Dan Ancona
Getting Immigration Very, Very Wrong
There are two recent polls on immigration that, while commissioned by ostensibly-progressive groups, both read like they were commissioned by conservative groups. These polls represent an ongoing failure of leadership opn this issue. The assumptions and policy directions these polls imply would be disastrous for hard-working immigrants and the current middle class. They are also a roadmap to electoral carnage for individual candidates and any political party should it widely adopt these positions and language.
This weekend's defeat of an anti-immigrant demagogue in former Republican Speaker Denny Hastert's district illustrates the danger and opportunity here. Not all foes of a diverse society will be quite as stunningly hypocritical as the loser of this election, who managed to employ undocumented workers as he was scapegoating them for general economic woes during his last election. But clearly, there are better and worse ways to talk about this issue.
The first of the wrong-direction polls was a Carvillle/Greenberg Democracy Corps poll from December 07, titled Winning the Immigration Issue. The use of the word "Winning" here maybe be confusing to the political neophyte. This is "winning" in the traditional corporate-centrist sense of the word. It refers to "the political act of coming up with any old story on an issue that can't be thought through while attempting to change the subject." Less is known about the second poll; it was leaked to the Huffington Post earlier this week and apparently commissioned by the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and the Center for American Progress. Since so little is known about the shadowy CCIR/CAP ambush poll, it stands to reason it's as a bad or worse than the DemCorps' birdcage liner, so the rest of this analysis will lump them together. (If those who commissioned or ran either poll would like to clarify anything around this, they are most welcome to do so in the comments below or via email.)
These two polls reek of a baseline mortal fear of this issue, which seems to have been engendered of the roughly 20% of the citizenry that has followed Lou Dobbs over the cliff and become completely unhinged over this issue. They are a colossal mistake - not just a step in the wrong direction, but a turbo-powered slingshot in the wrong direction. They are miles from even the vaguest sense of a moral center. They may be the worst political advice offered to candidates from anywhere on the political map in recent memory. Any political party that attempts to capitalize this language for short-term political gain is facing a demographic wall of doom that will be upon them sooner rather than later.
To start to understand the electoral, economic and moral dimensions to how flawed this research truly is, a little background is required. First, keep in mind how voters make decisions about who to vote for. From the Rockridge Institute's Thinking Points, Chapter One: it's values, connection, authenticity and trust. Issues do play a role; campaign narratives can turn on them. But how a candidate talks about the issues matters more. When leaders speak from their moral center, voters respond.
Second, consider this framework for understanding progressives and conservatives, based on but slightly different from the Lakoff model:
Conservatives are mainly about1) maintaining and enforcing moral orders and
2) the kind of freedom that comes from property rights.while progressives are basically about
1) strengthening interdependence & mutual responsibility and
2) expanding substantial freedom
(Substantial freedom is, roughly, all the other kinds of freedom beyond property rights, starting with cognitive freedom.) There are a number of benefits to this framework. For one, it doesn't rely on confusing family metaphors. Second, it doesn't do a disservice to either side. On some level it's perfectly reasonable to make maintaining moral orders a political priority. It has certain ramifications for society, most of which seem to have not been thought through, but on the surface at least it's not an unreasonable thing to want. Ditto for property rights freedom. It seems great, up until the point where your society starts making fancy cars a higher priority than paying teachers a wage they can live on.
Consider the words of one candidate running for high office that isn't afraid to speak from a moral center on this:
We need to sit down as Americans and recognize [immigrants] are God's children as well. And they need some protection under the law; they need some of our love and compassion.
Who said this - some latte-drinking, birkenstock-wearing, sushi-eating urban liberal. Right?
Nope. It was John McCain.
With that background in mind, there are three categories of problems with the approach these polls take: gaping distance from the progressive moral center, misunderstanding of how to communicate with voters, and a lack of courage on challenging outright falsehoods.
Wrong on principle. Since progressivism is not a rigid ideology, but instead a flexible tissue of principles and ideals, progressives have many individualized moral centers. But one commonly shared and deeply resonant center is that of interdependence, the state of being both independent and connected. As MLK put it, "we are all woven into a single garment of destiny."
