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Kevin DrumJun. 23, 2017 2:33 PM

A couple of days ago I wrote a post responding to Peter Beinarts recent article about Democrats and illegal immigration. It was a bit of a dogs breakfast. I intended to write one thing and then ended up writing something else, which made the post a little disjointed. Then it turned out Id made an arithmetic mistake, and had to rewrite a chunk of the piece on the fly. Blecch.

But I did promise to eventually write the piece I initially had in mind, so here it is. Im a little pressed for time, so Ill keep it short.

Statistics aside, one of Beinarts main points was not that liberals should become big opponents of immigration, but that they should be willing to admit that there are drawbacks as well as benefits to large flows of illegal immigration. Its complicated stuff.

I agree completely, and this is hardly a problem limited to immigration. Its the way almost everything has evolved. I blame it mostly on conservatives, but I imagine conservatives blame it mostly on liberals, so Ill skip trying to assign blame. Either way, the upshot is that there never appears to be any political advantage to admitting that an issue has both upsides and downsides. But every issue important enough to be worth talking about does. Its just that theres hardly any audience left that cares.

I have no idea what, if anything, we can do about this. But I will say this. I lurk on a number of message boards populated by liberals, and what they say privately is very often more nuanced than what they say publicly. On immigration, there are probably lots of liberals willing to concede that there needs to be a limit to the flow of undocumented workers. There are cultural, economic, and nationalistic reasons for this. But theres little benefit to saying so in public. It just invites massive, social media swarms insisting that youre a closet racist.

Ive long been on record as a moderate liberal on immigration. I think there are benefits to keeping illegal immigration to a moderate level, and details aside, I think the answer is a rigorous version of E-Verify along with tough employer sanctions. In my own personal utopia, Id pair this up with a national ID card. Basically, if undocumented immigrants cant get jobs, theyll stop coming. Theres no need for a wall.

I wonder how many liberals agree with me, more or less? I wonder how many are waiting for someone else to say it before they do? I wonder how many just flatly dont consider it worth the blowback, so they stay quiet? Questions, questions.

As you might imagine, this is partly because the boards Im attracted to arent run by shouters and nutballs. Still, Im curious: is the same true of moderate conservative boards? Any wingers out there care to comment?

And drawbacks to getting too tough on illegal immigration. There are good reasons to protect our borders, but there economic, humanitarian, and police state reasons not to have a goal of zero illegal immigration.

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See the original post here:
Liberals and Immigration - Mother Jones