Ira Chernus: Why Are So Many Americans Scared of Undocumented Immigrants?
[Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Read more of his writing on Israel, Palestine, and American Jews on his blog: http://chernus.wordpress.com.]
“The overwhelming majority of Americans think the country’s immigration policies need to be seriously overhauled.” And most Americans support Arizona’s stringent new immigration enforcement law, “even though they say it may lead to racial profiling.” That’s the finding of the latest New York Times / CBS News poll, according to the Times article summarizing the poll.
No surprise, huh? Anyone who is paying attention to the mass media probably believes that the U.S. is in a pretty ugly anti-immigrant mood.
But that belief comes more from media hype than real facts. Buried in that NYT / CBS poll (though ignored in the summary article) are these startling items:
33% of the respondents say “America should always welcome all immigrants.” Always! All! And only 21% of the poll respondents identified as liberals. Even if all of them gave this answer, it still leaves about a third of self-identified moderates wanting our nation’s doors open to anyone and everyone, all the time. That’s amazing.
Another 34% of respondents say “America should always welcome some immigrants, but not others.” Only 27% of all respondents say “America cannot afford to open its doors to any newcomers.” Back in 1994, when the nation was supposedly in a much more confident, expansive mood, only 19% wanted to welcome all immigrants, while 34% wanted no new immigrants at all....
So what border line is really at stake here? What’s the main source of public fear? Watch any TV news report on the immigration issue and you’ll have your answer in a few seconds. It’s the physical, geographical border of the United States -- the border that the camera will inevitably show immigrants (virtually always Latinos) jumping, running, tunneling, or swimming across.
Americans have not always been so worried about the integrity of their geographical borders. From the mid-19th century on into the early 20th, fear of attack from abroad waned and then virtually disappeared. In the late 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to revive that fear, he faced an uphill task. Most Americans assumed that they were physically safe from attack by foreigners.
FDR grabbed at any rhetorical tool that might swing public opinion in the opposite direction, to back his plans to resist the Nazis. Playing on the homey imagery of his “fireside chats,” he said: “We seek to keep war from our firesides by keeping war from coming to the Americas.” After the Germans conquered nearly all of western Europe, Roosevelt warned: “At no previous time has American security been as seriously threatened from without as it is today.” He treated each family’s home and the entire nation as two sides of a single sacred entity. He treated war and Nazism as two sides of a single threat to that sacred entity.
Thus Roosevelt laid the groundwork for public acceptance of the basic idea that has dominated American public life ever since: Our nation must be ever vigilant against enemies who are plotting, night and day, to cross our borders and destroy us. The name of the enemy has changed several times: first Nazis and Japs, then Commies, then terrorists.
In recent years the fear of terrorist attack from abroad has waned. Most polls that asked “What’s the most important issue facing the country?” in the last year no longer even bothered to list “terrorism” as an option. Those that did found it way down on the list. Occasional scares like the recent botched car-bomb in Times Square don’t seem to change that result.
But the question, “How can we keep our borders secure against the evil-doers?” remains a powerful element -- very possibly the fundamental element -- in American political culture. With no other threatening foreigners in sight, the illegal immigrants, who prove how porous and easily violated our borders are, become the target of choice....
Read entire article at Alternet
“The overwhelming majority of Americans think the country’s immigration policies need to be seriously overhauled.” And most Americans support Arizona’s stringent new immigration enforcement law, “even though they say it may lead to racial profiling.” That’s the finding of the latest New York Times / CBS News poll, according to the Times article summarizing the poll.
No surprise, huh? Anyone who is paying attention to the mass media probably believes that the U.S. is in a pretty ugly anti-immigrant mood.
But that belief comes more from media hype than real facts. Buried in that NYT / CBS poll (though ignored in the summary article) are these startling items:
33% of the respondents say “America should always welcome all immigrants.” Always! All! And only 21% of the poll respondents identified as liberals. Even if all of them gave this answer, it still leaves about a third of self-identified moderates wanting our nation’s doors open to anyone and everyone, all the time. That’s amazing.
Another 34% of respondents say “America should always welcome some immigrants, but not others.” Only 27% of all respondents say “America cannot afford to open its doors to any newcomers.” Back in 1994, when the nation was supposedly in a much more confident, expansive mood, only 19% wanted to welcome all immigrants, while 34% wanted no new immigrants at all....
So what border line is really at stake here? What’s the main source of public fear? Watch any TV news report on the immigration issue and you’ll have your answer in a few seconds. It’s the physical, geographical border of the United States -- the border that the camera will inevitably show immigrants (virtually always Latinos) jumping, running, tunneling, or swimming across.
Americans have not always been so worried about the integrity of their geographical borders. From the mid-19th century on into the early 20th, fear of attack from abroad waned and then virtually disappeared. In the late 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to revive that fear, he faced an uphill task. Most Americans assumed that they were physically safe from attack by foreigners.
FDR grabbed at any rhetorical tool that might swing public opinion in the opposite direction, to back his plans to resist the Nazis. Playing on the homey imagery of his “fireside chats,” he said: “We seek to keep war from our firesides by keeping war from coming to the Americas.” After the Germans conquered nearly all of western Europe, Roosevelt warned: “At no previous time has American security been as seriously threatened from without as it is today.” He treated each family’s home and the entire nation as two sides of a single sacred entity. He treated war and Nazism as two sides of a single threat to that sacred entity.
Thus Roosevelt laid the groundwork for public acceptance of the basic idea that has dominated American public life ever since: Our nation must be ever vigilant against enemies who are plotting, night and day, to cross our borders and destroy us. The name of the enemy has changed several times: first Nazis and Japs, then Commies, then terrorists.
In recent years the fear of terrorist attack from abroad has waned. Most polls that asked “What’s the most important issue facing the country?” in the last year no longer even bothered to list “terrorism” as an option. Those that did found it way down on the list. Occasional scares like the recent botched car-bomb in Times Square don’t seem to change that result.
But the question, “How can we keep our borders secure against the evil-doers?” remains a powerful element -- very possibly the fundamental element -- in American political culture. With no other threatening foreigners in sight, the illegal immigrants, who prove how porous and easily violated our borders are, become the target of choice....