Toward a New Nativism?
Max J. Castro
North-South Center
University of Miami
May 19, 1995
DRAFT
Not for quotation or citation
In this working paper, I discuss some trends in the context in which immigration policy is being debated and made in the United States in the waning years of the 20th Century and draw out some implications for Latin America and the Caribbean.
I argue that the elements of a new nativist discourse are being assembled, and ask whether it signals that the country is on the threshold of another restrictionist era such as was ushered in by the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924.
Traditional nativism, as described by Higham, arises out of the interplay of ethnic prejudice and nationalism. Nativism came in several varieties and focused on different perils -- religious, racial, political -- at different times. Outbreaks of intense nativism tended to coincide with national crises. Higham identified four periods in American history in which "nativism erupted powerfully enough to have an immediate impact on national development." In the 1790s, nativism produced the Alien and Sedition Acts. In the 1850s, at the height of Irish immigration, it spawned the Know Nothing Party and was a factor in the breakup of the party system. In the late 1880s and 1890s, nativism produced social strife, and during World War I, nativism brought political repression and set the stage for the most important piece of immigration restrictionist legislation in American history.
The coincidence of nativist outbreaks and national crisis is suggestive and raises the question of whether today structural conditions in the United States -- such as the end of the assumption of intergenerational mobility and increasing economic inequality -- generally are conducive to nativism or whether such conditions are confined to disproportionately affected areas, such as California in the early 1990s.
In this paper, I use a broad concept of nativism to refer not only to ideology but also to related practices, policies, and scientific debates. The assumption, based on the historical record, is that nativism thus understood can have real consequences on immigration levels and composition. In the 1920s, draconian legislation passed in the wake of decades of nativist activism and aimed at curtailing immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe did just that. This is not to deny the centrality of structural forces, but to assert that the state does have a level of efficacy in regard to immigration, particularly in relation to legal immigration. While policies purportedly aimed at curtailing undocumented immigration have so far been ineffective, most immigrants into the United States today come through legal channels. These can be narrowed or shut off altogether, which is likely to have a major effect on the size and nature of the flow, despite the compensating increase in undocumented immigration. A New Nativism
I will advance that the elements of a new nativist discourse include:
The rise and electoral success of populist anti-foreigner
and/or anti-immigration movements at the local and state
levels, such as the anti-bilingualism referendum movement
in Miami in 1980 and the Save Our State (SOS) campaign in
California in 1994 that led to the adoption of
Proposition 187.
The ability to arouse ethnic passions, to attain a perfect
record of electoral success, and to fail utterly in transforming fundamental social realities so far has been the hallmark of these movements. The 1980 anti-bilingual referendum in Miami, was passed by 59 percent of the vote. It kicked off the English-Only wars of the 1980s, sought to relegate Spanish to the private sphere and to make southern Florida a less hospitable place for Latinos. Ten years later, the number of Hispanics had increased dramatically as had the use of Spanish in public and private settings. Proposition 187 in California, passed by an identical percentage of the vote in 1994, remains deadlocked in the courts. Despite the apparent impotence of these movements, the message they send should not be dismissed lightly.
The creation of national Americanization and anti-
immigration lobbies, mainly U.S. English and the
Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
These two organizations with a common origin and complementary
agendas provide resources and an institutional framework for translating diffuse anti-immigration sentiment into national policy. While they have not yet been successful in having Congress adopt its agenda, they have established their presence and gathered substantial support. While U.S. English appears to be in decline since Linda Chavez resigned after a racist memo written by founder John Tanton was uncovered, FAIR has been extremely active and is currently promoting a campaign for an immigration moratorium.
An increasingly negative public view of immigration and
increasing salience of the issue of immigration in the
public mind as reflected in public opinion polls.
