There is no doubt that the urgency of the immigration debate accelerated in the past few years. But why? After all, the resurgence of large-scale immigration started 40 years ago; we've had millions of illegal immigrants living in our midst since the 1970s; and it has been recognized that a disproportionately large number of the new immigrants are low-skill workers who have adverse impacts on low-wage labor markets and on the costs of providing social services since the mid-1980s. Yet immigration did not become the hot political potato it has become until recently. Why?
This NYT story gives an important clue to this puzzle. Until 1990, immigrants clustered in a very small number of geographic areas. In 1990, for example, 33 percent of immigrants lived in only three metropolitan areas (Los Angeles, New York, and Miami), while only 12 percent of natives lived in the largest three metropolitan areas housing natives. Even by 2000, almost 70 percent of immigrants resided in six states (California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey), but only 34 percent of natives lived in those states.
Beginning sometime in the 1990s, however, both legal and illegal immigrants began to settle in non-traditional places. And this settlement brought the economic, social, and cultural impact of immigration closer to home for many more Americans--in effect, awakening a large swath of the population to a new demographic reality and ending the long-term lethargy that had set in on how Americans think about immigration.
The nation’s struggle over immigration may seem distant in states like Iowa, hundreds of miles from any border, but the debate is part of daily life here, more than ever now as residents prepare to pick a president. Nearly all of more than two dozen people interviewed here last week said they considered immigration policy at or near the top of their lists of concerns as they look to the presidential caucuses next month...
Like a handful of communities in Iowa — places named Denison, Ottumwa, Postville and Marshalltown — Storm Lake, a city of about 10,000, offers a glimpse at how new immigration has transformed the nation’s rural middle and with it, the political landscape.
Two decades ago, less than 1 percent of the people in Buena Vista County, where Storm Lake is the county seat, were Hispanic. By last year, the county had the highest percentage of Hispanic people of any county in Iowa, with 19.2, compared with less than 4 percent statewide. Buena Vista County also ranks highest in Iowa in percentages of those learning English in school, of recent international immigrants and of residents born in other countries.
In the interviews here, peoples’ focus on immigration held regardless of what perspective they brought to the debate, whether they were Democrats or Republicans, Hispanic or not, recent arrivals or lifelong Iowans.
It is hard to follow the immigration debate and not come to the conclusion that Americans' newly found appreciation for thinking about immigration has permanently altered the political landscape. It seems that a growing number of Americans have seen first-hand what immigration does to their communities--and more than a few just don't like it.
I know that some people--including some of our leading politicians--can't resist the temptation to label those Americans who feel this way as yahoos, xenophobes, and racists. But I suspect that those who so readily play this "race card" are just trying to avoid discussing what's going on in those communities. There's absolutely nothing xenophobic or racist in opposing social policies that worsen economic conditions for many workers, that create havoc in public schools, and that greatly increase the cost of public hospitals and other social programs.