Immigrant Nostalgia From Mitt Romney

Given the general antagonism toward immigrants that is expressed by Republicans in the US, especially Republican governors and state legislators, I was genuinely astonished last night that, in giving his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney mentioned immigration within the first few moments:

That very optimism is uniquely American. It's what brought us to America. We're a nation of immigrants, we're the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the ones who wanted a better life. The driven ones. The ones who woke up at night, hearing that voice telling them that life in a place called America could be better.

Of course, he wasn't referring to recent immigrants, who come especially from Latin America and Asia (although he did toss off a passing reference to Cubans). Rather, it was clear that he was thinking back to past immigration from Europe. Indeed, MSNBC's Chuck Todd echoed my sentiments completely with his tweet that:

I feel like the theme of this speech is "optimistic nostalgia"

At the same time, even as I was contemplating this nostalgia on the part of the Republicans, I was drawn back to the fact that the Obama Administration has deported more immigrants than did the Bush Administration. We like to think about being a nation of immigrants, but we seem to be a little unsure about how the concept.

The Republican View of Immigration and the Economy

With the Republican National Convention in progress, attention naturally turns to the things that are presented to the public in terms of what Republicans stand for. My son, Greg Weeks, noted today in his blog that:

Tucked into the Republican platform on immigration is the following:

"We recognize that for most of those seeking entry into this country, the lack of respect for the rule of law in their homelands has meant economic exploitation and political oppression by corrupt elites."

This is pretty remarkable because immigrants come overwhelmingly from countries the United States considers allies, e.g. Mexico. And Republicans were at the forefront of protecting corrupt elites in Honduras who overthrew the president in 2009, which in turn prompted more turmoil and emigration. If indeed corrupt elites are the problem, then perhaps we need to see less ironclad support for corrupt elites.

And a few days ago, Jack Goldstone was prompted in his blog to counter the Republican claims about what's gone wrong with the American economy.

If I had to sum things up, I would try to answer this question: How in the
world did Americans become convinced that the Federal government — which prior to 1980 cleaned up the environment, protected unions, prevented unscrupulous lending, promoted social mobility and expanded the middle class through support for college education while fighting discrimination, is the problem, while private sector CEOs — who drove down wages, offshored jobs, undermined pensions, watered down health care, shifted all benefits from productivity gains away from workers and into their own pockets, destroyed the solvency of our national banking system and then sought and gained huge government bailouts when their bets went bad — embody the solution.

And don't forget that the Democratic National Convention is coming right up, and it will have its own demographic food for thought, as well.

Texas Redistricting Still Up in the Air

Even as the Republican National Convention is being held tonight in Tampa, Florida, the issue of redistricting that may have been aimed at helping the Republicans win in Texas has been thrown a curve ball. BloombergBusinessweek reports that:

Texas’s remade congressional and state assembly districts were rejected by a federal court in Washington, dealing a blow to Governor Rick Perry and the Republican-controlled legislature’s efforts to redraw the state’s political landscape.
The three-judge panel, in a decision today, said Texas failed to show that the maps for state assembly and congressional districts created by the legislature last year “do not have the purpose or effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group” under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It turned out that the maps were drawn in such a way that two African American members of Congress (both Democrats) were essentially redrawn out of their former districts. But this did not happen to any white Republicans.

The election will proceed as planned under the interim maps, which were drawn up by a federal court in San Antonio and used for the primary election on May 29, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said in a statement.

Abbott also said his office “will immediately take steps to appeal this flawed decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.” Perry supports the appeal, Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for the governor, said in an e-mail.

Despite the Texas Attorney General's statement about using the interim maps in the general election, it isn't actually clear that those maps will be implemented without some further adjustment. It is clear, however, that this redistricting fight is far from over.

Demographics of Race in the Presidential Election

For the second time in US history, the presidential race includes a black and a white. The first time, in 2008, Barack Obama defeated John McCain. Now, the question is whether President Obama can keep the presidency when confronted by another white, Mitt Romney. The 2008 race seemed generally not to be about race, although that was obviously a factor in the minds of many voters. But Thomas Edsall of Columbia University opines in today's New York Times that the Republican Party is putting the issue of race directly into the race, so to speak.

The Republican ticket is flooding the airwaves with commercials that develop two themes designed to turn the presidential contest into a racially freighted resource competition pitting middle class white voters against the minority poor.

Edsall argues that this strategy seems consistent with the data on party identification posted online by the Pew Research Center.

There is extensive poll data showing the depth of Republican dependence on white voters.
On August 23, Pew Research released its latest findings on partisan identification, and the gains that the Republican Party has made among older and non-college whites since 2004 are remarkable.

Most importantly, the Pew surveys show that 89% of voters who identify themselves as Republican are white. Faced with few if any possibilities of making gains among blacks and Hispanics — whose support for Obama has remained strong — the Romney campaign has no other choice if the goal is to win but to adopt a strategy to drive up white turnout.

However, if you look at those data posted by Pew, you see that white, non-Hispanic Republicans account for only 27 percent of registered voters. Assuming that equal proportions of people in all parties and racial groups vote (and, of course, that's a big assumption), that is clearly not enough to win the election. Other factors besides race are going to have to play a role.

The Tragedy of Unaccompanied Children in the Migrant Stream

In the past few years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of unaccompanied minors entering the US and being detained. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, although I suspect that it has to do especially with the tightening of border controls since 9/11, combined with the bad economy since 2008. The tightening of the border has made it much more difficult for undocumented immigrants to go back and forth between their home in Mexico or Central America and their job in the US, often forcing parents to be separated from their children for protracted lengths of time. The bad economy has had a dampening effect on remittances, at least according to data from the World Bank for Mexico, as reported by the Migration Policy Institute. At the level of the individual family, it may well be that money sent home to care for children left behind has diminished. Furthermore, as the tightening of the border and the poor economy has slowed migration north, those who do try to cross, such as the unaccompanied minors, have a higher chance of being apprehended than in the past.

No matter what the reasons, the problem is growing, and the New York Times has a lengthy story on the issue in today's edition.

The young people, mostly from Mexico and Central America, ride to the border on the roofs of freight trains or the backs of buses. They cross the Rio Grande on inner tubes, or hike for days through extremes of heat and chill in Arizona deserts. The smallest children...are most often brought by smugglers.
The youths pose troubling difficulties for American immigration courts. Unlike in criminal or family courts, in immigration court there is no right to a lawyer paid by the government for people who cannot afford one. And immigration law contains few protections specifically for minors.

I would personally know much less about this problem than I do were it not for one of our PhD students here in Geography at SDSU who is quoted in the article: 

“The children at home feel unloved, they feel empty,” said Elizabeth G. Kennedy, a researcher at San Diego State University who studies child migrants. “If parents know their child is feeling empty and is in danger, they will make a decision.”

The decision, of course, is to encourage their children to come to the US, but too often things go awry. This seems to be a bad situation with no immediate solution in sight.