor-der, not least because an estimated one-hal o all il-legal immigrants enter the country legally and thenoverstay their visas. I the magnetic appeal o theAmerican job market could somehow be reducedor eliminated, such ancillary measures might proveuseul, but i the jobs remain, the immigrants willremain here as well.

Escaping the Low-Wage SocietySo we are aced with several apparently insolubleand reinorcing dilemmas. Passing legislation to cur-tail immigration seems a political non-starter withboth parties, and enorcing such legislation even ipassed is equally unlikely. Yet as an almost inevitableconsequence o the current system, the bulk o theAmerican populationincluding the vast majorityo immigrants and their childrenalls deeper anddeeper into economic misery, while government -nances steadily deteriorate, leading our country to a

looming calamity whose outcome appears both direand quite dicult to predict. Over the last century,the political consequences o a largely impoverishedmiddle class and a bankrupt governmentwhetherin Latin America or in Central Europehave oenbeen very unortunate.

By contrast, the sharp constriction in the laborsupply resulting rom steep reductions in additionalimmigration would dramatically boost worker wag-es, especially at the low end, with current immigrantsthemselves being among the greatest beneciaries.An increase o a couple o dollars per hour or more

could make huge improvements in the dicult ex-istence o the working poor, perhaps allowing themto exit the debt treadmill and stand a better chanceo eventually rising into a revitalized middle class.Admittedly, corporate prots might suer a little andsome businesses at the lowest end might disappear;but corporate prots are already doing quite nicelythese days, and it makes no sense or developedcountries to desperately compete with the impover-ished Tird World or jobs that are only viable underTird World salaries. Immigration restrictions thatraised working-class wages by a couple o dollars an



Politics

hour would also do wonders or the scal health othe Social Security system and government nancesin general.

But perhaps the obvious escape rom this seem-ingly inescapable political trap is as simple as merely

reversing the direction o cause and eect. Considerthe consequences o a very substantial rise in the na-tional minimum wage, perhaps to $10 or more likely$12 per hour.

he automatic rejoinder to proposals or hikingthe minimum wage is that jobs will be lost. Butin todays America a huge raction o jobs at or nearthe minimum wage are held by immigrants, oen il-legal ones. Eliminating those jobs is a central goal othe plan, a eature not a bug.

Let us explore the likely implications o this sim-ple proposal. Te analysis that ollows should be re-garded as impressionistic and plausible rather thanbased on any sort o rigorous and detailed research.It is intended to raise possibilities rather than pro-

vide answers. Also, let us assume or the momentthat these higher wage requirements would be verystrictly enorced.

First, the vast majority o workers in Americas sur-viving manuacturing sectorwhether in unionizedSeattle or non-union South Carolinaalready earnar more than the existing minimum wage, so their

employers would hardly be aected, resulting in al-most no impact on our international competitiveness.

Te same would be true or government employees,

resulting in negligible cost to the taxpayer.By contrast, the bulk o the low-wage jobs aected

all into the category o domestic non-tradeable ser-vice-sector jobs, which cannot be replaced by over-seas workers. Many o these jobs would disappear,but a substantial raction would remain viable at thehigher wage level, with employers either raising pricesor trimming prots or more likely a mixture o both.Perhaps consumers would pay 3 percent more orWal-Mart goods or an extra dime or a McDonaldshamburger, but most o these jobs would still existand the price changes would be small compared to

ongoing uctuations due to commodity prices, inter-national exchange rates, or Chinese production costs.

Meanwhile, many millions o low-wage workerswould see an immediate 20 percent or 30 percentboost in their take-home pay, producing a large in-

crease in general economic activity, not to mentionpersonal well-being. We must bear in mind that anincrease in the hourly minimum wage rom the cur-rent ederal level o $7.25 to (say) $12.00 would alsohave secondary, smaller ripple eects, boosting wagesalready above that level as well, perhaps even reachingworkers earning as much as $15 per hour.

Te likely impact upon immigrant workers,whether legal or illegal, would be quite varied.Tose most recently arrived, especially illegal oneswith weak language or job skills, would probablylose their jobs, especially since many o these indi-

viduals are already orced to work (illegally) or sub-minimum wages. However, workers who have beenhere or some years and acquired reasonably goodlanguage and job skills and who had demonstratedtheir reliability over time would probably be kept on,even i their employer needed to boost their pay by adollar or two an hour.

