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“Self Deportation”: Attrition Through Enforcement Is A Real Thing, And It Isn’t Pretty

Mitt Romney unveiled a novel solution for illegal immigration during Tuesday night’s GOP debate, saying that he’d rely on “self-deportation” to reduce the number of unauthorized immigrants in the US.

Or at least it sounded novel. As my colleague Clara Jeffery notes, while “self-deportation” might sound like something you don’t want your parents to catch you doing, it’s actually an old euphemism for an immigration strategy of “attrition through enforcement.” What “self-deportation”—the favored approach to immigration of the GOP’s right-wing—actually means is making life so miserable for unauthorized immigrants that they “voluntarily” leave. Here’s Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies (the anti-immigrant think tank that tried to mainstream the “terror baby” conspiracy theory) explaining the concept in 2005:

Among the other measures that would facilitate enforcement: hiring more U.S. Attorneys and judges in border areas, to allow for more prosecutions; passage of the CLEAR Act, which would enhance cooperation between federal immigration authorities and state and local police; and seizing the assets, however modest, of apprehended illegal aliens.

These and other enforcement measures would enable the government to detain more illegal aliens; additional measures would be needed to promote self-deportation. Unlike at the visa office or the border crossing, once aliens are inside the United States, there’s no physical site to exercise control, no choke point at which to examine whether someone should be admitted. The solution is to create “virtual choke points”—events that are necessary for life in a modern society but are infrequent enough not to bog down everyone’s daily business. Another analogy for this concept to firewalls in computer systems, that people could pass through only if their legal status is verified. The objective is not mainly to identify illegal aliens for arrest (though that will always be a possibility) but rather to make it as difficult as possible for illegal aliens to live a normal life here.

This is the right-wing’s answer to the question of how you deport 11 million unauthorized immigrants: You don’t. You force them to “deport themselves.” Although immigration reform advocates would prefer a solution that involves a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants already here, Romney and his top immigration advisers believe they can remove millions of people through heavy-handed enforcement that makes life for unauthorized immigrants intolerable. This approach is notable for its complete lack of discretion and flexibility. Unauthorized immigrant parents with citizen children who need to go to school? Americans who are married to an undocumented immigrant who needs medical treatment? “Self-deportation” hits them all with the same mailed fist.

We can see how this concept has been applied in states like Arizona and Alabama, where local authorities have been empowered to act as enforcers of immigration law. Alabama takes the choke point theory even more seriously than Arizona—everything from enrolling in school to seeking health treatment has been turned into a so-called choke point. The moral, social, and economic consequences of the strategy are secondary to inflicting enough suffering on unauthorized immigrants in order to force them out of the country.

Kris Kobach, the Kansas Attorney General secretary of state who helped write both restrictive immigration laws and recently endorsed Romney, bragged about the impact of the Alabama law after it passed last year:

“There haven’t been mass arrests. There aren’t a bunch of court proceedings. People are simply removing themselves. It’s self-deportation at no cost to the taxpayer. I’d say that’s a win.”

Alabama’s immigration law has actually been such a disaster that the state is trying to figure out a way to repeal parts of the law. But make no mistake, when Romney is discussing “self-deportation,” he’s talking about creating a United States where parents are afraid to register their kids for school or get them immunized because they might be asked for proof of citizenship. He’s talking about the type of country where local police can demand your immigration status based on mere suspicion that you don’t belong around here. “Self-deportation” is just a cleaner, less cruel-sounding way of endorsing harsh, coercive government polices in order to make life for unauthorized immigrants so unbearable that they have no choice but to find some way to leave. The human cost of such an approach, let alone what it might do to American society, is viewed as a price worth paying.

 

By: Adam Serwer, Mother Jones, January 23, 2012

January 25, 2012 Posted by | GOP Presidential Candidates, Immigration | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Anti-Obama GOP: The Republican Hatred Of Obama Has Become A Cult

On Wednesday morning, I opened the New York Times to read that president Hu Jin-Tao had denounced the West for launching a culture war against China. “We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration,” Hu pronounced in “Seeking Truth,” a Communist Party magazine. “We should deeply understand the seriousness and complexity of the ideological struggle, always sound the alarms and remain vigilant, and take forceful measures to be on guard and respond.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Was it really possible that such wooden slogans were still being used by the leaders of the country with the most dynamic economy on earth? “We should deeply understand”? “Always sound the alarms”? Those antique phrases sounded like they’d been torn from a poster that had been pasted up during the Cultural Revolution and somehow never taken down. It seemed that not that much had changed since soon-to-be-Chairman Mao was writing tomes rejoicing in titles like “To Be Attacked by the Enemy Is Not a Bad Thing but a Good Thing” and urging the members of the party to cut off the head of imperialist snakes. A belief system as nutty as Maoism took a long time to get out of a nation’s system. I pitied the poor 1.3 billion Chinese, living in a country so insecure, so adolescent, so in thrall to authoritarian nationalism, that its politicians felt impelled to keep the cult alive. Thank God I’m an American, I told myself. We have plenty of cults, but at least they don’t get involved with our national politics.

