How about allowing immigration quotas move to a skills based system and only allowing immediate family reunifications. Other Western countries do this and would assure the more pragmatic xenophobes that mostly the “good ones” get in.
The upside is that, among other things, small children might not be kidnapped and sold as slaves by the attorney general.
And you are wrong, also. Not just on immigration, but on the nature of political credibility. There is not much credibility gain in saying, “You know, the other side sure are smarter than we are, they’ve been right all along!” There is even less in saying, “Well, we’re a big tent. Some of us agree with the other guys, and others don’t. We just don’t know jack, really!” The GOP have stupid ideas, but appear to believe them, and that appearance of certainty both gives their ideas credibility and gives the politicians the appearance of honor and consistency. In the present environment, the Democrats would possibly be* more *successful as a smaller and more radical tent, because they’d appear to know something–at least to the voter who uses certainty as a positive heuristic.
Capitulating on immigration doesn’t flip a switch, because immigration policy is not binary. Capitulation is not even a coherent strategy.
Capitulating on immigration doesn’t work, because the loudmouths complaining about “open borders” aren’t talking about the nuances of the law as it is. “Immigration” really is a buzzword, and political buzzwords not only are not policy, their reach of influence is barely affected by policy.
Isn’t that pretty much how it is right now, with only a very tiny quote for immigration without those skills?
But, assuming that you are actually talking about changing the system, rather than sticking to the status quo:
Do employers get to request the skills they are looking for?
What skills exactly would you look for on the resume of a migrant agricultural worker?
What should the CV be for someone who is looking for entry level food service work?
What set of skills are we looking for when we have massive construction and infrastructure projects that are put on hold due to lack of workers?
Does that also mean that we turn away any refugees or asylum seekers if they don’t have skills we are looking for?
I have no problem with screening for criminal history, and in fact, encouraging people to come through proper points of entry by assuring they won’t be turned away out of hand will decrease the availability of criminals or terrorists to use the existing routes of illegal immigration for cover. Immigrants have a lower prevalence of crime than native born americans, so with just a bit of screening, we can show that incoming immigrants are far more likely to be a “good one” than a person actually born here.
To a pragmatist, that would be more than enough.
Of course, you use the oxymoron of “pragmatic xenophobe”, so I doubt it would be. To assure them that only the “good ones” get in, we would not be using a skills assessment or a criminal background check to determine whether they are acceptable to the xenophobe, but just a brown paper bag.
“Immigration” is really not the issue or even a real problem. “Immigration” is just one easy convenient boogeyman to use as an Orwellian Goldstein, among several rotating subjects for the day’s Two Minute Hate.
Joining in on the Two Minute Hate, even in a weaker/softer manner, is not the effective approach to reach non-college educated whites, is simply wrong to do, and from a pragmatic perspective throws away the Democratic side’s long term growing demographic strength.
The issue is that non-college educated whites, especially those in rural regions, have been losing their position on the socioeconomic ladder, are being hollowed out of the middle downwards, and their group identity is less and less the overwhelmingly dominant one of the American cultural hodgepodge stew. And they are convinced (in error I believe) that the Democrat side does not care about their problems.
Just telling them to suck it up, to accept that American society and culture is increasingly leaving them and what they consider their way of life behind … well tough love reality check is a hard sell. The GOP side is doubled down on selling the concept that their identity can be the American identity again, that their (white christian) identity can be the great American identity again, with others fitting themselves into it in controlled and mostly subservient manners. That is not such a hard sell.
The Democratic message cannot become the one the GOP is using and the Democratic side cannot get suckered into disrespecting the white Christian identity. The Democratic side needs to have a message that specifically outreaches to the real problems facing non-college educated whites in this time of ever increasing wealth inequality and explicitly recognizes that their concerns are in fact understandable. And they need to do that in a way that does not disrespect the independent challenges that this society still imposes on various other identities.
It’s a tricky pitch to make.
In 1996, the Dems supported feminism, “racial justice,” and gay rights yet still got the support of these white, non-college educated voters. Why would you believe that these voters left because of these issues?
I don’t think so. Regardless, the vast majority of American immigrants are family reunification immigrants.
Oy vey. You get a panel together to decide which industries are short on employees.
You don’t* think* so? Do you know what the quota for unskilled and unrelated immigration from Mexico of other central and South American countries are?
You said that you would only allow immediate family reunification,that is how it is right now.
And note, you have to become a citizen to sponsor a family member, not just a permanent resident.
Trump has made quite a bit of noise about chaim immigration, which may be why you think that it is such a problem, but if you did just a bit of research, you would find that it is already exactly as you say you would want it. Don’t trust Trump as a source, he lies and will mislead you.
3.7% unemployment rate, all industries are short on employees. Look around you and pay some attention. When you go to shop at the store, it says “Now Hiring”, when you get your latte, it says “Now Hiring”, when you get your cheeseburger at lunch, it says “Now Hiring”, when you go to the home improvement store, it says “Now Hiring”, when you go out to eat after dinner, it says “Now Hiring”, when you are driving down the street, on the corner, there is a sign for Staffing Services, it says “Now Hiring”.
Come by my shop, I’ll tell you that I’m hiring.
You may be unaware of the labor shortage that is facing us, but that is only because you are somehow unaware of it, not because it is not very obvious.
I don’t need to get a panel together, the industries are already making these needs known.
