There Is No Immigration Crisis questioned the appropriate policy and politics for Democrats to pursue in the immigration debate while asking whether a true crisis exists. Writing in The Atlantic, Peter Beinart pointed out that it was primarily immigration issues that led to President Trump’s election.
To support his argument, published on June 27, Beinart referred to James S. Sherman Professor of Government Philip Klinkner’s research using the American National Election Study in which Klinkner determined that Trump outperformed Mitt Romney among voters with negative views of undocumented immigrants. Beinart wrote, “And, crucially, Trump did no worse among voters with positive views. In Klinkner’s words, ‘Trump won in 2016 by mobilizing the minority of Americans with anti-immigration views—but only because he avoided an offsetting counter-mobilization by the majority of Americans with pro-immigration views.’”
Professor of Economics Paul Hagstrom’s research on refugees was highlighted in an article on the CNBC news site. Titled Despite Trump’s draconian policies, refugees continue boosting New York’s Rust Belt economy, the July 10 story showcased how refugees have helped revitalize Utica’s Rust Belt economy as “more than 16,000 refugees from Bosnia and about 30 other troubled nations have settled in Utica over the last four decades.”
In addressing the benefits of Utica’s refugee population, Hagstrom said, “The primary fiscal benefits accruing from refugees stems from their participation in labor markets (and therefore consumption of local goods) and real estate markets. Direct benefits are derived from sales and property taxes, while indirect benefits accrue through positive effects on local real estate markets.”
An op-ed titled Can Trump's slow-motion ethnic cleansing keep whites in U.S. majority?, appearing on the Philadelphia Inquirer news site on July 12, pointed to “anxiety over whites becoming a minority in the United States by the middle of the century” as the reason behind “wars that President Trump and his hard-line right-wing zealot advisers like Stephen Miller are waging.”
The author used Klinkner’s research to show that “concern over immigration and racial resentment were much bigger drivers for Trump voters than anxiety over jobs or the economy. ... While 58 percent of 2012 Mitt Romney voters wanted to limit all immigration — legal or illegal — that number spiked to 74 percent for Trump voters. ‘Trump won in 2016,’ Klinkner wrote recently, ‘by mobilizing the minority of Americans with anti-immigration views.’”
