Bush has to satisfy one part of the GOP coalition that wants an endless supply of cheap, exploited labor. At the same time he must keep happy Republicans who want to keep America safely Anglo. The president, because of the Iraq misadventure, has seen his poll numbers hemorrhage like a Russian prince, and now he is whipsawed by these competing demands
Facing a possible GOP train wreck in the off-year congressional elections, Bush has apparently decided that he must appeal to bigots who believe that Mexicans are lazy, flee to the United States to receive benefits of our badly fraying social safety net, and are culturally and/or genetically incapable of performing as loyal citizens in a democratic republic.
Racial Ideology and Immigration
Those bigots are growing louder and more numerous. An ugly racist discourse heard daily on shows like “Hannity and Combs” and “Lou Dobbs Tonight” contends that new Mexican arrivals somehow don't understand "American" culture (whatever that is) and that their mere presence will change the country for the worse. Buchanan, and his anti-immigrant allies don’t believe that the United States can absorb millions of Spanish-speaking residents and remain America. “And you’re rapidly changing the nature of the entire country,” Buchanan says. “We speak 300 languages. Unless we do something and make sure the things that unite us are elevated -- like language and history and all the rest of it -- we’re gonna lose our country, my friend.”Buchanan’s sentiments assume that there's something intrinsic in "us" (by which he means "us white guys") that "they" (meaning brown folks) don't have. That argument has been made about every immigrant group that has ever arrived in the United States. The Mexican immigrants of today, like the Irish, Polish, Italian and Jewish immigrants of yesterday collide head-on with a political system in which social and economic goodies are distributed according to one’s degree of “whiteness.” Such a system depends on the notion that so-called black, white, brown, red and yellow people represent “races,” distinct entities with innate qualities. To the contrary, there is more genetic variation — deviations in skin pigment, hair texture, inherited disorders, etc. — within the arbitrary racial boxes used to divide humanity than between each category.
Because they are social conventions rather than scientific categories, the definition of racial identities such as white, black, and brown, however, vary over time and by location. In the 19th century, Jews, Italians and the Irish were viewed by many ruling Anglo-Americans as non-white. These groups, however, became “white” in part by accepting elite ideas of race and by supporting an economic system that provides a great deal for the few and the barely adequate for the many. The social status and the incomes of these groups rose accordingly. If Mexicans are an outside group now, they too might enter the white man’s club if they accept predatory capitalism and adopt the language of anti-black racism. As Richard Pryor once said, the first word an immigrant learns in English is “nigger”
There have been two previous crises over immigration in American history, the period between the 1840s and the Civil War when Irish newcomers were depicted as racial outsiders, and the panic over Eastern and Southern European and Asian immigration that began in the 1870s but peaked between 1890 and 1925. A close look at these past controversies provides a likely guide to how today’s immigration debate will play out.
Article Continues: Irish Immigrants and the 'Know-Nothing' Era