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This is a story of migration. No, not the illegal sort at our southern border, though that will feature prominently. The migration Im talking about is that of voters who were once solidly in the Democratic camp to the party of Donald Trump.

This follows a drawn-out history of defection and disaffection, beginning when President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

This inflection point warrants reflection. At the time, journalist Bill Moyers was a special assistant to LBJ. Moyers repeated his boss quip after the signing: I think we may have lost the South for your lifetime and mine. Variations of this quotation became lore in the halls of politics. Whether the president was utterly serious or only facetious, his speculation proved out. Until the 1960s, the South had been known for its Democratic lean. In fact, there was a name: Dixiecrats.

But by the time President Richard Nixons political strategist Kevin Phillips spoke to The New York Times in 1970, the racist Southern strategy of the GOP was paying off.

From the vantage point of today no longer a mountaintop, more like a pitchers mound it is hard to imagine a Democratic South. Governors like Floridas Ron DeSantis and Texas Greg Abbott can count on their constituents including evangelicals who now excuse Trumps mores to oppose a whole host of Democratic issues, from immigration to abortion, sexual preference and schoolbooks. What began with racial civil rights has broadened to take in a host of third rails separating Democrats from some states.

When it comes to immigration, it could be an issue that determines the presidency. In 2022, 2.8 million would-be immigrants were apprehended or turned away at the border the highest number since 1980. Migrants correctly understand that if they reach U.S. shores, it will be years, if ever, before they are sent back. In fact, in 2021, courts removed only 89,000 illegal immigrants, the lowest number since 1996.

More importantly for the nations governance, it is an issue for voters. When Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, seasoned politicos scratched their heads over her cultivation of illegal immigrants as a sort of protected class, since by definition those same people were ineligible to vote. She was playing to the wrong audience, a mistake the GOP would never make. If you want to enact policies, you first must gain office. If your platforms doom you to electoral defeat, the things you believe in will remain fairy dust. The Dems are looking pretty dusty these days.

In a recent Gallup poll, 63 percent of voters are dissatisfied with the immigration status quo, a sharp rise over the past two years of polling. Among Republicans, that dissatisfaction is at 71 percent, the highest such number Gallup has ever recorded for this. Even more telling, adult Latino voters are joining the South in migrating away from the Democratic Party. According to a 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center, 53 percent of adult Latinos say immigration is in need of major change, and an additional 29 percent say our policies need to be completely rebuilt. In the coming election, this is five-alarm fire.

Yet President Joe Bidens reelection team had their feet stuck in mud. With his back against the wall on arms for a faltering Ukraine, he ventured a deal on immigration reform. Then Donald Trump, dominating the primaries, weighed in. Bidens border turnabout was dead in the water. Trumps GOP was not about to let Biden claim immigration reform. His bully pulpit, in the face of pressure from the progressive wing of his party, had stayed mute too long. Trump, his 77 years ironically vigorous in comparison, understood the potency of his rallying cry from 2016: Build a wall! A vulnerable Biden seemed asleep at a wheel, evidencing 81 years of wear.

Weve been down the road with a well-meaning Democratic president: Jimmy Carter, a man voters tried to like. The hostage crisis and gas lines around the block condemned him to a single term. In addition to Bidens age, the crisis at the border could be the straw that breaks the camels back for him. Its not the polls Im reading, though those are justifiably worrisome. Its a perfect storm of perception. Stir into the mix Russian President Vladimir Putin with no exit strategy in Ukraine and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with none in Gaza. Biden is tangled in both their webs, waiting to be eaten by an Electoral College spider.

In that game-changing year of 1964, the Carter family sang, It takes a worried man to sing a worried song, Im worried now but I wont be worried long. Come Nov. 6, the day after elections, my worries may not have been long, but they might meet Waterloo on the Rio Grande.

Dalton Delan can be followed on Twitter @UnspinRoom. He has won Emmy, Peabody and duPont-Columbia awards for his work as a television producer.

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For Biden and Democrats, immigration reform is a wicked policy problem - Berkshire Eagle

Black Americans are the most reliable Democratic voters, and yet the Democratic Party betrays their loyalty by neglecting the needs of Black voters, or worse, actively supporting policies that harm Black Americans. Illegal immigration is a prime example.

