Penguin.com (usa)

Henry George, who would later become an influential political economist, first gained prominence denouncing what he called the “Mongolization of America.” In 1881, George wrote of “the supreme law of self-preservation which justifies us in shutting out a non-assimilable element fraught for us with great social and political dangers.” He warned that Asians “will introduce into the life of the republic race prejudices and social bitterness.” He said they would “reduce wages and degrade labor, and widen the gulf between rich and poor.” And like today's nativists, George was concerned that “the Chinese, if free play be allowed their immigration, [will] supplant the white race.”

Slouching Toward Guatemala?

Modern-day restrictionists either don't know this history or are hoping the public doesn't know it. But what's most relevant about these time-honored arguments is that those spouting them have a perfect record of being wrong. Immigration alarmism sells books and boosts TV and radio ratings, but its doomsday scenarios never seem to come to fruition.

Elite thinkers today continue to insist that U.S. culture is slouching toward Guatemala. In his 2004 book Who Are We? Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington writes that “contemporary immigration is unprecedented in American history” and that “the experience and lessons of past immigration have little relevance to understanding its dynamics and consequences.” As far as Huntington is concerned, the historical record should have little bearing on immigration public policy decisions going forward. Curious notion, that.

The immigration issue is the fool's gold of American politics. Voters like to sound off to pollsters about it, yet they inevitably pull the lever on Election Day with other matters foremost in mind. Elections seldom if ever turn on immigration, and the GOP restrictionist message so adored by talk radio, cable news, and the blogosphere once again failed to deliver the goods in 2006, when the Republicans lost control of the House and Senate.

Worse, the GOP had made “securing the border” a loud national theme in the run-up to the 2006 election, only to do nothing about it save for approving for a few hundred miles of fence along a two-thousand-mile border. Republicans thus managed to highlight either their fecklessness in failing to do something about an allegedly urgent problem or their cynicism in raising the issue at all.

The GOP has a long history of fumbling immigration. And President George W. Bush, a former border-state governor who knows the issue well, has tried to steer conservatism and Republicanism away from repeating those mistakes with Hispanics, who are the country's fastest-growing voting bloc. Mr. Bush doesn't want his party to lose Latinos the way its xenophobic message in the early twentieth century turned away Irish, Italian, and Asian voters for decades.