Right of silence: of ten leading Republicans, two favor keeping our current immigration policy, two favor changing it more or less radically, and six are agnostic - position of possible presidential candidates on immigration policy - Cover Story

National Review, July 11, 1994 by Roy Beck

Often leading Republicans, two favor keeping our current immigration policy, two favor changing it more or less radically, and six are agnostic. What future for America would each position lead to?

Last fall, a Republican National Committee survey discovered a remarkable unity among 134,000 grassroots activists about the potentially contentious issue of immigration. By a 5 to 1 margin, the party leaders and elected officials affirmed: Immigration levels are too high.

But who at the top of the party will champion such mass sentiment for change? The field is not crowded, at least not this summer, according to an informal canvassing of the RNC and of ten national-profile leaders who are considered possible presidential contenders.

- Only two of the Republicans (Bob Dole and Pat Buchanan) were prepared even to say they agreed with the grassroots GOP majority. Besides taking strong stands against illegal immigration, both favor the reversal of federal policies that have more than tripled legal immigration since 1965, the year a major overhaul of U.S. immigration law was enacted. "While America remains the land of opportunity, it is not the land of unlimited opportunity for unlimited numbers of immigrants, both legal and illegal," says Dole.

- Two other leaders (Jack Kemp and Phil Gramm) said they believe the apparent grassroots majority is misled on immigration. They said they wanted to use their leadership to resist cutting legal immigration while educating the voters about the advantages of recent higher levels. "I just don't agree with some of my colleagues that immigration is a threat to America," Kemp said.

Gramm said he feels required by principle to defend immigration: "We have room in America for people who are willing to work. I am not ready, nor will I ever be ready, to tear down the Statute of Liberty or close the door to America.... We have found genius in ordinary people through immigration and have brought in new blood, new vision, and new energy."

- Six GOP leaders (Bill Bennett, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, Pat Robertson, Bill Weld, Pete Wilson) declined to endorse either the grassroots desire for change or current high-immigration policies. They (or their spokesmen) indicated that they hadn't given the three-decade phenomenon of renewed mass immigration enough thought to comment on it. A spokeswoman for Bennett was as straightforward as any: "This is not his issue. He's not up to speed on it. He hasn't looked at this issue at all. It's not one he's studied and not one he ever speaks on. He has no expertise on it." The Republican National Committee also places itself with these six leaders, offering no analysis of legal immigration because the 1992 Platform didn't address it.

It is important to note that the lack of leadership is on legal immigration. Many Republicans have been forceful in tackling illegal immigration. But illegal aliens amount to only about one-fourth of permanently settling foreigners each year. Leaders who work only to halt illegal entries would, if successful, ensure merely that future immigration will take four years to create the burdens on America (in terms of congestion, welfare, and so on) that today occur in three years.

The Face of America, 2050

There are essentially two versions of America's demographic future, deriving from the two major approaches to immigration.

The Challengers' Version. Those who challenge the current immigration policy want to cut immigration back to near its traditional U.S. average of about 297,000 per year (the average annual rate from the beginning of immigration recordkeeping in 1820 to the 1965 Act). If successful, the traditionalists would create a country with a slow-growing population that shortly after 2050 would stabilize for the first time in our history. Foreign workers would play a proportionately decreasing role in the economy (which traditionalists argue would lead to improving standards of living for all Americans). America's ethnic minorities would gradually become a larger percentage of the population, because of continuing, though lower, immigration and relatively high fertility. But the country would retain its European-descended majority and its traditional cultural identity in which an American nationhood - encompassing different ethnicities but based upon a British/European culture - would continue to evolve.

Public-opinion polling since 1976 has found the majority of Americans endorsing something similar to this vision of the future. Most have opposed the social changes thrust on their communities by federal immigration policies. Many have been concerned that it will be more difficult to maintain what they consider to be an American lifestyle of personal freedoms in an ever more densely populated country. A 1992 Roper poll found Americans, by a ratio 7 to 1, felt the country was already suffering from too high a population, an opinion that placed the public at direct odds with the government's immigration policy.

Pat Buchanan aggressively advocates the immigration traditionalists' version of the American future. Bob Dole has indicated some sympathy for this America, although his current legislative stance would reduce immigration by such a small amount that the results would not differ significantly from those brought about by the government's current policies.