Then I watched Michele Bachmann’s withdrawal speech.

Bachmann’s speech was a religious testimony, informing us that on the evening of March 21, 2010, she had a divine revelation. OK, she didn’t use the word “divine,” but that was basically the idea. You see, her holy revelation started with the Founding Fathers. And for Bachmann, Washington and Jefferson, if not literally angels, are flying around in their neighborhood.

“Entrusted to every American is their responsibility to watch over our Republic,” she began her speech. “You can look back from the time of the Pilgrims to the time of William Penn, to the time of our Founding Fathers. All we have to do is look around because very clearly we are encompassed with a great cloud of witnesses that bear witness to the sacrifices that were made to establish the U.S. and the precious principle of freedom that has made it the greatest force for good that has ever been seen on the planet.”

The “great cloud of witnesses” is a biblical term. By invoking it, Bachmann moved the Founding Fathers into the company of the prophets. And then she related her own humble journey to join the saved souls atop that great cloud – an epic quest that was spurred by the near-miraculous intercession of a painting of the Founding Fathers signing the Constitution.

“Every schoolchild is familiar with this painting,” Bachmann said. “But I’ve been privileged to see it on a regular basis, doing my duties in Congress. But never were the painting’s poignant reminder more evident than on the evening of March 21, 2010. That was the evening that Obamacare was passed and staring out from the painting are the faces of the founders, and in particular the face of Ben Franklin, who served as a constant reminder of the fragile Republic that he and the founders gave to us. That day served as the inspiration for my run for the President of the United States, because I believed firmly that what Congress had done and what President Obama had done in passing Obamacare endangered the very survival of the United States of America, our Republic.”

Bachmann closed her sermon by saying, “I look forward to the next chapter in God’s plan.”

Of such blinding revelations, religions are made. And cults.

The Republican hatred of Obama has become a cult. It is typically dressed up with the trappings of Christianity, but the cult does not reflect the teachings of that Jewish heretic known as Jesus of Nazareth — unless you believe, as Bachmann appears to, that defeating “Obamacare” is an essential part of the Lord’s master plan for the universe. (Personally, I would have thought that the great soul who reached out to the poor, the sick and the despised would have preferred universal healthcare over a system devoted to swelling the profits of those modern-day money-changers known as insurance companies, but what do I know?) But that is not to say that the version of Christianity embraced by many members of the anti-Obama cult does not play a key role in the movement, in ways we shall presently explore.

The anti-Obama cult is based on an irrational, grossly excessive fear and hatred of something the cult members call “big government” or “socialism,” and an equally irrational worship of something they call “freedom” or “liberty.” The fear and hatred of big government is irrational and excessive because Obama’s innocuous heathcare bill, the passage of which cult members like Bachmann see as the beginning of the end for America, is far less momentous as a piece of “social engineering” than Social Security, Medicare, welfare or progressive taxation.

We already live in a world where government intrudes on our freedom in a multitude of ways. Moreover, other enormous, impersonal forces, mainly corporate ones, constrain our liberty even more directly. Many of the “average Americans” the cult members claim to be speaking for lost their life savings when the bubble caused by an orgy of unregulated financial speculation burst – a far greater infringement on their “freedom” than being required to carry health insurance.

As for Obama himself, he is a bland left-leaning centrist, a slightly more liberal clone of moderate Republicans like Dwight D. Eisenhower, and his “socialist” policies are part of a long American tradition that goes back to FDR.

Why, then, did the anti-Obama cult suddenly take over the entire Republican Party?

The main reason, I believe, is that the American right was backed into a corner and had no other card to play. The disastrous presidency of George W. Bush revealed the complete bankruptcy (literally) of the two core right-wing nostrums, “freedom” (good) and “big government” (bad). “Freedom” had led to the biggest meltdown since the Great Depression. And big government – which was greatly expanded by Bush, to the deafening silence of the soon-to-be-anti-Obama fanatics – had done nothing to prevent it. In the wreckage left by Bush, there was nothing for the right to do, if it wanted to live to fight another day, except deny causality (and reality) and demonize Obama. By naively reaching out to Republicans, Obama let them get away with this, and squandered a teachable moment that could have changed the face of American politics.

