Krugman's Take on the Immigration Issue

by Paul Krugman

New York Times Blog

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April 26, 2010, 1:23 pm
The Curious Politics of Immigration
Just a quick note: my take on the politics of immigration is that it divides both parties, but in different ways.

Democrats are torn individually (a state I share). On one side, they favor helping those in need, which inclines them to look sympathetically on immigrants; plus they’re relatively open to a multicultural, multiracial society. I know that when I look at today’s Mexicans and Central Americans, they seem to me fundamentally the same as my grandparents seeking a better life in America.

On the other side, however, open immigration can’t coexist with a strong social safety net; if you’re going to assure health care and a decent income to everyone, you can’t make that offer global.

So Democrats have mixed feelings about immigration; in fact, it’s an agonizing issue.

Republicans, on the other hand, either love immigration or hate it. The business-friendly wing of the party likes inexpensive workers (and would really enjoy a huge guest-worker program that would both provide such workers and ensure that they can neither vote nor, in practice, unionize). But the cultural/nativist/tribal conservatives hate having these alien-looking, alien-sounding people on American soil.

So immigration is an issue that divides Republicans one from another, not within each individual’s heart.

For a long time the GOP was essentially run by business interests, with the cultural right taken for a ride; in 2004 Bush ran as the nation’s defender against gay married terrorists, then announced that the election gave him a mandate to … privatize Social Security.

But what the Tea Party really signifies, I think, is that the business interests have lost control, that the base, with its fears about the Other, has escaped from guidance. And the sudden immigration outburst is part of that phenomenon.

Democrats think this gives them an opening. I’m unclear about that, at least for 2010. But yes, in the long run you have think that if the GOP becomes the party of angry white men, unleashed — as opposed to angry white men harnessed to the business elite — it will have a poor future.