ANALYSIS: A Nation of Immigrants
National ideals, local realities will be discordant partners on Monday as we celebrate MLK on the same day we inaugurate Donald Trump. Don't expect that discordance to last.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Civil rights and nonviolence both made and destroyed Martin Luther King Jr.’s reputation, whose birthday and legacy we remember today with acts of service across the country.
Immigration may well do the same to Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated today as the 47th president of the United States and is expected to fast-track mass deportations with a “shock and awe” use of power meant to shore up his image as a strong man and make his opponents cower.
What the lives of both these leaders show, however, is that the nation we occupy is far too complicated for either idealism or fear to long rule the day.
Rather, the two are in a political tug-of-war that, thus far, has kept any one group from pulling the other across the line, thereby ending the struggle.
Americans — despite the actions of extremists left and right — remain a pragmatic people, driven by a cocktail of self-interests, economic viability, commonsense politics, and a sense of fairness.
Jonathan Eig in his new biography of King described this tug-of-war as it played out between King and Malcolm X, who disagreed vehemently about the role of nonviolence in the civil rights struggle. Their disagreement — in a classically pragmatic American way — played to each other’s benefit. As Eig explained:
King made it clear that people in power had better pay attention to him if they didn’t want to deal with his more antagonistic contemporary, while Malcolm moved audiences with the reminder that their anger was justified, that their self restraint need not be eternal, that not everyone had to maintain the kind of patience practiced by King.
A Modern Tug-of-War
Those still smarting from the November elections would do well to remember Eig’s words today. And to recall a bit of recent history.
Consider what has happened nationally over the past eight years.
As Trump’s language and actions became courser and crueler during his first term, the voter backlash became more severe. In 2018, Democrats picked up 41 seats in the House of Representatives to gain a firm grip on that body; Republicans, meanwhile, lost 42.
And while Republicans held the U.S. Senate in 2018, they underperformed given that the election map was such that they were expected to pick up far more than they actually did. Democrats had to defend 25 seats that year — including two that were held by Independents who caucused with the Dems — while Republicans had only to defend 8. That Republicans gained only two seats given that advantage speaks to the level of frustration voters had with Trump.
Then in 2020, voters decisively turned on Trump.
Four years later, the tables were again turned when Americans, frustrated with what they felt were too aggressively liberal policies, returned Trump to the White House — carrying all seven so-called battleground states along the way.
Those who are salivating that beginning at noon today Trump and the Republicans will have full control of the White House, House, and Senate should restrain their optimism. Otherwise, shock and awe will quickly descend into electoral defeats.
That need not be the case if Trump can curb his crueler instincts. A column in The Economist, “Trump the Deporter,” argues that Trump is uniquely positioned to do what his five predecessors failed to do — cut a deal on immigration. “The only solution,” the writer says, however, “is a deal that combines effective border enforcement with a right to stay for law-abiding migrants.”
If he cannot, the local reality of immigration will be the undoing of his presidency.
The Immigration Test and the Local Score
Though it may feel otherwise, we still live our lives at the local level — not the national.
Whether one is consumed with Fox News or MSNBC, at the end of the day we live in a community that is incredibly diverse. And it is impossible in the 540 — indeed, in most parts of the country — to go through life unaffected by the many positive ways that immigrants, whether legal or not, positively shape our community.
For one thing, they actually create jobs for native-born Americans. Studies by both Chloe East of the University of Colorado Denver and the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that “deportations under President Barack Obama led to the loss of one native-born job for every 11 migrants thrown out of the country.”
As the article goes on to note: “‘Unauthorised immigrants do not just supply labour for a fixed demand,’ explains Michael Clemens of George Mason University, ‘they are a crucial ingredient for production.’”
Political rhetoric to the contrary, Americans seem to intuit the positive impact that immigrants have on our society. That’s reflected in another Economist piece, which said: “A majority of Democrats and a plurality of Republicans support more legal pathways. Some 61% of registered voters surveyed by Pew in April maintain that America’s openness to people from elsewhere is essential to its national character.”
How to understand the vitriol in the political world on one hand toward immigrants, and the generally positive feeling Americans seem to have for them?
It may be as simple as this. We remain a nation of immigrants. More than that, we live among immigrants, and we understand the net positives they bring to our society.
Talk with those on the frontlines of working with immigrants in our region, and a constant theme emerges.
“The immigrants I work with,” said one person who daily interacts with new families to the U.S., “want nothing from us. They just want to work.”
And work they do. Our economy depends heavily upon immigrant labor to thrive. Far from taking jobs from native-born Americans, they often work the jobs — in agriculture, construction, and in restaurants — native-born citizens don’t want.
