Republicans, I believe, will face the same dilemmas.
The solution -- politics aside -- will not come from pointing out the views on either extreme. Unlike the two dimensional either-or argument presented by Edsall and so many others in the media, meaningful immigration reform will involve new ideas and compromises to be born by all parties and to partially benefit each: U.S. workers, U.S. Corporations, International Trade, and illegal immigrants.
Reform is never easy, but if the politicians would approach the problem seriously instead of politically, some serious progress might finally be made.
Speed Bump at the BorderBy Thomas B. Edsall
The New York Times
Democrats preparing to take over Congress appear to have a perfect issue for the party of the left: the rich are getting richer, but sizable productivity gains and rising corporate profits are not paying off for the working and middle classes. All boats are not rising with the tide.
The picture is a paint-by-the-numbers portrait of the greedy picking the pockets of the needy. The villains are C.E.O.s, investment bankers and corporate managers who refuse to pass on profits in the form of higher wages. The victims are workers who struggle to deal with an increasingly unreliable and, for many, unrewarding marketplace — producing more while under the constant threat of job, health care and pension loss.
The success of candidates attacking outsourcing and trade agreements like Nafta, combined with high Democratic margins among economically pessimistic voters, clearly point to middle-class wage stagnation and growing inequality as significant factors in the election this month.
Politically, the result has shifted the balance of power within the Democratic Party in favor of the protectionist wing, and especially in favor of such major unions as the Teamsters, the steelworkers and the autoworkers, all key party supporters with money and manpower.
The strengthening of the Democrats’ protectionist wing is virtually certain to force to the surface a second, and closely related, internal conflict between the party’s pro- and anti-immigration wings. This conflict among Democrats remained submerged while President Bush and the Republican House and Senate majorities fought without resolution over the same issue.
“Immigration is a difficult issue for the Democrats; it cuts in complicated ways,” says Stephen Ansolabehere, an M.I.T. political scientist who helped conduct an Internet survey of 37,000 voters. The Democratic Party made major gains in the Mountain West, he says, and many of these voters are “populist with a lot of nativism,” firmly opposed to the more liberal immigration policies of key party leaders.
A solid block of Democrats who won this month — Jon Tester, James Webb, Sherrod Brown and Heath Shuler included — is inclined to put the brakes on all cross-border activity (otherwise known as globalization): trade, outsourcing and the flow of human labor. Nolan McCarty of Princeton, writing with two colleagues, has provided some empirical data supporting the argument that immigration has led “to policies that increase economic inequality.” Significant numbers within the Democratic Party agree with this reasoning.
Globalization “needs to be controlled and slowed down because of the brutal destruction and vast imbalances of wealth it causes,” Jeff Faux, a stalwart of the protectionist wing on the Democratic left, writes in Dissent magazine. “The nihilistic vision of the world as an accelerating treadmill of constant insecurity, jobs with longer hours and shorter pay ... the triumph of dog-eat-dog competition ... is a vision of hell.”
The protectionist wing will likely hold sway at least in the first few months of the 110th Congress. Over time, however, Faux and his allies are likely to fail. The forces of international competition have proved more powerful than any government, and advocates of aggressive policies to constrain them face a porous, borderless and now highly electronic international economy. Legislation can require American companies to distribute profits to workers, but it will be virtually impossible to enforce as competition razes companies playing by those rules. For the moment, Democratic chances of restoring more equal patterns in the growth of wages are bleak.
Barney Frank, representing members of the House who would like to stake out middle ground, has proposed a “grand bargain.” If corporate America agrees to equitable wages, Democrats will back free trade and eased regulations. "What we want to do is to look at public policies that’ll get some bigger share of the increased wealth into wages, and in return you’ll see Democrats as internationalists,” he said.
Even if the deal were cut, the odds are strong that the global economy would prevent American business from keeping its promise. The sooner Democrats realize that they — and, more important, their constituents — are up against a wall, the sooner they will seriously focus their attention on how to climb it.
Thomas B. Edsall holds the Pulitzer-Moore Chair at Columbia University. He is a guest columnist this month.
Photo Credit: Thomas Edsall. (Mount Holyoke College/College Street Journal)
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