[VDARE.com note: Virginia Abernethy [email her], Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Anthropology at Vanderbilt University, was the American Third Position Party’s 2012 candidate for Vice-President. Her most recent response to the usual critics is here.]
Karl Rove is a principal architect of the GOP's 30-year advocacy for mass immigration. Karl Rove can also be seen as the principal architect of the GOP's November 2012 disaster—because the large Hispanic vote turned around and bit him.
Rove, who has lived in Texas since 1981, was apparently impressed by the quality of post-Castro Cuban immigration. He must have failed to notice that the professional class was fleeing Castro, so the Cubans he met were not precisely representative of Cuba’s general population.
Unfortunately, Rove's enthusiasm for more and more immigration was welcomed by U.S. businesses who saw, cynically, that they could profit from a policy that depresses wages. They have been the main funders of Rove’s gargantuan PACs.
In 2012, Hispanics seem to have accounted for approximately 10 percent of the total vote. They broke overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. The presence of Cuban Hispanics was felt only in Florida, the closest electoral college race in the county.
If Karl Rove is confused that his indiscriminate welcome mat for Hispanics did not buy forever-gratitude, the explanation is simple: Cubans are not Guatemalans, are not Mexicans. In fact, the 1997 National Research Council report, "The New Americans", showed that the average immigrant from Central American is educated to less than the eighth-grade level. They compete primarily for manual labor jobs.
Such jobs are low paid, and the flood of new immigrant labor depresses wages and benefits still further. No surprise that approximately 36 percent of recent immigrants use at least one form of public welfare, as opposed to 17% for native-born whites.[Immigrants in the United States, 2010 : A Profile of America's Foreign-Born Population, By Steven A. Camarota, Center For Immigration Studies, August 2012]
Scholars including Professor George Borjas and Andrew Sum have repeatedly shown that American workers are displaced by new immigrants. The late Dallas Morning News journalist Richard Estrada testified to Congress and to the US Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by the saintly, late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, that both established Hispanics and African-Americans are materially harmed by competition from new immigrants. Similarly, political science Professor Frank Morris testified in congressional hearings on immigration’s particular harm to African-Americans.
Republicans should take note that mass immigration is detrimental to Americans with similar labor force characteristics. Therefore, advocacy for more immigration with special benefits is a DIS-unifying message.
On the contrary, established and legal immigrants respond to appeals to opportunity and protecting jobs from waves of new and more desperate labor force participants. Established Hispanic immigrants are receptive to evidence that they are among the victims when newer waves of immigrants accept jobs with lower wages and fewer benefits.
Case in point: forty-seven percent of Hispanics supported the 2004 Arizona Proposition which sought to make welfare unavailable to illegal aliens and also discourage non-citizens from voting. No recent Republican presidential candidate has won a larger proportion of the Hispanic vote—regardless of professed support for mass immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens!
Avoidance of wars is another issue that Americans of almost all stripes and immigrants have in common. In his speech to the Democratic Convention in Baltimore, President Obama’s listing of accomplishments was received quietly; the audience changed from merely polite to thunderous cheering when Obama mentioned his progress in ending wars.
Nevertheless, post-election quarterbacks were ready with the refrain that the GOP must now reach out to Hispanics. But suppose that the Republican Party according to Rove persists: Second generation Hispanic immigrants have an unusually high school drop-out rate. In 2016, post-1970 Hispanic immigrants will still be poor. They will continue to vote for the Party that promises most redistribution from the public till. And there will be more of them.
Moreover, continued mass immigration would displace forever the sector of the American population that supports fiscal responsibility and the quality of life of future generations.
Those who advocate continued mass immigration choose the path to national suicide.
Far better that the GOP redefine what it means to be “inclusive”. A message with broad appeal would center on the quality of jobs for Americans and established immigrants, smaller government with less regulation, and coping with environmental emergencies through an array of policies including an immigration moratorium—because smaller population centers are less vulnerable to infrastructure breakdown.
Karl Rove is the past. Without him, the GOP (and America) has a future.
Virginia Abernethy [email her], Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Anthropology at Vanderbilt University, is on the Board of Directors of Population-Environment BALANCE and the Board of Directors of Carrying Capacity Network. Her publications include Population Politics