Immigrants also tend to get in less trouble than native-born citizens — be they legal or illegal. A 2024 study from the National Institute of Justice, for example, found “that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.”
In our communities, we see this. We live with it. And, it is hoped, our understanding of our own immigrant past and our desire to see others be treated fairly keeps us from falling into the worst stereotypes that nativism thrives on.
In our darkest times, we can fall victim to hate. And when we are on top, we can delude ourselves into believing that our ideals will carry the day.
America, however, is held in tension by the two.
And it is lives lived in our local community that ultimately keep us grounded.
Memorializing King and inaugurating Trump need not unsettle our local equilibrium. It should remind us that democracy is a work in progress. Rarely perfect, sometimes expanding, other times retracting.
As King said: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Let that today, and every day, be our North Star.
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In a way, I admire Mr. Davis's Pollyanna optimism.
This idea, that no matter what wrong is performed, what right is trampled, or death created - it's no big deal.
Just one of those things. It'll be okay.
For a man who claims to be an atheist, he sure does seem to have a lot of faith.
Yet, in a more realistic way, I find it nauseating.
With him, and many like him - I can't help but wonder what it is that would make
them think differently?
Because it appears no matter what line is crossed, his solution is that if we just all bow down and look the other way - keep our blinders on and just focus on what Republicans do across the street, and pay no nevermind to what they do in Richmond, Washington, Gaza, or Greenland - it's alllllllll okay.
"Look, they showed up on my podcast and said we were friends, it's all good?"
All part of God's plan, right?
Again, weird hearing such faith and pablum coming from someone of his background. But these are indeed strange times.
And anyone who says otherwise is an extremist for worrying? Such is the state of our union.
What guarantee is there that we will have another election? As Trump fills his Cabinet and the bureaucracy with those who are loyal to him personally rather than the Constitution - who exactly is going to stop him from doing what he almost did 4 years ago? The Court? The Senate? The House? Oligarchs? Who?
Certainly not you. Right?
I swear, I never, not once, thought it would be radical to say that I am against children being tortured in our country to keep their parents from doing something, that as Mr Davis acknowledges - happens to our benefit and with our tacit consent. We hire them. Trump hires them. Republicans hire them. Democrats hire them. The majority wouldn't be here if we didn't.
Never thought it liberal to be concerned with $1000 of free money being given to every man, woman, and child at election time, with nothing to show for it except them seeing Trumps signature on the check - but the deficit got blown up anyway.
Yet here we are.
A known and prolific liar, cheat, convicted felon, assaulter of women, yada, yada, yada - and we're all supposed to pretend otherwise, or that it doesn't matter.
Keep our heads down. And somehow pretend that we still represent, in anyway, the values we say we do. To do otherwise is to be an "extremist".
If having principles other than appeasement is extreme, I'll wear that badge with honor.
Something that also seems in short supply around here now days.
I have no interest in schadenfreude, either for Trump, our nation, the world, or Mr Davis. But I cannot help but wonder should his son be harmed or die in a misadventure such as the invasion of Greenland - all in the name of Trump's glory, if that would change his tune.
As so many Republicans do or did, once they were voted out of office.
Would that be the thing to make him less indifferent? If it is him suffering rather than someone else? I hope we never find out. Truly. But I'll be the first to say that I hope we do more than hope.
Right is right, wrong is wrong. Truth is truth, a lie is a lie. They just are, no matter how much we choose to believe otherwise because it is easier.
And some of us were raised to believe that ALL men (and women) were created equal.....and in many more things based on those basic premises and promises. Not just Americans, not just those who live in the "540", but all.
A child dead in Gaza is just as dead, because Netanyahu did not want to pursue a peace plan until it benefited the Republican party - as he said.
Hard for someone like Denmark or Canada to trust us when we talk about stealing from them by force.
And even if it isn't you own kid who dies as a result of these exercises in greed, lust for power, or ego, it could be somebody's. I say they matter. As much to someone as your child does to you. They should matter to all of us.
That's the tension. Between those who only serve themselves, and those who see us a whole.
And right now, we are out of balance. Not from being too kind, but too cruel. Not too visionary, but looking down too hard. Scared to see reality. It may be safer, it may be easier, it is not wiser.
Pretending otherwise is not a solution. So I don't believe I will just keep my head down and hope for the best. I cannot. I will not. Even if I'm the only one who doesn't. Though I suspect I am not.
So while I cannot hope for the eloquence of Zola when he saw a wrong to say "J' Accuse...", I can, with equal determination say,
"I refuse."
"... Americans, frustrated with what they felt were too aggressively liberal policies, returned Trump to the White House."
Are we sure this was the motivation for the majority of voters, rather than inflation and concerns about Biden's age, anger about not getting to have a primary to pick Harris, etc.?