New Culture War
By DAVID BROOKS
The conventional view is that an angry band of conservative activists driven by nativism and economic insecurity is killing immigration reform. But this view is wrong in almost every respect.
In the first place, immigration is not now, nor has it ever been a primarily partisan issue. A Pew Research Center poll released last week found that 36 percent of Republicans support the bill, along with 33 percent of Democrats and 31 percent of independents. That’s hardly a party-line chasm. . . In the second place, immigration attitudes have never dovetailed neatly with racist or nativist ones. Hostility to immigration often increases in periods when racist attitudes are on the decline.
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David Brooks Immigration Politics Nativism News Racism Angry White Men Multiculturalism Assimilation English Only Bush