Quote of the Day (Peter Schuck, Prematurely Taking Issue With the Notion of a ‘New Nativism’)

“Americans will tolerate relatively high levels of immigration, and even increases in certain categories, as long as they are satisfied that newcomers pay their own way, don't get special breaks, and obey the law. And the policies enacted by the Congress in 1996 and 1997 are largely consistent with this. Congress has tempered the high annual quota of legal immigrants set in the liberal 1990 immigration law with strong measures to exclude illegal aliens, deport criminals, reduce aliens’ access to welfare, and limit their procedural rights. This is a hard balance to strike, and there have been some harsh, unjust, and downright foolish excesses. But it's absurd to speak of ‘a new nativism.’”—American legal scholar Peter H. Schuck, “The Open Society,” The New Republic, Apr. 13, 1998

When I finished reading this article I came across recently, it was hard not to shake my head. Twenty-seven years after retired Yale law professor Peter Schuck wrote the words above, it certainly is the case that a “new nativism” is afoot in America.

Immigration is one of the key issues that sundered the former Republican Establishment from the party base. It even provoked consternation among the MAGA faithful when Donald Trump briefly suggested in his first term that he could back “Dreamers” (i.e., undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and desire a path to legal status) in exchange for stricter immigration policies.

It's possible to argue that events and personalities of the last quarter-century have fundamentally altered the atmosphere that Schuck so confidently surveyed: 

*The 9/11 attacks brought to a boil many Americans’ suspicions about a new “other”—Moslem immigrants. Just before the turn of the millennium;

*Lou Dobbs was still primarily concerned with economic prognostications rather than with an increasingly hysterical anti-immigrant agenda. 

*Fox News, still just a few years old, was only beginning to flex strength with its right-wing audience.

But I can’t help feeling that a contrarian mindset, not to mention wishful thinking, blinded Professor Schuck—and not a few liberals in Bill Clinton’s second term—to rising anti-immigrant sentiment expressed in California’s Proposition 187 restricting illegal immigrants from using non-emergency health care, public education, and other services, not to mention Pat Buchanan’s 1992 Presidential campaign.

The only requirements for sparking the fire were fears—of attacks on our soil be fire and of jobs lost to other foreigners. Both arrived in the new century.

And now, we have plenty more "harsh, unjust, and downright foolish excesses" in immigration law.