Migrant caravan rides to Donald Trump’s rescue

Prospect of several thousand poor migrants committed to setting up home in the US has alarmed voters and energised Republicans.

Supporters cheer Donald Trump at a rally in Houston.

If the Russians handed the Republican Party the 2016 US election, are the Hondurans about to repeat the trick in 2018? Two years ago, if you believe the Democrats and most of the media, it was nefarious activity by Moscow (with or without collusion from the Trump campaign, the search for the proof of which continues) that swung the election. This time, it seems, another foreign intervention, albeit less wittingly, may be contributing to the Republican cause.

For the past week the nation’s attention has been riveted by the spectacle of several thousand indigenes escaping the ineffable misery and terror of life in central American republics, making their way north, destined, they hope, for a better existence in the United States.

Whatever you think of their plight it’s hard not to see this caravan of modern magi as bearing a bounty of potentially valuable electoral gifts for President Trump.

The midterm elections, in which all the seats in the House of Representatives and one third of those in the Senate are up for grabs, are fewer than two weeks away. Even allowing for the usual hyperbole there is no doubt the stakes are high.

If Democrats take control of the House, any prospect of more legislation from Mr Trump’s hyperactive administration - on taxes, healthcare, regulatory reform, or elsewhere - will disappear: More importantly, the Democratic majority will have its hands on levers of power that it will use to subject Mr Trump, his family and associates to that most excruciating of modern political tortures, investigation by congressional committee. Expect everything up to and including a serious attempt at impeachment, accompanied by investigations and backed by the subpoena power Congress possesses, into Mr Trump’s campaign and his business history, in an exercise that will make Inspector Javert look like PC Plod.

Central American migrants use a piece of plastic as covering as they sleep on a sidewalk in Huixtla, Mexico. Picture: AP.

The Democrats entered this election with a large advantage in the battle for the House (currently controlled by Republicans). Of the 40 or so competitive seats, all but a couple are held by Republicans, many in districts that were won by Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. But a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll published this week shows the battleground tightening. Mr Trump’s approval ratings are the highest of his presidency. The Senate, always a tall order for Democrats, now looks well out of reach, thanks in part to a sense that Democrats overdid their aggressive attempts to block the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Yet this poll and others continue to show the Democrats holding on to an advantage in the House.

Enter the caravan. The prospect of several thousand poor immigrants committed to breaching the border and setting up home in America has alarmed voters and energised Republicans in border states and elsewhere. Mr Trump’s tough-on-immigration stance has been a hallmark of his presidency and he lost no time in seizing this gift horse and saddling it up with his usual rhetorical excesses. He has threatened to use the military to block the border and claimed, without evidence, that the caravan contains dangerous “unknown Middle Easterners”. If you peer beyond the immediate outrage, the president may once again be exhibiting a certain political genius, not through his lies but by identifying a larger truth.

For the past few years, immigration and an encroaching sense that borders are being erased by migrants from violence-ridden countries, has been the most powerful element driving voters towards populist, nationalist parties and positions in the US and Europe.

The opening for this insurgency has been provided by a political establishment that at times seems, with its well-intentioned calls to humanitarian leniency, to embrace open borders. From Germany to Brussels to Washington, they’ve gone farther and condemned belief in controlled immigration as racist. Joe Biden, the 75-year-old former vice president who is pondering a presidential run in 2020, said at a campaign stop this week that Republicans were promoting a racist approach “because that’s who they are”.

This widening political divide within the West is rooted in part in an economic and cultural gap. Tolerance of mass immigration for the metropolitan elites is not only a high-minded statement of humanitarian belief. In so far as they have much direct interaction with poor immigrants, for these groups migration works largely to their benefit - a steady supply of cheap labour to keep their gardens green, their children supervised and just the right amount of vanilla syrup in their five-dollar latte.

But for many other Americans or Europeans the benefits of immigration are less obvious. They can’t afford to hire migrants. Instead they must deal daily with the challenges of wage-suppressing labour competition, increased pressure on public services and, in many cases, elevated levels of crime. These groups are more likely to see the diversification associated with high levels of migration as a challenge to their way of life and culture.

They look at the divergent demographic trends - rapid population growth in violent, fractured, low-income countries to the south, with stagnating population growth in their own countries - and wonder how many immigrants may join the caravan north.

This sentiment and these trends, and the seeming indifference of political establishments, is animating the new nationalism around the world. Whether the border is the Rio Grande, the English Channel or the Mediterranean, the nationalists seem to be winning.

The Times