Via RealClearPolitics this morning comes an interesting article by Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Pollling Institute, who argues, as his title indicates, that “Politically, Immigration Is Like Affirmative Action.”
It gets off to a somewhat shaky start. Although it is true that “[b]oth bring out deeply held, complex emotions” and “[b]oth involve race, which can be political dynamite,” I have a problem with what immediately follows:
And, how to handle the 12 million illegal immigrants is similar politically to the issue of compensation for past transgressions against blacks in that the public agrees on the broad goals, but not specific methods.
Surely the difference here, however, is bigger than any surface similarity: compensatory affirmative action is justified (insofar as it is justified) by a desire to compensate victims of discrimination, much of which was illegal and all of which was wrong; amnesty for illegal immigrants, by contrast, can not be described as compensation for treating them illegally. On the contrary, it’s a reward of sorts for their illegal behavior.
Nor do I think Brown gets it quite right when he describes the ongoing controversy “over programs supporters call affirmative action and opponents label racial preferences.” This is not purely a semantic debate. In fact, critics of racial preferences almost universally support affirmative action policies that do not involve racial or ethnic preferences. All of the leaders of the effort to pass the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, for example, support non-preferential affirmative action programs and insist that MCRI would leave them untouched. Supporters of racial preferences, on the other hand, seem incapable of recognizing that there is or can be any affirmative action that does not involve preferences. Bizarrely, they now define anyone who believes in the classic American principle of treating individuals “without regard” to race as racists (this latter Brown does recognize and condemn).
Once past that hurdle, however, Brown makes some interesting points.
Perhaps most interestingly, it may well be the case with immigration, as it was with affirmative action, that a great many politicians – and those with whom they mix — see the most divisive parts of the issue differently than a majority of their constituents.
….
… Few Americans opposed “affirmative action” defined as efforts to recruit minorities and bring them into the mainstream of U.S. economic life.
But many more Americans than its advocates were willing to acknowledge opposed government programs that gave racial minorities a leg up in college admissions, hiring and state contracting.
It took elections and ballot initiatives in a number of states to convince politicians who had led the drive for affirmative action/racial preferences that it was a political loser.
Immigration is similar because the vast majority of Americans support “immigration reform.” But what that phrase means can vary widely. It would be wise to look at the polling data, not just the protest demonstrations.
There is public agreement on the need to stop the flood of human beings entering this country illegally.
But there is no consensus on how, and what else, if anything, should be done other than border control.
To most, immigration reform is not primarily about making it easier for those here without papers to integrate themselves into American society….
Many Americans think the flood of undocumented workers is harmful to working Americans by driving down wage scales. Others think rewarding those who violated U.S. law by allowing them to become citizens is wrong.
Whether or not one shares these peoples’ concerns, those who don’t would be wise to avoid categorizing those who do as racially motivated. That was the political mistake of many affirmative action advocates and it wore out their welcome in Middle America.
As for the polling data itself, Brown notes:
A Quinnipiac University national poll released last month found Americans oppose making it easier for illegal immigrants to become legal workers by a 54-41 percent margin. But, they are even more against allowing those without documents to become citizens, by a 62-32 percent ratio.
This sentiment was not reflected in much of the U.S. Senate debate, which centered on how to legalize, rather than whether to legalize, illegal immigrants – and how to make them citizens.
Brown’s conclusion rings true:
It was when the debate about affirmative action became focused on preferences — the specific tool that ran into a wall of contrary public opinion — when the issue shifted from focusing on the rights of the minority to the concerns of the majority.
I would add only that the “debate” shifted when the policies shifted. “Affirmative action” as originally conceived and implemented is no longer controversial; “affirmative action” as racial and ethnic preference has never been popular. When the civil rights movement, liberals, and now virtually the entire Democratic Party abandoned the principle of colorblind equal treatment and thus redefined the meaning of civil rights, they jettisoned widespread popular support, an error that was compounded by the extension of preferences to recent immigrants, many of whom arrived illegally.
UPDATE
Although not responsive to the particular points Peter Brown makes, Heather Mac Donald expresses a decidedly different, and also persuasive, view, in NRO today:
Efforts to analogize the illegal-alien protests to the civil-rights movement are ludicrous. Blacks were demanding that state governments end the unlawful deprivation of rights that they already possessed under the Constitution, and for which the nation had fought a traumatic civil war. The illegals are claiming rights to which by law they have no right and for which they can make no legal argument whatsoever.