A plethora of polls have shown that the public thinks that
there are too many immigrants and that they are the source of myriad problems. One poll even showed that 25 percent of Americans would support the deportation of persons who have immigrated legally in the last five years. Polls have also shown that immigration has become a more salient issue. A poll recently published reported that the two issues that public believes represent the greatest threat to U.S. vital interests in the next ten years are the possibility of unfriendly countries becoming nuclear powers (72 percent) and large number of immigrants and refugees coming into the U.S. (72 percent), beating out international terrorism (69 percent) and economic competition from Japan (62 percent).
The emergence of scholarly analyses that estimate a high
cost of immigration or a declining quality of the
immigrants themselves in terms of human capital.
The work of Donald Huddle, who has estimated that immigrants
cost the United States a net $40 billion annually, is often cited in anti-immigration arguments. Also cited is the work of George Borjas, who has argued that current cohorts of immigrants are of lower quality from an economic standpoint than those of the 1950s.
The publication of anti-immigrant treatises and tracts
reviving old nativist themes, including racialist and
culturalist arguments and the specter of a threat to the
American national character, such as is contained in the
anti-immigration polemic Alien Nation. Also, the
inclusion of immigrants within the groups targeted by
more general ideological tracts, for instance their
inclusion among the genetically inferior groups
identified by Herrnstein and Murray in The Bell Curve.
The nativist and apocalyptic flavor of Brimelow's book -- the
author is a recent immigrant from Great Britain -- is reminiscent of the flavor of turn-of-the-century anti-immigrant tracts, especially Madison Grant's influential The Passing of the Great Race, and echoes some of the themes in the rhetoric of the contemporary militias:
"I suggest that the critics of immigration adopt a name that
has a long and honorable tradition in American history:
"Patriots."
And:
"Deep into the 21st Century, throughout the lifetime of my
little son, American patriots will be fighting to salvage as
much as possible from the shipwreck of their great American
Republic."
Herrnstein and Murray, for their part, base their argument on
eugenics:
"Putting the pieces together -- higher fertility and a faster
generational cycle among the less intelligent and an immigrant
population that is probably below the native born average --
the case is strong that something worth worrying about is
happening to the cognitive capital of the country."
The articulation of anti-immigration themes with other
conservative hot-button issues, e.g, law and order, the
war on drugs, national security, the assault on welfare,
and the fiscal crisis of the state.
Both Proposition 187 and the Republican Contract with America
aim to realize savings in the cost of government by denying services to immigrants -- undocumented immigrants in the case of Proposition 187, all immigrants in the case of the Contract. The creation of an office within the State Department to deal simultaneously with immigration, terrorism, and narcotics, is suggestive.
The successful use of the anti-immigrant card in at least
one major electoral contest, the 1994 California
gubernatorial race.
Pete Wilson's political rise from the dead in 1994 is credited
to his playing the Prop 187 card. The move invites emulation.
The progressive radicalization of policy proposals as
contained in the form of bills, referenda items,
speeches, etc.
This includes a bill not passed by the U.S. Congress to deny
citizenship to the U.S.-born offspring of undocumented persons, a bill passed by the House of Representatives to deny welfare and other benefits to legal immigrants, a campaign promise by Republican Presidential hopeful Phil Gramm, to work to deny eligibility for welfare to immigrants for the duration of their lifetime regardless of whether they become citizens.
A variety of ad-hoc policies implemented by the U.S.
government tending in a restrictionist direction and
seemingly reversing previous policies, contradicting
campaign promises, or in apparent conflict with other
policies.
This includes the decision to interdict and return Haitians in
contradiction with a Clinton campaign promise, the trend toward a "Haitianization" of the policy toward Cubans -- interdictment, internment in Guantanamo, involuntary return -- despite a thirtyfive -year tradition of receiving Cubans with open arms, and the various operations on the Mexican border in the wake of NAFTA.
The deployment of advanced technology and massive
paramilitary forces in the fight against undocumented
immigration.
I place in this category the proposal by the Commission on
Immigration Reform for a computerized work authorization verification system that many see as a virtual national I.D., the use of sophisticated military equipment to detect border crossers, and the experiment in creating a human wall consisting of Border Patrol Agents at El Paso.
