Key Immigration Politics Stories
- Pew poll on immigration: “voters have shifted in a more liberal direction.”
- Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli need to resign from DHS – they’ve betrayed America
- Border Patrol produces racist video just in time for Trump’s reelection
- Biden, Latinos and Florida – check the data, and the hand-wringing
- Trump still relies on xenophobia, especially at his rallies
Pew Poll on immigration: “voters have shifted in a more liberal direction.”
- Trump has forced Americans to make a choice on immigrants and refugees. And we have. Unlike four years ago, 60% of Americans say that ‘newcomers strengthen American society,’ and only 37% say that immigrants and refugees ‘threaten traditional American customs and values.’ This is a dramatic rebuke to Trump and Trumpism.
- “In 2016 voters were about evenly divided in the share saying that the growing number of newcomers strengthens American society (46%) and the share who said they threaten traditional American customs and values (50%).
- Today, more than eight-in-ten Biden supporters (84%) say the growing share of newcomers in the U.S. strengthens American society, up from 71% among Clinton supporters in 2016. By comparison, a much smaller share of Trump supporters (32%) view immigration as strengthening society. Still, that is up from just 19% among Trump supporters in 2016.”
Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli need to resign from DHS – they’ve betrayed America
- Damning revelations from a DHS whistleblower make it clear that the acting DHS leaders Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli have betrayed the country and their duties.
- They are responsible for covering up Russian attacks on our democracy and minimizing the white supremacist terrorist threat in America, demonstrating unwavering loyalty to Donald Trump and Stephen Miller instead of to the American people.
- See here for our full take on why they need to resign.
Border Patrol produces racist video just in time for Trump’s re-election
- A lurid, inaccurate and racist propaganda video released by the U.S. Border Patrol epitomizes the fact that DHS has become an arm of the Trump re-election campaign.
- Jean Guerrero, author of the stunning new book on Stephen Miller, fact-checked the video in The Daily Beast, noting: “Right-wing extremism is responsible for most extremist-related violence in this country … You would never know it from videos like Border Patrol’s or from listening to Trump officials such as acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf … Instead, Trump officials promote lies meant to stoke white fear. The blood is on all of their hands.”
- As AV Executive Director Frank Sharry stated, “When the Border Patrol produces a propaganda video that casts Latino immigrants as killers, it seems to be intended to further the campaign narrative of Donald Trump. It also may serve to encourage violent white nationalists. Taxpayers pay for DHS, and its peddling of shockingly ugly and inaccurate propaganda cries out for investigation and accountability. They are supposed to work for the public, not for a divisive authoritarian. They are supposed to improve security not threaten it.”
Biden, Latinos, and Florida – check the data, and the hand-wringing
- This week there was much hand-wringing about Biden and Democrats’ performance with Latino voters in Florida.
- Democratic strategist based in Florida, Steve Schale: “Statewide surveys that don’t over-sample the Latino community tend to demonstrate a lot of noise from poll to poll. Because the Florida Latino population is so diverse, one poll is going to show huge movement, another is not. The best thing to look at is the poll by Equis. It shows Biden up 15 or 16 points up among Latinos. That’s a much more reasonable number.”
- Must reads: 1) Fabiola Santiago in the Miami Herald, “Trump isn’t our savior from socialism, Florida Latinos. He’s the ‘caudillo’ we fled”; 2) Greg Sargent’s interview in the Washington Post with Florida Democratic strategist Steve Schale”
Trump still relies on xenophobia – we look at recent rallies in NC and MI
- Racism and xenophobia are the beating heart of Trumpism. While his campaign has been heavily focusing on racialized fearmongering related to exaggerations over urban protests, his anti-immigrant messaging is a go-to at Trump rallies.
- North Carolina rally: “You know Mexico is paying for the wall, just so you understand…We are going to charge them a small fee at the border. We have toll booths, did you know that? We have toll booths…we are putting a small toll on and maybe we are going to do something with remittance that is when people come here make money and they send it back.”
- Michigan rally: “When I banned travel from China, he [Biden] called it hysterical and xenophobic. If we would have listened to Biden hundreds of thousands more would have died of the China plague. Biden was willing to sacrifice American lives on the altar of open borders….He has also pledged to eliminate all the national security travel bans, overwhelming your state with poorly vetted migrants from jihadist regions. Making matters worse he would open up the floodgates in the middle of the pandemic.”
ICYMI – Hope for an “Anti-Racist Majority”
- Alongside so many infuriating and painful news items, an essay by Adam Serwer in The Atlantic caught our eye this week, making the case that “the United States has its best opportunity in 150 years to belatedly fulfill its promise as a multiracial democracy.”
- As Serwer writes, “There has never been an anti-racist majority in American history; there may be one today in the racially and socioeconomically diverse coalition of voters radicalized by the abrupt transition from the hope of the Obama era to the cruelty of the Trump age.”
- Read Serwer’s essay, “The New Reconstruction”
Racist Campaign Ad of the Week (from our newly remodeled site, 2020 Ad Watch)
- Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), a PAC that focuses on state legislative races, stitches together fear-mongering around anti-racist protests with an anti-immigrant message.
- The RSLC launched radio and TV ads, and targeted Democrat Bob Trammell, Georgia House Minority Leader.
- The voiceover: “He sides with the rioters tearing America apart…Trammell puts his liberal politics over safety, so it’s no wonder Trammell voted against the law that would stop local governments from hiring illegal immigrants. In these tough times, we should ensure that every taxpayer-funded job goes to legal citizens…Trammell, coming after your guns and paying illegal immigrants with your tax dollars while putting our safety at risk. Their TV ad tries to depict Georgia in a state of chaos because of anti-racist protests while the voiceover says, “we know who lawyer, politician, Bob Trammell stands with, and it’s not us.”