Whatever those in power do to Black Americans, they will soon do to everyone else. This is why we must call out the Democrats for their push to provide amnesty for the nation's estimatedbut almost certainly undercounted11 million illegal immigrants and the trillions of dollars they support spending on those who enter the country illegally. Meanwhile, the majority of the homeless, the impoverished, the unemployed, and the evicted are Black Americans. This is an unforgivable betrayal.

In 1924, House Democrats voted 158-37 to drastically slash immigration. A. Philip Randolph, one of the most prominent Black labor and civil rights leaders of the day, praised the restrictions, explaining that too much immigration "over-floods the labor market, resulting in lowering the standard of living."

As the flood of competing foreign workers slowed to a trickle, Black workers made gains. Frank Morris, the former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, noted that Black men's wages quadrupled from 1940 to 1980, growing even faster than white wages.

In 1965, Congress changed immigration law to open opportunities for more immigrants from non-European countries to come to the United States. Immigration to the United States since 1965 has almost quadrupled.

This second "Great Wave" of immigration to America has done great harm to Black Americans, much as the flood of immigration from Europe following the Civil War did. According to a study by economists from Harvard and the University of Chicago, the influx of new immigrants between 1980 and 2000 accounts for as much as 60 percent of the decline in wages, 25 percent of the decline in employment rates, and 10 percent of the increase in incarceration rates among less-educated Blacks.

In the mid-1990s, Barbara Jordanthe first Southern Black woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representativeschaired President Bill Clinton's Commission on Immigration Reform. That commission recommended that the government slash legal immigration levels by a third in order to protect, in Jordan's own words, the "most vulnerable parts of our labor force."

President Clinton endorsed Jordan's proposed reformsbut they were ultimately defeated afterwards by business groups. Since then, Democrats have sought to raise legal immigration levels and have supported amnesty for illegal aliens.

They say this policy is compassionate, but where is the compassion for Black Americans who are hurt the most by illegal immigration?

The often cited argument that illegal immigrants "do work that Americans will not do" is simply not supported by data. In my home state of South Carolina, a poultry plant was found to have employed 300 illegal immigrants in 2008. After the illegal immigrants were detained, those jobs immediately were filled by American workers, many of them Black Americans. This same chain of events has played out in Illinois, Mississippi, North Carolina, Georgia, and countless other states. Black Americans and working-class white Americans do these very same jobs that we are told Americans are no longer willing to do. We will do the jobs, but for a fair wage. Workers deserve fair wages and no corporation should be able to avoid paying them by importing cheap labor. Cheap labor is cheat labor.

Another matter that is not often discussed is anti-Black racism. While illegal immigration is not the primary source of the systemic racism that Black Americans have faced for centuries, many illegal immigrants benefit from the civil rights fought for by Black Americans, and yet are deeply anti-Black American. A 2006 Duke University study in North and South Carolina showed that nearly 60 percent of immigrants from Latin America living in those states illegally felt that Black Americans were not hard workers and were not trustworthy. A large proportion said they did not have anything in common with Black Americans. Only around 10 percent of white Americans reported such negative views of Black Americans.

There is another potential danger not being discussed in the media: the dilution of the Black vote. Throughout the nation, several municipalities have made efforts to allow illegal immigrants the right to vote. Black Americans are the main constituency of the Democratic Party and yet the party ignores us. If we do not get anything for our vote now as their main constituency, do you think we will see anything for our vote if the party is able to secure votes from millions of illegal immigrants? Corporations should not be able to import cheap labor to avoid paying a fair wage, and the Democrats should not be able to import new voters to avoid addressing the needs of Black Americans.

There's no single solution to the economic problems plaguing Black Americans, especially in South Carolina's left-behind communities. We need to use every tool in the kit. That means ensuring equal access to education. It means helping folks afford reliable transportation. It means reparations for unpaid debts. And it means stopping illegal immigration completely and reducing legal immigration to levels that work for American citizens, not just American corporations.