A more negative, even lurid, view of immigration within
mainstream sectors of the media that may further
legitimate anti-immigrant rhetoric.
To give one example, a recent segment of the CBS network
program 48 Hours dedicated to immigration featured the case of a young child raped by an undocumented construction worker in Lake George, Utah, interviews with American computer programmers who had lost their jobs to Indians brought in as temporary workers, a career criminal who was being deported but vowed to return, and the thesis that the overcrowding of the Dade County public school system as a result of immigration could be robbing American children of a decent education.
In summary, and borrowing, subversively, the language of Herrnstein and Murray: Putting the pieces together, the case is strong that something worth worrying about is happening. The Limits to Nativism
Nonetheless, a number of factors weigh in against a move to draconian restrictionism. First, immigration is driven by powerful structural forces and powerful economic interests in the United States benefit from it. Second, ideological conservatives and the Republican party are deeply divided over the issue. Third, the asymmetrical but real bi-partisanship of the fast-growing Hispanic electorate, the ethnic group most strongly opposed to drastic restrictionism, creates a disincentive for either party to become too closely associated with the anti-immigration cause. Fourth, one of the legacies of the 1960s is a stronger legal, moral, and institutional basis for resisting some elements of the antiimmigrant drive than existed during earlier nativist waves. Fifth, organized labor is much less solidly in the restrictionist camp than during the turn of the century.
However, several of these factors existed in the 1920s and
they did not prevent the adoption of restrictionist legislation.
For instance, before 1924 business vehemently opposed immigration
restrictions fiercely and the Republican party was split on the
issue as urban Republicans fought to obtain the votes of newly
naturalized Americans.
Hemispheric Implications
The adoption of an effectively restrictive immigration policy, if that were to come to pass, would have major implications for the region, for several reasons:
Immigration from Latin American and the Caribbean is, has
been, and will likely the largest component in the
current wave of immigration into the United States.
Official immigration from Latin American and the Caribbean was
seventeen times greater in the 1980s than in the 1950s and continued to increase in the 1990s, with parallel or greater increases in the undocumented flow. Remittances have become a major source of income for a growing percentage of the population in several countries of the region as well as an important element of the balance of payments for states.
While relations between Latin American societies and what
is today the United States go back for centuries, the
massive migration of peoples from Latin American into the
United States is a recent historical development that has
introduced a new, unprecedented element into the
relationship.
Let me mention here a single example. The massive immigration
of Cuban exiles since 1959 has transformed U.S. policy toward Cuba, and to a certain extent toward Latin America, in part into a domestic political issue. Two members of Congress born in Cuba -- Ileana Ros-Lehtenin and Lincoln Diaz-Balart -- are playing a role in U.S. policy toward Cuba.
The reactions in the United States against increased
immigration impact most directly and significantly the
Latin American and Caribbean-origin population in this
country.
Not only are anti-immigration campaigns often explicitly anti-
Latino, their consequences, such as the threatened loss of services and benefits, will affect the Latino population most directly, not only because it is the largest, but also because it is disproportionately in need even compared to other sectors of the immigrant population, particularly Asians.
Many countries in the hemisphere are immigration
countries; the relegation of immigrants in the United
States to second class citizenship status implied in
Proposition 187 and other measures may serve as an
example for other countries. At a minimum, it places the
United States in a weak position when, for instance, it
demands fair treatment of Haitians in the Dominican
Republic.
Conclusion
The debate over immigration in the United States continues to
intensify. A new nativist discourse has been emerging. While there are powerful forces arrayed against a draconian change in immigration policy -- say, a total moratorium on legal immigration or a replay of Operation Wetback -- the outcome today is far from certain. That outcome is important for Latin America and the Caribbean, and for the relations between the region and the United States. A nativist turn in the United States is sure to damage any efforts to promote a process of hemispheric integration based on mutual respect and open, democratic societies.