Tus, the orce o the policy would all over-whelmingly on those immigrants who possessed theweakest ties to American society and still retainedthe strongest links to their country o origin. Bycontrast, those immigrantslegal or otherwise

who had lived here or some years and thereorehad gradually become part o the community wouldmostly emerge unscathed, probably receiving a verywelcome boost to their amily income. Some anti-immigration activists might nd this prospect ex-tremely distasteul, but hal- or two-thirds o a loais better than none.

Moreover, although this wage structure would tendto grandather a considerable raction o existing il-legal immigrants, it would constitute a very ormida-ble barrier to uture ones. Paying $12 per hour mightbe reasonable or a reliable employee who had worked

with you or several years, but would be much harderto justiy or an impoverished new arrival speakingminimal English and with no track record. o a largeextent, the undocumented job window in Americawould have permanently slammed shut.

In eect, a much higher minimum wage serves toremove the lowest rungs in the employment ladder,thus preventing newly arrived immigrants rom gain-ing their initial oothold in the economy. As a naturalconsequence, these rungs would also disappear orthe bottom-most American workers, such as youthsseeking their rst jobs or the least skilled in our soci-

The minimum wage represents one othose issues whose vast appealto ordinary voters is matched by littleinterest among political elites.



ety. But over the last ew decades, these groups havealready been largely displaced in the private-sector

job market by immigrants, especially illegal ones.Whereas 40 years ago, teenagers and blacks tended tomow lawns and work as janitors, in most parts o the

country these days, such jobs are now held by recentarrivals rom south o the border. So the net loss oopportunity to Americans would not be large.

Furthermore, recently arrived illegal workers mustvery quickly nd employment i they hope to covertheir living expenses and remain here rather thanbeing orced to return home instead. But rst-timeAmerican job-seekers are already living with theiramilies and anyway have no other home to drawthem away, and consequently could spend monthsseeking an available job. Tus, a higher minimumwage would tend to disproportionately impact new

immigrants rather than their American-born com-petitors.

he enorcement o these wage provisions wouldbe quite easy compared with the complex web ocurrent government requirements and restrictions.It is possible or business owners to claim they wereooled by obviously raudulent legal documents orthat they somehow neglected to run the conusingelectronic background checks on their new tempo-rary dishwasher. But it is very dicult or anyone toclaim he orgot to pay his workers the legally man-

dated minimum wage. Furthermore, the ormer situ-ation constitutes something o a victimless crimeand usually arouses considerable sympathy amongimmigrant-rights advocates and within ethnic com-munities; but the latter would universally be seen asthe case o a greedy boss who reused to pay his work-ers the money they were legally due and would at-tract no sympathy rom the media, the police, juries,or anyone else.

Very sti penalties, including mandatory prisonterms, could assure near absolute compliance. Virtu-ally no employer would be oolish enough to attempt

to save a ew hundred dollars a month in wages paidat the risk o a ve-year prison sentence, especiallysince the workers he was cheating would immediate-ly acquire enormous bargaining leverage over himby threatening to report his behavior to the police.

Te proposed change would simply be in the rateo the minimum wage, rather than in the structure othe law, so certain relatively small modication andexceptions, such as including estimated tips or somerestaurant employees, might be maintained, so longas these did not expand as a means o circumventingthe statute.

Depending upon the state, the current Americanminimum wage ranges between $7.25 and $8.67 perhour. But is a much higher national minimum wagesuch as $12 per hour really unreasonable by histori-cal or international standards? In 2011 dollars, the

American hourly minimum wage was over $10 in1968, during our peak o postwar prosperity andull employment, and perhaps that relationship waspartly causal. Although exchange-rate uctuationsrender exact comparisons dicult, the minimumwage in Ontario along our northern border is cur-rently well over $10 per hour, while in France it nowstands at nearly $13. Even more remarkably, Austra-lia recently raised its minimum wage to over $16 perhour, and nonetheless has an unemployment rate o

just 5 percent. With the collapse o Americas unsus-tainable housing-bubble economy o the 2000s, our

unemployment rates seem no better and in manycases considerably worse than those o afuentWestern countries that have reused to pursue ourrace-to-the-bottom low-wage economic strategy orecent decades.

But suppose this boost in the minimum wage suc-ceeded at one o its primary goals and eliminatedthe jobs o many millions o Americas large undocu-mented population. Would these current workers andtheir amilies remain here anyway, perhaps turningto crime as they became nancially desperate? Aer

all, huge numbers o immigrants were employed inhousing construction, and ollowing the collapse othat industry their unemployment rates have soared,but most o them have stayed here anyway ratherthan going home again.