The right survived. But defending this indefensible position squeezed its core beliefs into a kind of black hole, a blank spot of pure resentment, devoid of content, where the laws of logic did not apply. (According to Wikipedia, “Black holes of stellar mass are expected to form when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle.”) As a result, “freedom” and its evil twin, “big government,” became metaphysical concepts, so elastic and amorphous that they could mean anything or nothing. They have come to play the same role in right-wing discourse as “the bourgeoisie” and “the workers” do in Marxism – they’re catchalls that can be plugged into any situation.

Thus, “big government” mostly means “giving money to undeserving people with dark skin” – a core GOP belief, central to the party since Nixon’s Southern Strategy, that Rick Santorum was rash enough to articulate. But it also has a cultural dimension in which it means pointy-headed elites who look down on “real Americans.” And trickiest of all, it also has a personal dimension in which it means anything that limits individual freedom — which explains the appeal, to those Republicans and independents who are genuine and consistent libertarians, of Ron Paul. (It is because “freedom” does not actually mean anything in the orthodox right-wing universe that non-libertarian conservatives like Romney, Bachmann, Santorum and the rest can advocate for intrusive drug laws, anti-gay laws and massive military budgets, while wrapping themselves in the mantle of “liberty.”)

Because “big government” does not have a fixed meaning, attacking it can simultaneously serve as a rallying cry for racial resentment, an impassioned demand for personal liberation and a marker of class- and region-based solidarity. This is why when the Republican candidates inveigh against big government, which they do approximately every time they open their mouths, their rants have all the weird, malevolent imprecision of a Stalinist attack on “running dog lackeys of the bourgeoisie.” They are the ravings of True Believers, of cult members.

Also lurking in that black hole was the one right-wing card that Bush did not destroy, because it is indestructible — the “culture war.” The far right’s free-floating hatred of America’s liberal, secular culture waxes and wanes, but it never goes away, and it is responsible for the rise of Rick Santorum, the GOP’s latest Dispose-a-Candidate. For Santorum, sinful modern life is to blame for everything, and it is our duty to always sound the alarms and remain vigilant against it. Thus, when the Catholic Church’s pedophilia scandal broke, Santorum blamed, not the church that covered it up or the individual priests who disgraced themselves and abused their position, but – Boston.

He wrote:

“When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm. We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of liberalizing and dividing America, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration.”

OK, I borrowed that last sentence from the quote by Comrade Hu, but you have to admit it tracks pretty well with the thoughts of Chairman Santorum.

The implosion of right-wing ideology and the persistence of the culture war toxin might have been enough by itself to create the anti-Obama cult, but two other factors also played a role. The first was his race. For many right-wingers, Obama was a foreign object, whose unexpected entrance into the body politic activated their immune systems – hence the “birther” movement and other bizarre right-wing obsessions. Whether the right’s aversion to Obama constitutes classic racism is a Talmudic question; what is undeniable is that his race activated a horde of (literally) white cells, rushing to expel the invader. Like organisms, cults always delineate themselves by drawing sharp lines between Us and Them.

The second reason involves Christianity. As Michele Bachmann’s speech demonstrated, for many devout right-wing Christians, there is no real difference between politics and religion. If religion is the uppermost thing in one’s life, if Jesus is with one every minute of every day, then it is easy to see how a true believer like Bachmann could come to see preserving her vision of the Republic as a semi-sacred trust, and defeating “Obamacare” as an essential part of that godly mission. Moreover, devoutly literalistic Christians tend to divide the world up into Good and Evil, with the founding dyad of God and the devil lurking in the background; it is not too much of a stretch to say that for many right-wing Christians, Barack Obama is at least of the devil’s party, if not Beelzebub himself.

Let me make it clear that I am not arguing that Christianity itself is a cult, or that Christians (or adherents of any religion) are inherently drawn to cultlike thinking. I am simply making the case that the right wing’s irrational hatred of Obama is cultlike, and that the literalist Christian faith of many right-wing opponents of Obama, including many of the GOP presidential candidates, clearly plays a role in their extreme beliefs.

To be sure, much of the anti-Obama cult is just Machiavellian politics. You hunt where the ducks are, and the ducks in this case are loons. It is extremely unlikely that Mitt Romney stares at a painting of Ben Franklin every day and has celestial visions of turning back Obama’s satanic plan to destroy America — which is precisely why the True Believers can’t stand him. But things have gotten Chairman Mao-y enough in the Republican Party that Romney has been forced to do his best to pretend he is a card-carrying member of the People’s Glorious Tea Party, Determined to Kill All Wriggling Socialist Snakes. Whether a fake cult member will prove more attractive to Republican voters than the genuine article will determine who will face Obama this fall.