Acknowledgment of this valuing of interdependence seems utterly absent from this research approach. The authors of these studies are clearly aware of the options they have in how to approach the issue:
As you will see in this report, voters want to know first, that leaders ‘get it’ – that they share their common sense frustration with the problem and second, that they will act against employers, on the borders and on government programs to get things under control. But most in the broad public hold positive views of the new immigrants and will support an inclusive American response, including a path to citizenship for the responsible, tax-paying and law-abiding – if they believe first that America has acted to get this national problem under control.
Of these two large choices, the framers of this study choose only the former, the enforcement and authoritarian direction. Instead of focusing on arguments to bring people together around this issue, they strengthen conservative, authoritarian frames by focusing nearly exclusively on this:
Tougher enforcement, therefore, is a key starting point in a Democratic plan... The country is ready to support a party that really solves the problems that have left America hobbled.
Progressives don't see a country "hobbled": we see the beginnings of a vibrant, inclusive multi-ethnic society. One with a long way to go, for sure, but we aren't hobbled by our diversity. We are strengthened by it.
As the DMI Immigration and the Middle Class studies have clearly shown, the presence of a huge, unregulated, easily-exploitable labor pool right below the middle class on the economic ladder isn't good for anyone. It's not good for the immigrants, because they're being exploited, it's not good for the working and middle class, because they have less security, and it's not good for the folks doing the exploiting, because it slowly corrodes their souls. The first guiding principle is that "Immigration policy should bolster — not undermine — the critical contribution that immigrants make to our economy as workers, entrepreneurs, taxpayers and consumers." These polls don't help us understand how to better make that argument, they're running from it.
And for the trillionth immigration poll in a row, there's not a word about what the economic situations that cause migration are or how we might as a country address those circumstances. Nothing about NAFTA. Nothing about encouraging Mexico to invest in it's people. Nothing about solidarity. Nothing about strengthening a global labor movement similar to the one that built the middle-class here. This is a failure not just of leadership but of imagination.
Wrong on effective leadership and communication When conservatives do in-depth issue-based polling like this, the entire focus is on how to shift public opinion towards the conservative line: what are the best arguments, word choices and underlying mental structures that keep opinion either in place or open for movement. One of the ways they do this is through the consideration of Overton's window, a way of categorizing ideas as they move through public discourse. The steps ideas take are often stated as "Unthinkable, radical, acceptable, sensible, popular, policy."
The true purpose of political research is not to win elections: it's to figure out how to move ideas through this process. Winning elections is simply a byproduct of successfully propagating ideas.
Republican pollster, strategist and wordsmith Frank Luntz understands this perfectly. From his book Words that Work:
"The assumptions implicit in a polling question about policy also govern the answers it generates."
Memo to Mr. Greenberg, Mr. Carville, and the staff of CCIR and CAP: re-read that sentence until it makes sense. Maybe we can make a little plaque for the wall of your war room; it can hang next to the one that says "it's the economy, stupid." Here's the example that Mr. Luntz is discussing:
...in the mid-1990s, a majority of Americans (55 percent) said that emergency room care "should not be given" to illegal aliens. Yet only 38 percent said it should be "denied" to them. The difference in response is attributable to the difference in assumptions.
Additionally, there's a difference between issues that are good for running on and those that are for governing. Drivers licenses for undocumented workers are the perfect example of this; it's a common-sense law and order issue, and while they're ought to be a constituency for it, there isn't. So don't run on it, and fix the underlying problems. That's leadership.
Wrong on the facts. Last, these polls seem to take several untruths and use them as starting points for making the case for more blathering on about enforcement, rather than as the fact-free assertions they are. For example:
"The view that immigrants take more than they contribute is most pronounced among some key demographic segments, including senior citizens and men with no more than a high school education. In congressional battleground districts, a clear majority (54 to 36 percent) believes immigrants take more from the country than they give."