Te central point to recognize is that most illegalimmigrants, and a substantial raction o legal ones,enter America with the original goal o short-termeconomic gain, intending to work or a ew years,save as much money as possible, then go back hometo their amily and riends with a nice nest-egg. Fre-quently, these plans are unrealisticsaving money

proves more dicult than expectedand local tiesdevelop. But except or nancial actors, even thoseindividuals who have lived here a decade or longer o-ten still dream o returning to their native countries,sometimes even aer they have married, had Ameri-can-born children, and put down considerable roots.

Among other actors, the cost-structure o Ameri-can society is extremely high compared with that inmost o the developing world, where dollars go mucharther. Tis is the primary reason that substantialnumbers o non-Hispanic American retirees havechosen to relocate to Mexico with their pensions, de-



Politics

spite considerable barriers o language and culture.Furthermore, as discussed earlier, the scal costs

to the American government o low-wage immigrantamilies can be enormous. A couple working jobs ator near the present minimum wage pays negligible

taxes, while i they have two school-age children, thegrossly inated expense structure o American pub-lic education may easily result in an annual taxpayerburden o $20,000 or more, even excluding the sub-stantial costs associated with all other public services.And i one or both o these parents lose their jobs dueto a soaring minimum wage, the scal burden growsstill more severe.

Te obvious solution, both humane and highlycost-eective, would be or the government to oerimmigrants extremely generous nancial relocationpackages i they return home to their own countries.

A tax-ree cash payment perhaps as high as $5,000 oreven $10,000 per adult plus a much smaller sum perminor child, together with ree travel arrangements,would constitute an enormously attractive oer, prob-ably being much more than they had managed to ac-cumulate during many years o dicult low-wage la-bor. I the legal changes proposed herein had alreadycaused their jobs to disappear, such a relocation oerwould become irresistible. (Naturally, the ull nan-cial package would require hard evidence that theyhad already been living in America or a year or more,thereby preventing oreigners rom crossing our bor-

ders simply to game the system.) Given the massivescal burdens inherent in the current situation, evensuch generous nancial terms would probably pay orthemselves almost immediately.

An important aspect o all these proposals is thatthey are largely sel-enorcing. Workers would be per-ectly aware o the simple minimum wage laws, andharsh penalties would deter employers rom takingthe risk o violating them. Te disappearance o low-wage jobs would remove the primary lure or new il-legal immigrants, and generous cash relocation pack-ages would lead many existing ones to eagerly turn

themselves in and seek deportation. Although theBorder Patrol would continue to exist and immigra-tion laws would remain on the books, aer a shorttransition period these would become much lessnecessary, and a vast existing system o governmentbureaucracy, business red tape, and taxpayer expensecould saely be reduced.

Even principled libertarians, ervently opposed tothe very concept o a minimum wage, might nd thissystem preerable to the status quo, which containsan enormously complex web o regulations and em-ployment restrictions; the civil libertarian nightmares

o identity cards, national databases, and workplaceraids; and an existing minimum wage on top o allthese other things.

Te Political Balance SheetTe political response to this package would obvi-ously not be uniormly avorable, but would almostcertainly be more so than or any typical immigra-tion-restriction proposal.

Most o the larger corporations, especially thosein the industrial sector, would be minimally aect-ed by the wage changes, while beneting rom the(eventually) decreased burden o immigration-relat-ed reporting and paperwork requirements.

Many large retail establishments would be orced

to pay higher wages, but since these requirementswould be uniorm, hitting all o them simultane-ously, they would be able to raise prices in unisonto cover much o the additional expense, a situation

very dierent rom one in which well-paid unionizedcompanies are driven to the wall by their lower-paidnon-unionized competitors. Furthermore, duringthe course o this severe recession, giant companiessuch as Wal-Mart have disclosed disturbing trendso declining sales, and this has widely been ascribedto the growing impoverishment o their lower-mid-dle-class and working-poor customers. A dramatic

rise in the wages o low-end groups would reversethis situation and probably boost the ortunes oWal-Mart and its peers.

Large agricultural interests are heavily reliantupon illegal labor, but while they might be unhap-py about raising their workers pay by a signicantamount, they would nd this situation vastly pre-erable to actual enorcement o todays immigra-tion laws, which would immediately put them outo business. Anyway, although agricultural labor isdicult and unpleasant, most eld workers alreadyearn well above current minimum-wage levels, aver-

aging just over $10 per hour in 2009, so the requiredincrease would be much less than what one mightassume. And unlike the situation decades ago, onlya small raction o todays illegal immigrants are em-ployed in agriculture.