 

By: Gary Kamiya, Contributing Writer, Salon, January 9, 2012

January 10, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012, GOP, GOP Presidential Candidates | , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Misguided Appeal For A “Closeted Moderate” Mitt

Nicholas Kristof presents an argument today that I’ve heard before, but which I struggle to understand. As the NYT columnist sees it, Mitt Romney was a “moderate and pragmatic governor,” who, his metamorphoses notwithstanding, may flip “back to his old self” in 2013.

The reassuring thing about Mitt Romney is that for most of his life he probably wouldn’t have voted for today’s Mitt Romney. […]

If we do see, as I expect we will, a reversion in the direction of the Massachusetts Romney, that’s a flip we should celebrate. Until the Republican primaries sucked him into its vortex, he was a pragmatist and policy wonk rather similar to Bill Clinton and President Obama but more conservative. (Clinton described Romney to me as having done “a very good job” in Massachusetts.) Romney was much closer to George H.W. Bush than to George W. Bush.

Kristof says we should “expect” this current version of Romney to revert back to a previous version. I think this is wildly misguided.

The premise here is that the Romney we see running for president is a ridiculous phony. Sure, he’s saying reckless right-wing things, he’s making irresponsible right-wing promises, and he’s completely rejected any sensible positions he once held, but it’s just an act to get elected. Voters should simply pay no attention to what Romney is saying, doing, proposing, and promising, since none this is sincere anyway.

This isn’t a criticism levied by Romney’s detractors; this is a defense offered by Romney’s tacit supporters.

It’s also incoherent.

To accept the premise of the argument, a voter would have to believe that every word out of Romney’s mouth for the last five years — about his policy agenda, worldview, and priorities — has been a deliberate scam. As part of an elaborate scheme to mislead the American public, Romney has chosen to become a closeted moderate. The lie will end and the centrist will reemerge just as soon as the electorate has put the presidency in his hands.

What those making this argument are actually proposing is an incredible gamble with the nation’s future. Sure, Romney says he’ll take a far-right approach to everything from the economy to entitlements, foreign policy to the judiciary, but perhaps we’re witnessing a half-decade-long ruse and everything will turn out fine.

That’s quite a risk with so much on the line.

Let me give Jonathan Bernstein’s piece in the new print issue another plug. The point of the article is important: what candidates say they’ll do is generally what they will do if elected.

Someone might want to send a copy to Nicholas Kristof.

 

By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 5, 2012

January 6, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

With “Radicalized Right-Wing Obstructionism”, Divided Moderates Will Be Conquered

The deficit that should most worry us is a deficit of reasonableness. The problems the United States confronts are large but not insoluble. Yet sensible solutions that are broadly popular can’t be enacted.

Why? Because an ideological bloc that sees every crisis as an opportunity to reduce the size of government holds enough power in Congress to stop us from doing what needs to be done.

Some of my middle-of-the-road columnist friends keep ascribing our difficulties to structuralproblems in our politics. A few call for a centrist third party. But the problem we face isn’t about structures or the party system. It’s about ideology — specifically a right-wing ideology that has temporarily taken over the Republican Party and needs to be defeated before we can have a reasonable debate between moderate conservatives and moderate progressives about our country’s future.

A centrist third party would divide the opposition to the right wing and ease its triumph. That’s the last thing authentic moderates should want.

Let’s look at the record, starting with the congressional supercommittee’s failure to reach agreement on a plan to reduce the fiscal deficit. It’s absurd to pretend that we can shrink the deficit over the long term without substantial tax increases.

No matter how hard policymakers try to trim spending on Medicare, its costs will go up for many years simply because so many baby boomers will be retiring between now and 2029. Moreover, employers will keep cutting back on coverage for their workers as long as the price of insurance continues to go up.

However we manage it, in other words, government will be required to pay an ever larger share of our nation’s health-care bills. That means the government’s share of the economy is destined to rise — unless we decide to leave a large part of our population with little or no protection against illness.

The least we can do under those circumstances is to repeal the tax cuts for the wealthy enacted under President George W. Bush. Yet the only revenue conservatives on the supercommittee put on the table involved $300 billion, most of it from ill-defined tax reforms, in exchange for lower tax rates on the rich and making something like $3.7 trillion worth of tax cuts permanent.

Progressives have already made clear that they are willing not only to increase revenue but also to cut Medicare costs. The Obama health-care law did both, and it was attacked by Republicans for doing so. Democrats on the supercommittee offered substantial entitlement cuts. But they rightly refused a deal that would squander years of future revenue in the name of keeping taxes low on the wealthiest Americans.

