Promising to crack down on illegal immigration, House Speaker William Howell and other senior Republicans announced a series of reforms two days ago such as ending in-state tuition rates for illegals at public colleges. Not rounding up the illegals and sending them home, mind you. Not denying them admittance to public universities. Just denying them the in-state rate reserved for legal residents of Virginia.
None of the House proposals struck me as “over the top.” (Read yesterday’s post here.) Of course, that may be because I’m one of those awful, bigoted “white males” the House leadership and Jerry Kilgore are pandering to in the hopes of motivating me to vote for Kilgore in the gubernatorial election.
Read the responses to my post. They’re more interesting than the post itself. What strikes me is that there is little effort to argue against the merits of the proposals themselves. The criticism of the House initiative varies in tenor but follows a common theme: The crackdown on illegal immigrants (illegal, mind you, not legal immigrants) is a nativist, if not downright racist, election gambit to rile up the white bubbas against the brown-skinned newcomers and get them to the polls on Tuesday.
Assuredly, there is an element of political calculation in the Kilgore campaign. Republicans have this funny thing about “law and order,” and Kilgore is appealing to it. But I have seen no evidence to suggest that the appeal of the illegal-immigration issue is an ethnic or racial one. If someone can present me evidence, then I will be all ears. But who needs evidence? Among many people, there is simply the presumption of racism. No evidence needed. Guilty until proven innocent, racist until proven otherwise.
The evidence that exists indicates that ethnicity and race are not behind the House legislative initiative. Speaker Howell couldn’t have been more clear in his speech in Springfield the other day: The issue is the rule of law, not ethnicity, race or immigration. “We are a nation of immigrants and better for it,” he said. “Our national character is not centered around any one religious denomination. Neither is it based upon any one ethnic group our race.” I could go on, as he did, but you get the message.
What the “racism, racism, racism” trope tells me is that those opposed to the Republican initiatives have nothing constructive to say on the subject. By labeling Republicans as nativists, racists and hypocrites, they are saying, in essence, that the Republican position is entirely irrational and that the problem of illegal immigration is a fabricated one. Yet that position is untenable. Even Tim Kaine concedes that illegal immigration is a problem. He just doesn’t want to do anything about it. He blames the federal government, and says the feds should solve it.
But illegal immigration is a unavoidably a state/local problem when illegal immigrants apply for food stamps, seek medical care and attend overcrowded, fiscally stressed schools. These problems cannot be fobbed onto the federal government. The problems are inherently local, and they’re real. They aren’t racist fantasies. And Virginia has to find a way to deal with them.
I don’t pretend to know the answers — the issues are complex. Illegal immigrants are embedded in our society, and they do play a significant role in our economy. I know a lot of immigrants, some of them probably illegal. Once you get to know someone as a person — with hopes and fears, children to care for, out-of-work relatives back in the old country, elderly parents who can’t afford health care — it’s hard to take the attitude, “ship ’em back home!” I’m not saying that the House came up with the right answers, but I do think they are tackling important issues — and I think it’s wrong to stigmatize those who would try to address those issues by characterizing them as racists.
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