Many small textile manuacturers and other busi-nesses that survive only by relying upon very low-paid immigrant labor, working in near-sweatshopconditions, would probably be driven out o busi-ness. But that is the intent o the proposal.

Te reality is that most o the larger, more power-ul business interests in America are much less heav-


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ily impacted by minimum wage laws than by all sortso other regulatory and legal issues, not to mentionhealthcare and pension costs. A simple change inminimum-wage rates would provoke only a smallraction o the organized business opposition gen-

erated by many o the other sweeping national pro-posals o recent decades, notably healthcare reorm.Small business interests, inuential in Republicancircles, would certainly oppose the measure, but theywould largely stand alone.

Agreater diculty on the Republican side o theaisle would involve the entrenched ideologicalpositions o many conservative elected ocials andpundits, who over the years have come to vaguely re-gard minimum wage laws as being bad, both eco-nomically and even spiritually, having substituted

dogma or thinking. As an example, conservativerebrand Rep. Michele Bachmann recently hintedthat the solution to Americas current economicproblems might involve substantially reducing ourexisting minimum-wage rates. Presumably, she be-lieves our country would prosper by cutting its wagesto Sub-Saharan Arican levels, then naturally im-porting millions o Sub-Saharan Aricans happy towork at those rates.

But we should also recognize that these days acrucial component o the Republican electorate con-sists o working-class whites, oen strongly religious

ones, who tend to live in non-unionized low-wagestates or who otherwise generally subsist, sometimeswith considerable diculty, on the lower rungs othe economic ladder. Proposing a large wage in-crease to a socially conservative evangelical Chris-tian who works at Wal-Mart and currently strugglesto pay her bills would be the sort o simple, clearmessage that might easily cut through an enormousamount o ideological clutter. And even i Rush Lim-baugh, who earns tens o millions o dollars eachyear, denounced this proposal as big-governmentliberalism, or once his views might not nd recep-

tive ears. I suspect that a very substantial raction oMichele Bachmanns supporters all into exactly thissocioeconomic category.

Te minimum wage represents one o those po-litical issues whose vast appeal to ordinary voters ismatched by little i any interest among establishmentpolitical elites. As an example, in 1996, ollowingyears o unsuccessul attempts to attract the supporto Caliornia politicians, disgruntled union activistsled by State Sen. Hilda Solis, now serving as PresidentObamas secretary o labor, scraped together the undsto place a huge 35 percent minimum wage increase

on the state ballot. Once Republican pollsters begantesting the issue, they discovered voter support wasso immensely broad and deep that the ballot initiativecould not possibly be deeated, and they advised theirbusiness clients to avoid any attempt to do so, thus

allowing the measure to pass in a landslide againstalmost no organized opposition. Aerward, the ree-market naysayers who had predicted economic disas-ter were proven entirely wrong, and instead the stateeconomy boomed.

Finally, we should remember that many o themost militant and ideologically ervent grassrootsactivists within conservative ranks are vehementlyanti-immigration, oen largely on racial grounds,and sometimes ocus on that one issue to the ex-clusion o most others. For them, the very realisticprospect o dramatically cutting the numbers o

Americas huge undocumented population, reduc-ing uture illegal immigration to a mere trickle, andeven perhaps encouraging a substantial raction oour legal immigrants to return home would be tre-mendously attractive, and they might make lie veryuncomortable or any Republican politician whoopposed this plan without providing a realistic alter-native in its place.

Te political calculus among Democrats wouldbe much simpler. Any neoliberal Democratic oce-holder who balked at a large rise in the minimumwage by citing the economic theories o Milton

Friedman or the research reports o Goldman Sachswould be trampled into the dust by his enraged con-stituents, disappearing orever.

Alittle over a century ago, Henry Ford took thebold step o doubling the regular wages o hisassembly-line workers to the then remarkable sumo $5 per day, thereby achieving international ameas well as enormous business success or his owncompany. According to most accounts, this eventwas a crucial actor in creating the prosperousmiddle class that eventually dominated Americas

20th-century history, and Lenin later hailed Fordas one o the worlds greatest revolutionary heroes,urged his ollowers to closely study Fords writ-ings, and argued that so long as America possessedleaders o such wisdom, no Communist revolutionwould be necessary there.

Tese days, times have changed. But perhaps asimilarly bold step, which similarly raises the in-come o Americas working class and similarly cross-es many ideological lines, would help saeguard andmaintain the national prosperity that men like Fordoriginally created.

Documents

Immigration, the Republicans, and the End of White America