What might a reasonable budget argument look like? Progressives would propose fewer spending cuts in exchange for tax increases that would fall mainly on the wealthy: higher rates on top incomes, capital gains and estates, along with a financial transactions tax. Conservatives would counter with larger spending cuts coupled with taxes on consumption rather than on investment. Out of such a debate might come a sensible deal, based on a shared acknowledgment that long-term balance requires both thrift and new revenue.

In the meantime, a broad range of economists agree that America’s sputtering jobs machine needs a sharp and quick jolt. It is unconscionable that in the face of mass unemployment, Republicans continue to foil measures to spur employment, including an extension of the payroll tax holiday. How can conservatives declare simultaneously that (1) it would be a terrible crime to raise taxes on the rich in the long term, and (2) it is an act of virtue to raise taxes on the middle class immediately? Has class warfare ever been so naked?

Then there is immigration. Common sense says there is no way the United States can or should deport some 11 million illegal immigrants. But when Newt Gingrich spoke of this reality — and suggested that conservatives ought to worry about how deportations would break up families — he was said to have committed a gaffe that will end his ride as the Republican front-runner. In today’s GOP, it’s becoming dangerous to be sensible.

We need moderation all right, but a moderate third party is the one way to guarantee we won’t get it. If moderates really want to move the conversation to the center, they should devote their energies to confronting those who are blocking the way. And at this moment, the obstruction is coming from a radicalized right.

By: E. J. Dionne, Jr, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 27, 2011

November 29, 2011 Posted by | Deficits, Immigration | , , , , , | 1 Comment

If Only Sen Snowe’s Actions Met Her Misplaced Rhetoric

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner talked to the Senate Small Business Committee, urging its members to approve jobs measures proposed by the White House. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), ostensibly Congress’ most moderate Republican and the member most likely to listen to reason, went on quite a tirade.

“Your primary mission is to craft the economic policy of this country, and at this point, it simply isn’t working,” she told Geithner. “Something’s gone terribly wrong, and what I hear over and over again is that there is no tempo, a tempo of urgency.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking to…but you need to talk to the average person,” she said later in a testy back and forth with Geithner. “Rome is burning.”

I’m delighted Snowe is pretending to care about the economy. I’m also delighted she thinks she’s in touch with what “average” people want, and would like to see policymakers to act with “urgency.”

But if Olympia Snowe thinks her actions are consistent with her rhetoric, she’s sadly mistaken.

We are, after all, talking about the alleged moderate from Maine who, just last week, voted with right-wing senators to refuse a debate on the popular and effective American Jobs Act. She’s the same senator who’s refused to endorse any of the provisions in the bill, no matter how much they’d help. What was that she was saying about “urgency”?

Snowe thinks Geithner is responsible for crafting the nation’s economic policy? Here’s a radical idea: maybe if Snowe could bring herself to stop filibustering worthwhile economic legislation, Geithner might have more success.

“Rome is burning”? And who, exactly, does Snowe believe is responsible? The party with good economic ideas that can’t overcome Republican obstructionism, or the party engaged in the obstructionist tactics, offering ideas that would make the economy worse, and by some accounts, holding back the nation deliberately?

Snowe seems to believe the status quo isn’t working. On this, she’s correct. But it’s not working because Republicans are getting their way.

In what universe does it make sense for Snowe to blame Geithner? Snowe and Republicans got the tax cuts they demanded; Snowe and Republicans saw the stimulus spending evaporate, just as they wanted; Snowe and Republicans are watching the public sector lay off hundreds of thousands of workers, just as GOP policy dictates; and Snowe and Republicans have forced the White House to accept massive spending cuts, which takes money out of the economy on purpose.

And now she’s complaining? Why, because her party is getting what it wants and she doesn’t like the results?

Arguably one of the most dramatic Democratic dilemmas of 2011 and 2012 is overcoming the realization that Republicans are getting their way on economic policy and then denying any responsibility for the results. Indeed, it’s a rather extraordinary con: GOP officials see much of their agenda implemented, then see it fail, and then blame Obama when their policies don’t work.

The nation is reading from the Republicans’ economic playbook, and thanks in part to Snowe’s filibusters, that’s not likely to change anytime soon. When the GOP agenda fails, Republicans should be prepared to accept responsibility for the consequences, instead of pretending they’re not getting their way.

By: Steve Benen, Washington Monthly Political Animal, October 18, 2011

October 19, 2011 Posted by | Class Warfare, Congress, Conservatives, Economic Recovery, GOP, Income Gap, Middle Class, Senate, Taxes | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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