In sending National Guard troops on to the streets of Los Angeles, in support of efforts to arrest illegal immigrants for the purpose of deporting them, Donald Trump has done what he likes doing best. He’s implementing an explicit election promise, acting lawfully, deploying the awesome power of the US government, and intensely, perhaps dangerously, polarising US society and politics.
Trump couldn’t have been clearer at the presidential election that he would enforce US borders and deport large numbers of those in the US illegally, that is, without valid visas. Those who regard this as inherently wicked Trumpery should remember Barack Obama deported more people than Trump did in his first term.
Obama’s homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, proudly announced that in fiscal year 2010 the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency had deported just shy of 400,000 people. More than half had no criminal convictions.
The Obama administration also took tough action against businesses that knowingly employed illegal aliens. Napolitano declared: “This administration has focused on enforcing our immigration laws in a smart, effective manner that prioritises public safety and national security, and holds employers accountable who knowingly and repeatedly break the law.”
So it’s OK if Obama does it, but a crime against humanity crying to heaven for vengeance if Trump does it.
Of course, this is a really thorny, difficult issue. Illegal immigration has become one of the great defining issues all across Western politics. Keir Starmer in Britain says that, like the British public, he is angry at the number of people arriving in Britain illegally by boat. The problem is that if his government, just like the previous government, tries to deport anyone, they are effectively prevented first by the British courts themselves, then by the European courts.
Anthony Albanese, leading a Labor government in Australia, continues Coalition policies designed to make sure no one who arrives in Australia illegally by boat gets to stay here permanently under any circumstances.
However, the irregular immigration route to Australia has now moved to the air. It’s not illegal immigration, exactly. People arrive legally but then claim asylum or whatever. Of course there might be some question over whether in every case they honestly applied for the tourist visas.
Let’s pause for a second to consider the ethics of immigration, and illegal immigration. I have always been in favour of immigration, for many reasons. Provided the host society has a good sense of its own identity, laws, legitimacy and ethics, it can offer a wonderful new life to immigrants. Both those arriving, and those receiving, are enriched.
But it’s also the case that not all immigration is equal. If a society welcomes Albert Einstein, that has a different consequence from welcoming Adolf Hitler. So any national government has to exercise prudence in immigration policy. It’s not logical to be in favour of, or opposed to, all immigration in all circumstances.
A rich society should be generous, wanting both to share and enlarge national wealth. But it also should pursue immigration at a rate it can absorb, economically and socially. And it must be in control of the process. The immigration program has to be worked out by the government and implemented according to law. Only in the most extreme cases, of warfare or acute persecution happening right next door, in which case people fleeing across borders might need to be accommodated, are any of these principles legitimately breached.
Part of the crisis in Western politics today is that illegal immigration has run completely beyond the control of democratic politics. This is now a deep crisis in all Western politics. Western electorates vote repeatedly to control illegal immigration but to very little effect.
The conventional centre-left has essentially taken a lawless approach to the issue, while non-democratic institutions have elevated their own conception of morality above the rule of law. The presidency of Joe Biden was a fantastic contrast to that of Obama in its approach to asserting legitimate control of US borders.
Biden, whose presidency was feckless, confused and startlingly ineffective except in ways that it never meant to be effective, virtually abandoned the notion that the US had the right to determine its immigration intake. Not only did the southern border collapse, but enforcement of immigration law within the US fell apart.
This was one of the most important issues in getting Trump elected to the presidency a second time. However, the left more generally, in the US, Europe and Australia, moved against any kind of coherent immigration policy and control. Thus in the US we saw the movement of so-called sanctuary cities. These are Democrat-controlled cities that simply refuse to co-operate with federal government agencies in policing immigration control and enforcement.
This kind of movement is not based on genuine compassion and is profoundly anti-democratic. If the democratic left wants a more generous immigration program it should campaign for one politically and try to change government policy.
Anyone who wants to remember what politics should be like would be well advised to watch the movie Reagan, which stars Dennis Quaid. The producers made poor decisions to try to reconstruct Quaid’s face to look like Ronald Reagan, and used technology to allow an older Quaid to play a younger Reagan. These are ghastly decisions. But they did one very smart thing. They incorporated many actual remarks that Reagan made in his public life into the film.
One of the most important came in 1969, when Reagan, as governor of California, called out the National Guard to restore order amid student unrest at Berkeley. Reagan blasted the university administrators for giving in to the idea that students get to choose which laws they must obey and which ones they can ignore.
The movement of sanctuary cities, and the tendency for the Democrats in Trump’s first administration to sanctify and excuse the lawlessness and violence of certain demonstrations – in particular Black Lives Matter demonstrations but others as well – was effectively a large chunk of society deciding to choose which laws to obey.
Ordinary people hate this. They rebel against it either by electing more determined, and sometimes pretty crude, politicians such as Trump, or by themselves losing commitment to obeying laws. During the latest disturbances California Governor, Gavin Newsom and LA mayor Karen Bass, while routinely denouncing Trump, have told demonstrators they must behave peacefully. They know the politics of this issue has changed.
The long history of American institutions eroding means there are well over 12 million illegal aliens in the US. Surely Trump can’t deport them all. Yet if you don’t have a visa, a lawful authority to live in the US, that is the legitimate legal outcome.
Trump’s feud with Elon Musk indicates the contradictions and difficulties in his coalition. But on enforcing immigration law, Trump has the people with him. Yet this could well become a very ugly conflict.
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