There's been a disturbing recent turn of events in American society, where facts seem to have become even more discardable than usual. The email smears on Obama are another result of the same basic dynamic.
Fear seems to amplify the rate at which people discard facts in favor of whatever they want to hear. It's unclear whether democracy can function in the absence of facts. Telling the truth is part of it, but it's not simply about laying out facts: it has to be about creating a worldview. Narratives, principles and frames are all part of this. But these polls are worthless for establishing any of these.
For a starting point on how to get smart about this issue, look at NDN's latest in their Hispanics Rising series. Lack of an solid and clear progressive narrative about the economy makes it much harder to tell this story. Absent a narrative about why the economy has been so bad for so long for so many people, it's easy for the blamers to start pointing fingers.
The "progressive" groups that funded these studies need to think harder about whether the enforcement-everywhere authoritarian approach to immigration is truly going to do anything help build a functioning multi-ethnic society. These polls should be scrapped and replaced by research that's going to help us map out how get from where we are to where we need to go.
Posted at 7:07 AM, Mar 11, 2008 in Immigration | Progressive Agenda | Permalink | Comments (8)
Comments
Either this post needs to be clearer or it's just wrong-headed. As I read it, you object to two polls: the CAP and the Carville. I've read through the links and cannot understand precisely what it is you object to.
Do you object to the polling data? Do you think those polls produced outcomes which inaccurately measure people's views of immigration? If so, I do not understand the basis of your claim that they are inaccurate.
Do you object to the political conclusions suggested by the pollsters? I take it that the pollsters are advising Democrats to take a tougher line on immigration if they want to win votes & elections this cycle. Is that wrong advice? Why? Does the polling data suggest Democrats should take a softer line on immigration?
I believe divisive anti-immigrant campaigning by progressives is a blind alley but I am not certain that that is what these polls themselves are suggesting. As I read them, the polls suggest that immigration issues present a serious election challenge for progressives and recognition of that challenge is essential. As I read the data, the complex task facing progressive candidates is to engage people with their agenda without ignoring or belittling people's perceptions about immigration issues.
The goals for on-the-ground progressives who need to build long term political strength are different from politicians who need to win the next election. As Jackie Kendall, the President of the Midwest Academy (the trainers of generations of left organizers) said Monday night: Even if we have the best election results possible in November, they will count for little unless progressives are ready to push their politicians to enact our agenda.
Posted by: Daniel Millstone | March 11, 2008 09:22 AM
Hi Daniel, thanks for the comment.
I don't doubt the veracity of the data from the polls at all. I'm sure if you frame questions like this - that immigration is a "problem" and needs to be "dealth with" somehow - these are exactly the answers you get.
What I have problems with, in a nutshell, is the fundamental underlying assumption that it is a problem. The way progressives need to engage the public on this is to say "we realize that this country's economy has been brutal for the past 28 years, with only a brief respite in the 90s. Immigrants are not to blame, conservative market fundamentalism is. We have a path forward."
It's not about taking a harder or softer line, necessarily. It's about speaking from our moral center and communicating the truth as we see it, clearly and effectively.
Posted by: Dan Ancona | March 11, 2008 07:32 PM
You can't talk from a moral center when you're not arguing for ideas that are in the center. Liberals tried doing that in the 1970s, only to be tagged feel-gooders. Conservatives tried doing that in the 1990s and earlier in this decade, only to be ridiculed as fundamentalists.
For a successful liberal arguments that use economic rather than moral language, look at health care. Bob Shrum has been telling Democrats to use language like "Health care is a right, not a privilege" for more than thirty years; he's yet to win a single Presidential election. In contrast, around 2005, when it became clear the American system was unable to control costs, and Democrats started talking in terms of both costs and coverage, the left started to win the issue.
As for your framing analysis, it removes the most tiresome problems with Lakoff's way of talking about the issue, but not the deepest ones. People can't be neatly divided into liberals and conservatives. There are many ways of understanding politics; taking the political alliances of post-1980 America as normative isn't one of them. One analysis reported in the Washington Posts identified five different subtypes of Independents, only two of which could fit into these archetypes.
