No toughness on immigration without fairness

Willie Horton is now an immigrant.

You’ll recall, in 1988 Willie Horton was the Black man weaponized to help defeat Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis.

No doubt there were plenty of white predators also, but George H.W. Bush wanted you to know that, under Massachusetts Gov. Dukakis, a scary Black man released from prison on furlough raped a white woman and bound and stabbed her boyfriend.

This racially charged story helped the Republican candidate win the presidential election. 

Stoking white fears about people who don’t look like them is a longstanding  GOP tactic. 

In 2024 Horton is back, this time in the form of stories about immigrants who come to this country to murder and rape.

Immigrants cherry-picked for the role are featured in ads for Donald Trump. The ads  present the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, as weak, dangerous and totally responsible for an immigrant “invasion.”

The consensus is that these ads are false or misleading.

The border is not in crisis. Border-crossing numbers are down. Immigrants’ contribution to crime is negligible. Their contribution to our economy is immense. They come because Americans hire them. Going through the U.S. immigration process is nigh impossible for those who would prefer to come legally. 

So the claims are bogus but highly effective. 

Americans cite immigration as one of their top concerns. And ex-prosecutor Harris has reacted by emphasizing her tough-on-crime bona fides.

There is a better answer. I listened for it during the Democratic National Convention recently in Chicago.

In what was, even with some stumbles, a superb farewell speech, President Joe Biden, came close. 

Biden  said that Trump killed the strongest bipartisan immigration bill ever crafted in the Senate. Importantly, he added, reform ahead must include protections for Dreamers and other immigrants. 

Great, but I’m mindful that Biden earlier this year caved to the GOP rhetoric and issued an executive order on asylum that many believe is both immoral and illegal.

I also listened to  the words from a daughter of immigrants, Harris.

 “I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. We can create an earned pathway to citizenship—and secure our border,” she said.

I get it. When the other side is scaring the bejesus out of Americans with visions of foreign rapists and murderers, Democrats think they have to sound tough. Hence words like “secure” when it comes to the border and that word, “earned,” before “pathway to citizenship.”

These are intended to convey toughness. My fear is that our current moment in immigration will flavor the kind of immigration reform we get. In the interest of compromise to get something – anything – done, reform will not be enough about the changes that make our policies humane and practical for the economy and immigrants, but about a show of strength that is better politics than policy.

Too many have embraced the implication of the Trump ads: These relatively rare instances when immigrants commit crimes represent all brown immigrants. Be afraid.

No harm for brown people generally? Ask a Black man how years of pernicious stereotypes have affected him. 

There is a better way and it must involve fairness above all else. 

That includes a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who have been here for years – toiling to prop up the U.S. economy and paying taxes into a social safety net system they can never access, while fearing that deportation will tear  them from their families and means of support.

“Pathway” has recently been changed  to that fighting word “amnesty.”

OK, let’s fight.

Amnesty involves forgiveness. There is nothing to forgive. Being compelled to be here by root problems in countries of origin does not require forgiveness. There’s also no doubt that many immigrant workers who have been here for years have already “earned” a right to that pathway.

I’d rather Democrats get tough by unabashedly disavowing racist policies that are all about  optics but not substance.

I did hear some of that kind of pushback at the convention but a lot of it was couched in toughness. 

Yes, I know that immigration  reform is more likely to happen under Democratic leadership. But that it already hasn’t is part of the reason that Latinos in particular feel taken for granted.

Democrats cannot let our new Willie Horton dictate what reform looks like. Fairness above all.

I expect nothing less than from the daughter of immigrants.