Gregg Marcel Dixon is a teacher, activist, and candidate for South Carolina's Sixth US Congressional District.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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When It Comes to Immigration Reform, Don't Forget Black Voters - Newsweek

Were kind of obsessed with this graph. It shows the percentage of Americans who say immigrants strengthen the United States. Were all familiar with this end. Republicans and Democrats cant agree on anything. But what was happening down at this end? How did we start so close and get to: Build that wall. Build that wall. Well, thats what this video is about: the path to political polarization. This dramatic split has left the American immigration system in disarray. And understanding how we got into this mess might just help us find a way out. To start, lets go back to a moment that might seem totally unimaginable today. Y2K. Hello. These are good people, strong people. Its 1980, and the two Republican front-runners are having a debate. Rather than talking about putting up a fence, why dont we work out some recognition of our mutual problems? Were creating a whole society of really honorable, decent, family-loving people. Wait. What? Yeah. The top two Republicans are basically having an empathy competition empathy for immigrants, that is. I think the time has come that the United States and our neighbors should have a better understanding and a better relationship than weve ever had. And this was pretty normal at the time. Many Republicans welcomed immigration, especially the legal kind, and viewed immigrants as a source of cheap labor. And on the left: Illegal aliens dont have the right to be here. They broke the law to get here. They never intended to become a part of our social community, and they are not entitled to benefits. Might be hard to believe, but that was a former Democratic congresswoman. Democrats often said things that might sound totally bizarre today. They have no intention to integrate. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. Who compete for housing, who compete for classroom space. Sure, there were some sharp divisions within each party. But time and again, the winner was bipartisanship. This bill says simply, those wishing to immigrate to America shall be admitted on the basis of their skills. This bill is the most comprehensive. It is the most comprehensive reform of our immigration laws in 66 years. So for the last part of the 20th century, both parties and their voters were largely in lock step. It helped that immigration wasnt such a big deal yet. But then look what happened. So what caused this split? Yeah, 9/11 was a factor. But more important was the fast-changing nature of immigration itself. The number of foreign-born people in America has quadrupled since the 1960s. The immigrant population was booming, and it was looking less like this and more like this. But it wasnt just who was coming. It was where they went. For years, immigrants were concentrated in just a handful of states. But from the 1990s through the 2000s, immigration went from being a regional issue to a national issue. In these states, the immigrant population at least doubled. Americans were walking into their grocery stores and, for the first time, hearing Spanish, Hindi, Cantonese, Tagalog. Some felt under siege. I am tired of people coming across with impunity. We dont know whos here. We dont know what diseases they have. Theres 360 million Americans that need to start standing up for their country before we give it away. Republican politicians increasingly played on those fears. Some aggravated felons who have sexually abused a minor are eligible for amnesty under this bill. And they were rewarded with a larger share of the white vote, propelling the party further away from the center. Voters found themselves at a fork in the road. For Republicans, immigration was increasingly a law enforcement and national security issue. And for Democrats, it became more of a humanitarian and human rights issue. Equal rights for everybody, an opportunity for them to be able to be here legally. Immigration was becoming a hyperpolarizing issue. We have a comprehensive strategy to reform our immigration system. President George W. Bush spent years trying to forge bipartisan consensus. And weve got to continue to work together to get that done, and Im optimistic that Congress will rise to the occasion. But he was stymied by members of his own party who opposed giving undocumented immigrants a path to legal status. The motion is not agreed to. The American people understand the status quo is unacceptable when it comes to our immigration laws. A lot of us worked hard to see if we couldnt find common ground, and it didnt work. This was a big turning point for the immigration debate. The moderate middle was becoming a very lonely place. Its not that politicians didnt keep trying to meet in the center and fix things. This guy certainly did. What I can guarantee is that we will have, in the first year, an immigration bill that I strongly But he failed, too. And were all familiar with what happened next. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. We have become a dumping ground for the entire world. When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Build that wall. Build that wall. Trump inspired a wave of copycats. Its time to militarize this border. Once fringe ideas were now certifiably mainstream. Finish President Trumps wall, blow up the cartels drug tunnels and surveillance drones and deploy the Arizona National Guard to stop illegals from entering. But guess what? Its not just conservatives. Democrats have aggressively moved away from the center even more than Republicans. Immigrants and refugees are an enormous blessing. Talking about deporting 11 million people is so outrageous. If youd be so kind, raise your hand if you think it should be a civil offense rather than a crime to cross the border without documentation? Top officials in the Biden administration have gone to absurd lengths to avoid calling a spade a spade. Is there a crisis at our southern border? Senator? There is a very Thats a yes or no question. Is there a crisis? There is a very significant challenge that we are facing. Yes or no? Is there a crisis? I believe Ive addressed that question. So youre refusing to answer? Not to give Ted Cruz too much credit here, but its a fair question. The answer, of course, is, yes, its a crisis. Heres our opinion. Immigrants bring energy and new ideas. America faces a population slowdown, and immigration can help maintain a robust labor force. We build new buildings. We do your roofing. We clean your ditches. But we also need to strengthen the border, in part, by overhauling an asylum system on the verge of collapse. The immigration system is broken. But we can fix it if there was only the political will. Why dont we work out some recognition of our mutual problems, make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit? And nearly all Americans have ancestors who braved the oceans, liberty-loving risk takers in search of an ideal. We love America. We love our people. And we love people coming here legally. Most Americans support the key elements of sensible immigration reform, including a stronger border and providing undocumented immigrants with a path to citizenship. But as long as politics and emotion continue to eclipse reason, bipartisanship, sadly, will remain a thing of the past. Build that wall. Build that wall. Build that wall. Build that wall. Build that wall.