Anthropologists have come up with four different archetypes to identify which risks people are concerned about: individualists, egalitarians, hierarchists, and fatalists. Individualists are into low group (group solidarity) and low grid (difficulty of leaving the system), egalitarians into high group and low grid, hierarchists into high group and high grid, and fatalists into low group and high grid.
Liberal activists in the US are very concerned with frames that appeal to egalitarians: nurturant families, conservative market fundamentalism, large corporations versus ordinary Americans. This is the frame used most commonly by nativists, who portray Americans as threatened by immigrant outsiders, as well as by unions, which substitute corporations for immigrants. An additional frame nativists use is a hierarchistic one: illegal immigrants are violating the law by coming to the US, and must be punished. In contrast, individualist frames are almost entirely pro-immigrant: immigrants are hardworking people who come to the US to succeed within the system and who help the national economy, and the problem is that broken government regulations make life hard for them.
Right now, I'd say the frame that appeals to centrists the most is the hierarchistic one. Polls about whether the US should in principle encourage more or less immigration portray Americans as reasonably pro-immigrant: the median respondent says legal immigrants are on the whole good for the country, and the US should allow anyone in except criminals, terrorists, and people who come to live on US welfare. However, in the last year and a half Republicans have successfully pushed the line that the solution starts with stopping the bleeding, i.e. sealing the border.
If I had to guess, I'd say the response is to be more individualist rather than egalitarian. This is what Bloomberg is doing when he compares border sealing to communism, and the line Santos uses on The West Wing when he notes the US has tripled the border patrol since 1990 with no result. The advantage is that at least one class of independent voters is very individualist with some hierarchistic elements (socially liberal, economically conservative people) and none is egalitarian. In addition, egalitarianism is based on both internal equality and a strong group boundary, and if the experience of blacks and economic populism is any indicator, liberals won't be able to portray immigrants as part of the in-group until after they've gotten a path to citizenship.
Posted by: Alon Levy | March 12, 2008 01:30 AM
Neither Lakoff nor I are saying people can be at all neatly divided. The good doctor uses the term "biconceptuals" to describe someone (all of us, really) that have both progressive and conservative frames blown into our neural pathways. In the actual practice of designing communications it's very very messy. But I agree with Lakoff in that there's two basic very large categories that map reasonably well onto conservatives and progressives in this country at this time - with the caveat that there's lots of messy details inside those categories and inside people's heads.
While I can see the elegance and explanatory power of this anthropological framework, I'm less sure how useful it is. I'm interested in these frameworks from a tactical perspective as much as an academic one. I'm taking post-1980 America as normative only to the degree that I have to because I'm coming to this as an activist much more so than as an academic.
So what are the differences between these two models? Conservatives (including Bloomberg) are absolutely using a hierarchistic frame, no disagreement there, and we seem to agree that we shouldn't continue playing into it. My instinct and the research I have seen tells me there are plenty of independents that are receptive to egalitarian arguments, but the existence or nonexistence of any class of voters can't be settled with a framework, but only with research. And the line Santos took in the debate was very much in line with the common-sense non-authortarian approach we should be taking, not the enforcement-first approach suggested by these two flawed polls.
So ultimately, while it's interesting, I'm not quite sure what the anthropological model really buys you from a tactical perspective.
Posted by: Dan Ancona | March 12, 2008 02:11 PM
The main advantage of the anthropological model is that there's evidence for it. Lakoff seems cheerfully resistant to any attempt to verify or falsify his theory. In contrast, cultural bias as I explained it above has been shown to be a better predictor of how people assess risk than demographic factors like race or income. It's definitely applicable to politics; from the start, its proponents have used examples from environmentalism and support for government regulations.
Conversely, the Lakoff model was something he cooked up specifically as political advice, making it on the same level as punditry. There's a very large body of Independents who are socially liberal and economically conservative, and who respond to individualist and occasionally hierarchist language but never egalitarian one. There's no such body of Independents who are socially conservative and economically populist - these tend to stick with one party. This is not punditry; it's something backed with research reported in the Washington Post about Independent voters.
