The Republicans’ Hispanic Delusion

Amnesty is not just wrong in principle, it’s bad politics

Heather Mac Donald brings us this article in City Journal in which she points out that Republicans are operating under a false assumption if they think that a massive new influx of Hispanic immigrants will somehow increase the numbers in the Republican party. The facts are otherwise. As demonstrated in California, there is little evidence to think that Mexican immigrants who are poorly educated and lower class will suddenly discover the wisdom of Rand, Hayek and von Mises when it comes to economics. Nor are they going to start reading The Federalist Papers anytime soon.

Indeed, one can't help but think that there is a false and unspoken assumption here about immigrants generally. Many people around the globe can see that America is a country that is wealthy and successful. And many people want to come here as a result of our economic success. But it is a mistake to believe, as many in the Republican leadership apparently do, that just because you want to come here, that you automatically understand the reasons why America has become the economic powerhouse that it is.

In my own personal experience I have met many Russian immigrants, for example, who when I question them, demonstrate that they have no real clue about the underlying free market principles that have made this country's progress possible. These Russians have instead brought all of their old intellectual baggage with them from their home country and thus do not see the cause and effect relationship between the ideas of liberty and economic freedom on the one hand, and the astounding level of America's economic progress on the other. They know that they are richer here than they were at home, but they have no understanding of the reasons for the difference, or even that there are underlying reasons at all. To them it an inexplicable mystery. As Rand would have said, to them it is as if America's wealth is a fact of nature, not to be explained or even investigated.

Thus, an individual who has been brought up in an atmosphere of soft Socialism or Marxism, which is so prevalent elsewhere around the globe, will be unlikely to develop a sudden interest in free market economics or the philosophy of liberty to which they have not previously been exposed. And this is even more true for those with little or no education. Republicans in the leadership who think otherwise have not spent enough time thinking through the implications of their assumptions or looking at the factual evidence at hand. Had they done so, they would not hold the views on this issue that they do, and they would not be so impatient to inject hordes of uneducated people with socialist sympathies into our system who are unlikely to understand our way of life, or maintain our country's institutions for future generations.