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Video: Opinion | Things Fall Apart: How the Middle Ground on Immigration Collapsed - The New York Times

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) voiced his skepticism of a deal being crafted in the Senate to pair border and migration policy changes with Ukraine aid, and said that now is not the time for comprehensive immigration reform.

Johnson said at a press conference Wednesday morning that while there has been a lot of “thoughtful and deliberative discussion and debate” surrounding the potential deal, he has not seen any final proposal and was “anxious” to see text of the proposal.

But he dismissed any “comprehensive” immigration changes.

“It’s a complex issue. I don’t think now is the time for comprehensive immigration reform, because we know how complicated that is,” Johnson said.

“You can’t do that quickly. I do think it’s past time to secure the border. And that’s what H.R. 2 reflects,” Johnson added, referring to the House GOP border and migration policy bill that the chamber passed last year.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) listens to a question after a closed-door House Republican Conference meeting on Wednesday, January 17, 2024. (Greg Nash)

Johnson’s comments come ahead of a White House meeting Wednesday afternoon with other congressional leaders and President Biden.

A bipartisan group of senators have been working for weeks on a deal to pair border and migration policy changes with Ukraine aid.

The deal is expected to include changes to asylum policy, but negotiators have said that the issue of parole is a major sticking point in the talks.

Negotiators, too, would likely push back on the idea that the package amounts to comprehensive immigration reform. Any new path to citizenship, for instance, was quickly taken off the table.

The Speaker argued that all the various policy elements of H.R. 2 were necessary — including restarting the “remain in Mexico” asylum policy, reforming the parole process, and restarting construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

“You can’t choose from among those [provisions in H.R. 2] on a menu and assume that you’re going to solve the problem,” he said.

“We don’t need more buckets. We need to reduce the flow. We know how to reduce the flow. You have to have these elements involved,” Johnson added.

More here:
Johnson: Now is not the time for comprehensive immigration reform - The Hill

California, Texas, Florida, and New York have some of the highest numbers of individuals living in mixed-status households; more than half (52%) of individuals in mixed-status households live in these four states. And, some 10% or more of all residents in each of these four states California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Texas live in a mixed-status household.

Even as Congress has maintained family unity as a core principle in immigration policy for decades, many undocumented spouses and parents of U.S. citizens cannot adjust their status to become green card holders due to inadmissibility bars. These limitations of current immigration law force families to remain in mixed status families, living under the threat of separation, and forcing loved ones to live with the constant anxiety that their mom, dad, sister, brother, wife, or husband could be deported at a moments notice.

Fixing our failed immigration system is personal for millions of Americans living in mixed-status families. With millions of U.S. citizens living daily with uncertainty over whether they may be separated from their families, it is well past time for Congress to deliver relief, and the administration to do whatever it can to protect them.

Read more from the original source:
Immigration reform keeps millions of mixed-status families together - FWD.us