There's also something to be said for how this framing theory brushes off the importance of issues. People really do like lower taxes; you can't brush it off by stopping saying "Tax burden." People really are concerned about rising crime rates; you can't brush it off by shifting the discussion to poverty or racism. In fact, Reason reported how the Club for Growth's message has stopped working now that taxes are too low for people to get riled up over. Right now the Democrats have an opportunity to use rising health costs and middle-class stagnation to pass a reform proposal, but if they succeed, it won't be because they suddenly discovered new marketing.
Populists have never supported disenfranchised minorities. Economic populists in the South were pro-segregation; it's only after blacks became the dominant group in the Southern Democratic Parties that the populists started to appeal to them. The same thing has happened in Continental Europe. It's not just theory that says you can't use egalitarianism to prop up support for outsiders.
Posted by: Alon Levy | March 12, 2008 03:46 PM
No evidence! Millions of Americans sorting themselves into these two parties with the particular issue choices that they've taken on doesn't count as evidence?
Of course issues matter - again, this seems like a terrible gloss on Lakoff's baseline argument. (and mine?) Stopping saying "tax relief" is a tiny optimization in a large machine: progressives also need to develop some clear, strong principles, talk about our version of freedom and so on, and it seems like that conversation isn't really happening yet. Or only barely so.
Maybe this model will catch on then. If it can produce strong, clear principles in specific issue areas and start really resonating with people, that'd be great!
Posted by: Dan Ancona | March 13, 2008 07:11 PM
[quote]Millions of Americans sorting themselves into these two parties with the particular issue choices that they've taken on doesn't count as evidence?[/quoted]
Millions more and growing choose not to affiliate with either party. And even those who choose one party over the other often grumble about their party's chosen special interests. You don't see it so much at thinktanks, which choose their issues based on the party line, but there are plenty of people who don't fit nearly in these boxes: conservatives who want universal health care, liberals who don't care much for teachers' unions, union members who're against immigration, gun owners who support civil liberties.
[quote]Stopping saying "tax relief" is a tiny optimization in a large machine: progressives also need to develop some clear, strong principles, talk about our version of freedom and so on, and it seems like that conversation isn't really happening yet. Or only barely so.[/quote]
No, progressives already have these principles. What they need is to put them into action. The American people didn't abandon liberalism in the 1970s because conservatives yelled freedom more; they did because liberalism couldn't solve their problems. Find a way to make real wages go up again, and then make sure people know under which party the middle class's earning power goes up and under which it goes down. Solve the health care crisis, and solve it in a way that makes American companies more rather than less competitive. Enact policies that make it easier for entrepreneurs to start a business instead of policies that make it easier for inefficient firms to stay in business. Balance the budget, instead of only rant about how irresponsible the Republicans are.
Posted by: Alon Levy | March 13, 2008 10:25 PM
Amazing! Progressive?? I think not.
It is completely un-American to allow millions of people to invade our country, receive
free medical and educational benefits, citizenship for their babies, while funneling money
to Mexico and demanding more benefits from a country which they have entered illegally.
One of my dear friends lives separated from her Canadian husband, another was deported
to Australia with her newborn and Australian husband due to a visa problem, but come across the Rio Grande illegally, demand rights and receive them.
Outrageous!!!
50,000 Americans have been murdered since 9/11 by illegals.
Visit with those families and my neighbor who lost her family and is now a paraplegic
resulting from a head-on automobile accident caused by a drunk illegal.
It's interesting to note that he had 4 previous DUI's and no valid driver's license.
The middle class is "for" giving more illegals benefits???
Doesn't the middle class want some social security benefits???
We will have not viable social security if we assimilate these criminals, and yes, they are criminals.
Who do you think pays for the education of these illegals and for their
emergency room visits?
Progressive? This website is anything but progressive. Marxist perhaps, but not progressive.
Posted by: bryan | April 16, 2008 02:31 PM