ACCEPTANCE OF IMMIGRATION ON THE RISE
By Mike Dorning
Tribune Staff Writer
April 3, 2000
AUSTIN, Texas -- When
Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush went to a local
church agency last fall to praise it for promoting
"self-sufficiency," he didn't ask about an issue readily
acknowledged by workers at El Buen Samaritano, an Episcopal mission.
The mission's clients largely are undocumented immigrants working
illegally in Austin.
A spokesman for the Bush
campaign says the Texas governor knew the agency "helped people in
need and that many are Spanish-speaking immigrants." But the
campaign did not raise the issue of the immigrants' status,
treatment that suggests a profound shift in the role immigration
plays in the nation's political debate.
Gone are the fiery, anti-immigrant rhetoric of Pat Buchanan and
the controversial legislative proposals of California's
then-governor, Pete Wilson. No longer are Republican leaders railing
about porous borders or extolling the virtues of security fencing
along the U.S.-Mexican border.
Less than four years ago, undocumented immigrants were the most
potent emblem of anti-immigrant sentiment that smoldered through
much of the country. That resentment extended well beyond the narrow
issue of illegal immigrants, providing political power behind
congressionally mandated cuts in government benefits for all
non-citizens and calls for reductions in legal immigration.
Yet in the space of a single national election cycle, the mood of
the American public appears to have shifted dramatically, with
anti-immigrant sentiment at its lowest in a generation. The Bush
candidacy's casual treatment of the subject, as well as Austin's
easy acceptance of a wave of new immigrants, underscores some key
forces at work in a reshaped immigration debate.
During the current economic boom, fears of job competition from
immigrants have eased. As persistent government budget deficits have
given way to rosy scenarios of long-running surpluses, the vitriol
has gone out of complaints that new immigrants, legal and illegal,
can burden public services.
And as the rapidly growing Hispanic electorate joins the iconic
"soccer moms" as a fashionable political constituency, candidates
ardently court voters sensitive to immigrants' unflattering
portrayal in campaign commercials a few years ago. Their votes are
particularly important in key states such as California, Florida,
Illinois, New Jersey and New York.
The new attitudes toward immigration have permeated the rhetoric
of the presidential campaign. They are an important part of the
logic behind the Republican Establishment's embrace of the Bush
candidacy, which has been buoyed, among other things, by his
demonstrated appeal to Hispanic voters. And they are producing a new
atmosphere toward immigration policy in Congress.
"It's a remarkable sea change," said Frank Sharry, executive
director of the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigration group.
Among the legislative changes on the table this year are an
increase in visas available to skilled foreign workers, an expansion
of the program permitting employment of foreign farmworkers and an
amnesty for the estimated 6 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.
Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration
Studies, which favors a more restrictive immigration policy,
acknowledges his camp is "completely on the defensive at this
point."
What a change a few years, and a few thousand points in the Dow
Jones Industrial Average, can bring.
In 1996, when Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole
desperately needed to revive his California campaign in the weeks
before the election, he unleashed television commercials blaming
illegal immigrants for high taxes, crime and deteriorating public
schools. Two years earlier, Pete Wilson had come from behind to win
the California governor's office and gain national prominence by
championing Proposition 187, which denied illegal immigrants
virtually all government services, even an education for their
children.
Pat Buchanan's pitchfork populism of 1996 included a call for a
fence and ditches along the border with Mexico.
In the months before the '96 election, Congress passed a tough
deportation bill and a welfare reform bill that denied food stamps
and Social Security disability benefits to non-citizens, even
longtime legal residents. Although the Senate did not concur, the
House passed legislation declaring English the official national
language and, in most cases, banning the government from providing
services or documents in a foreign language.
This year, Bush, the presumptive Republican nominee, regularly
offers audiences the reminder that "family values don't stop at the
Rio Grande River." He has said he very well might have crossed the
border to support his own family if he had been born poor in Mexico.
Vice President Al Gore also is using supportive rhetoric. The
Democratic candidate speaks of how immigration has made the nation
"not only culturally richer, but also spiritually stronger."
In a complete turnabout, the AFL-CIO last month endorsed amnesty
for illegal immigrants now in the country and backed an end to
federal sanctions against employers who hire undocumented workers.
Organized labor had vigorously lobbied for that provision when it
was enacted in the mid-1980s. In recent speeches, Federal Reserve
Chairman Alan Greenspan has said high immigration levels are one
reason record-breaking economic expansion remains strong.
Among the public, sentiment in favor of restricting immigration
is at its lowest since 1977, as measured by a periodic Gallup poll
taken last year. The number of Americans who said they favor lower
levels of immigration was still considerable, at 44 percent. But in
1995, fully 65 percent of the public wanted lower levels of
immigration.
Likewise, polls by the Pew Research Center indicate a shift in
attitudes toward immigrants already in the country. In 1994, only 31
percent of Americans said new immigrants strengthen the country
versus 63 percent who said they were a burden. In 1999, the public
was more evenly split, with 46 percent considering immigrants a
source of strength and 44 percent considering them a burden.
The swing has been even more significant in California, home of
Proposition 187. There, in a poll taken last month, 54 percent of
respondents said they consider immigrants a benefit, versus 34
percent who consider them a burden. Only 2 percent of the public
consider immigration an important issue; 20 percent said so two
years earlier.
All this comes at the end of a decade that has brought more
immigrants to the U.S. than any other. Demographers expect that this
year's census will show more than 1 in 10 Americans to be
foreign-born for the first time since 1930.
Austin, Bush's current hometown, provides a tidy example of those
forces behind the transformation in public opinion.
An exemplar of the new economy, the Austin area has an
unemployment rate just above 2 percent. The region's fast-growing
high-tech sector includes stock option-enriched "Dellionaires" from
the locally based Dell Computer Corp.
Dell chief executive Michael Dell flew to Washington last month
to push for an increase in visas for skilled immigrants, which he
said is desperately needed to alleviate "a huge shortage of workers"
that threatens the technology industry's growth. The high-tech
industry draws heavily on skilled immigrants from throughout the
world, especially India and Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Hispanic voters suddenly are all the rage with
political consultants and party strategists.
Hispanics are expected to surpass African-Americans as the
nation's largest minority group by 2005. Their political power is
enhanced because their numbers are especially large in California,
Texas, Florida and New York, which together provide more than half
the electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
According to the Southwest Voter Registration and Education
Project, the number of Hispanics registered to vote has jumped from
5.1 million in 1994 to a projected 8.25 million in 2000. Voter
participation levels among Hispanics also have gone up slightly,
though they are still less likely to show up at the polls than the
population at large.
Tony Garza, a Hispanic Republican elected to the Texas Railroad
Commission, predicts the political rise of Hispanics will counter
anti-immigrant sentiments well beyond the current economic boom.
"The potential is as cyclical as the economy itself. But what's
going to smooth it out over time is that the more significant a
political and economic force we become, the more we will deter it,"
Garza said.
Alan Kraut, a history professor at American University, said
anti-immigrant sentiment regularly has re-emerged in the country's
past, even after new immigrant groups have gained political power.
"There is still an undercurrent of anti-immigrant sentiment there,"
Kraut said.
"If the market goes bust and the economy turns sour, it'll come
out again. It always has in the past."
A healthy economy helps Americans accept newcomers.