The New Nativism
By James K. Glassman
Guess what these developments have in common?
• Immigration is quickly becoming the number-one issue of the 2006 Congressional campaign.
• CAFTA, an innocuous trade agreement with five Central American countries and the Dominican Republic, last year passed the U.S. House by just one vote.
• Although there was no national security threat, Congress stopped the proposed purchase of Unocal, a California oil company, by CNOOC, a Chinese one.
• An uproar stopped a globally respected company based in the United Arab Emirates from taking over terminal operations in six U.S. ports—despite approval of the deal by intelligence agencies and the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
• Sentiment for a huge tariff on Chinese goods is running strong.
All are examples of the new nativism, a reaction to globalization that shuts doors and limits access to what’s foreign: people, goods, services, even ideas. It has thrived over the past decade in Europe with the rise of anti-immigrant parties and figures like Jose Bove, the French farmer who campaigns against McDonald’s and genetically modified foods.
While the U.S. has always been, in John F. Kennedy’s words, “a society of immigrants, each of whom had begun life anew,” nativism has flared off and on since the Alien Acts of 1798. Samuel F. B. Morse ran for mayor of New York on an anti-Catholic nativist ticket in 1836. He lost. So did Millard Fillmore, who ran for President in 1856 on the nativist National American (formerly Know-Nothing) party ticket while antagonism toward Irish and German immigrants ran strong. After World War I, the Ku Klux Klan, with some 5 million members, revived nativist sentiment briefly.
Now nativism is back. Why? In her 1998 book, The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel argued that the world can be divided between people who fear the future and either want to manipulate it (technocrats of both U.S. parties) or retreat into the past (rightists like Pat Buchanan and leftists like Ralph Nader), and people who embrace the future, ardently or implicitly. Postrel calls these embracers “dynamists,” and I suspect they comprise the vast majority of Americans.
But to some, the future is frightening. Globalization breaks down the barriers that wall us off from others, that give us a sense of our own proud uniqueness, that keep out both competitors who want our jobs and terrorists who want our lives. Globalization also speeds up what economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction.” As he wrote in 1942, “Capitalism...never can be stationary.”
In an article last year in The American Prospect, Leonard Zeskind coined the phrase “New Nativism.” But he took a limited, partisan (i.e., Left) view of the phenomenon, focusing on “alarming” anti-immigrant Republicans. In truth, Democrats like Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have exploited fears of foreigners at least as much, though their targets tend to be Asians rather than Latinos.
Opposition to illegal immigration is hardly at odds with advocating a sensible guest-worker program or a vast expansion of H1-B visas for immigrants with technical skills. