American Nationalism - It's Scary

Twitter data shows that the number of Republican lawmakers tweeting about immigration has risen sharply since Trump’s election. Across 156 official Twitter accounts of Republican lawmakers and tens of thousands of tweets, the analysis identified 1,409 posts in the first nine months of 2018 which included immigration-related terms and phrases such as “immigrant,” “build the wall” or “border.” That’s a nearly 80 percent increase from 795 posts in the same months of 2017 and more than triple the number from the same period in 2016. Some linked immigrants to threats of violence against Americans. Republican lawmakers are largely preaching to the converted: 77 percent of Republican likely voters in a Sept. 8-17 survey said they supported policies to deport more illegal immigrants. An equal number backed building a wall on the southern border.

Trump’s nationalist tone echoes sentiments rising in parts of Europe since the arrival in 2015 of more than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and beyond. The anti-immigration rhetoric, advertisements and campaign events, combined with the party’s embrace of Trump’s immigration crackdown, represent a dramatic evolution of Republicanism under Trump. Anti-immigration themes now dominate the party. In 2013, the Senate passed an immigration bill with bipartisan support, a significant portion of the Republican Party backed immigration reform – including a path to citizenship for some of the 12 million people living in the United States illegally. But those voices have been mostly silenced since the rise of Trump, drowned out by his statements decrying “amnesty for illegals” and “chain migration,” his term for the longstanding U.S. policy that allows legal immigrants to bring family members into the country. Twenty-three percent of Republicans said this month immigration was the “most important problem” facing the country, up from 4 percent in January 2012.

In races from Florida to California, in border states and ones with few immigrants, Republicans have poured millions of dollars into advertising that depict illegal immigrants as criminals and vowed enthusiastic support for Trump’s proposed wall at the Mexican border, Reuters shows.  20 percent of pro-Republican ads in congressional races have cited immigration, according to an analysis of broadcast advertising data through Oct. 15. That’s up from 8 percent in the same period of the 2014 congressional elections and 5 percent in the 2010 races. Spending on Republican ads that mention immigration has more than doubled to $62.4 million this year from the 2014 elections and has quadrupled since the 2010 races.  Immigration ad spending has also surged in state-level races. (Kantar Media/CMAG estimated earlier this month that total political ad spending for broadcast television would rise to $2.7 billion this year from $2.1 billion in 2014.)

In Indiana, only about 5 percent of the state’s residents are immigrants, compared with 13.6 percent in the United States as a whole. But in the last two months, nearly a third of television ads sponsored or partially sponsored by Braun have mentioned immigration, said Michael Franz, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, a nonpartisan group tracking televised political advertising. In Indiana, the state’s Republicans have made a journey that mirrors that of the national party. In 2006, Republican legislators pushed a plan in the state legislature that would deny public health services to immigrants who had entered the country illegally. As the far-right Tea Party movement rose in the Republican Party in 2010, resentment toward immigration increased throughout the state. When a new immigration-related bill came before Indiana lawmakers in 2011, they passed it, granting police the authority to detain people suspected of being illegal immigrants. In 2015, Pence, then Indiana’s governor, signed an order that aimed to block Syrian refugees from coming to Indiana. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump returned frequently to Indiana. At nearly every rally, he hit hard at illegal immigration, reprising crimes committed by people in the country illegally. “Raped, sodomized and killed,” he said at a rally in South Bend on May 2, 2016. “This is all over the country. We’re not taking it any more.”

A number of Republican ads link illegal immigrants to crime, but statistics paint a more nuanced picture. While people in the United States illegally have in some instances committed high-profile crimes, multiple studies – including ones from conservative groups like the Cato Institute - have found that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans.

In sparsely populated Montana, almost 90 percent of the population is white and illegal immigrants are estimated to number only in the few thousands. Voter Sandy Shumaker says she was ignorant about how illegal immigration was affecting the country before listening to Trump.  She echoed concerns about illegal immigrants voting for Democrats, as Trump has claimed without proof, and that Americans are being taken advantage of.

“Trump has remade the Republican Party into a blood and soil national political party that is hostile to immigration,” said Steve Schmidt, a former Republican political consultant. He left the party in June in part because of the policy of separating mothers and children at the southern border. Schmidt said the country’s growing Hispanic population ultimately will render the immigration issue “a death knell for the Republican Party.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-election-immigration-specialrepor/special-report-how-republicans-are-using-immigration-to-scare-voters-to-the-polls-idUKKCN1N0186