America Is Getting Friendlier to Immigrants, but Republicans Aren’t

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Over at Bloomberg, Noah Smith argues against getting too worked up over immigration:

Illegal immigration to the U.S. ended a decade ago and, according to the Pew Research Center, has been zero or negative since its peak in 2007….Why? One reason might be economic….The economy has improved, and the fertility rate has fallen a lot, meaning that young Mexicans are needed back in Mexico to take over family businesses and take care of aging parents….A third reason is increased border enforcement. For years, many Americans demanded that the border with Mexico be secured in order to stem illegal immigration. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama did exactly that. Obama, especially, stepped up the pace of deportation.

OK. But how do Americans feel about immigration?

Here too, surveys show that there isn’t really a problem. The percent of Americans telling Gallup that immigration should be decreased went up after 9/11, spiked again during the Great Recession, but has since fallen to about a third. As of 2016, a clear majority say that immigration should either be kept at its present level (38 percent) or increased (21 percent) — hardly a mandate for immigration restriction.

Quite so. Here is Gallup’s chart of public opinion:

But that tells only half the story. Here are all the recent Gallup polls I could find that break out Republican responses about immigration:

Smith argues that “there is no big anti-immigrant wave in the U.S….Instead, the current anti-immigrant fervor among Trump’s hardcore supporters might simply be a brief spasm of anger by a strident minority.” But that doesn’t seem to be the case. For at least the past decade, a strong majority of Republicans has favored decreasing immigration—and if the question were limited to illegal immigration, the numbers would certainly be higher.

This is no brief spasm. The country as a whole may be getting friendlier to immigration, but Republicans decidedly aren’t. If Democrats ever want to pass some kind of comprehensive immigration reform, they’re going to have to figure out some way to get Republican votes for it, but that’s not going to happen as long as the entire GOP—not just diehard Trump fans—is dead set against it.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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