Lets start with agriculture.
http://fortune.com/2018/06/18/immigration-policy-farm-labor-shortage/
https://www.npr.org/2018/05/03/607996811/worker-shortage-hurts-californias-agriculture-industry
https://agamerica.com/farm-labor-shortage/
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-01/u-s-farms-need-more-immigrant-workers
Drop the parents, maybe? Children and souses only? Lower the annual allowance of family immigration. The current state of affairs is abiut 68% of immigration is family reunification and 12% employment immigration.
Then why did they abandon the democrats?
Who are we trying to appease here?
What number are you trying to get down to? Why do you feel that we need to get down to that number?
Are we trying to appease the xenophobes here? If so, do you really think that they will be mollified by denying people the ability to sponsor their parents to immigrate?
Of course we are trying to appease xenophobes. That was the whole point of the conversation we’re having. 
I think if you got more employment/skills based immigration as a percentage of the total that yes it would help with them.
Canada has about double the “economic” based immigration over family based. Is that because we are a bunch of xenophobic racists?
The bar will always move with true xenophobes. You will not appease them. You will just move the window over.
Wesley Clark’s graphic - see better here is interesting and the question is valid.
Bill Clinton did fine with white no college educated voters, getting more of them than the R did in both elections. It then dropped back down (while college educated plus stayed D) and dropped further in 2016. The Bill Clinton years were exceptional on the upside and the Trump election was exceptional on the downside.
Keeping the college educated white gains and the current margins and other turnouts of various other groups, while getting white no college educated back to baselines that were not 2016 or the Bill Clinton elections would win presidential elections handily. Get back to Bill Clinton levels and it is a blow-out.
Okay Perot bleeding some of them out of the GOP side might have been part of Bill Clinton’s relative success.
But a bigger part of it was that he had real empathy for the problems of the group and neither GHWB or Dole came off that way.
In 2016 HRC did not deliver that sense of empathy, and Trump went all out that they mattered far above anyone else. What’s hard to understand here?
Then that’s just a losing proposition. You don’t appease the irrational, there is no reasoning with them. If you give them anything, then they will just see that as a weakness, a precedent to get you to give them more.
The only way to appease the xenophobes is to put a brown paper bag next to the ports of entry and say “Your skin must be lighter than this to pass.” Then have rules about having to speak english, and we may as well simply make speaking any language but english while in the US a felony.
Then we can go back and ask them what else that they want.
And what is it that we are negotiating for here, what are we getting in return? Once we have finally managed to appease the xenophobes by removing or exterminating all of the undesirables, will they finally let us talk about universal healthcare?
Do you really think that that statement has any relevance whatsoever to the conversation about appeasing US xenophobes? They don’t want economic or family immigration, much less Refugees and Protected Persons. Canada is taking twice the refugees as the US is, even though Canada has a far smaller population, and the xenophobes here are still whining and complaining about that.
Is that similar to a True Scotsman? No, while it may make your heart feel pure to say that and pretend dealing with them is impossible rather than a choice, not all xenophobes are created equal. It’s undeniable that a certain subset will have less of a problem letting in engineers or doctors from “shithole countries” compared to some random dude.
No, a True Scotsman fallacy would be like if you were trying to say that people can only be xenophobes if they can be appeased by capitulating to them.
It is not impossible, it is simply pointless. It is not the nature of the xenophobes that we are concerned about, it is the nature of appeasement. Appeasement never works, it only emboldens one to ask for more.
You are trying to make this into an emotional argument, trying to make the people that have irrational hate and fear in their heart into the good guys, and the people who point out that those fears and hatreds are irrational, and that you cannot appease the irrational, as the bad guys.
It’s not bad vs good, it’s rational vs irrational. And no, no matter how much it may make your heart feel pure to pretend dealing with the irrational is just the same as dealing with the rational, all people who have come to a place of discrimination through irrational avenues are created equal. There are ways of working with them individually that sometimes makes one or another come to the realization that they are operating on stubborn emotional rhetoric and responding to fear rather than to reason, but there is no way to negotiate with the group of them while they still hold those beliefs.
You kinda sound like the people who told MLK to just wait until the racists allowed them to have rights, or those who told the abolitionists to just wait until the slavers got tired of owning people. It’s not gonna happen, not ever, if the only tool in your tool box is giving them everything they want.
It is deniable, as I have seen racist xenophobes scream the same exact hatefulness at college professors and doctors as they have screamed at landscapers and food service workers.
No mater how much you coddle the racists, it will only encourage their hate, not alleviate it.
Which is pretty much what DSeid said, sooooo…
I know you are never going to agree to a single inch of appeasing xenophobic voters. But you’re just wrong that there aren’t rational and reasonable moves that would appease some of them.
Try re-reading and parsing that post there, dude, as it is the exact opposite of what he said and is more in line with your beliefs that the real xenophobes will come around once we start giving them everything that they want.
There are moves that can appease people who have come to an immigration stance through rational thought based on facts.
There are no moves that can appease people who have come to an immigration stance based on fear and emotion.
A xenophobe, by definition, has an irrational fear of outsiders. You cannot appease that through rational and reasonable moves, you can only encourage that by indulging in their fears.
Do you really think that your idea of limiting family reunification by not allowing citizens of the US to sponsor their parents would change even a fraction of a percent of the xenophobic vote?
I’m afraid you’re the one who needs to do some slower reading. It is what he said and I never said anything about giving xenophobes everything they want.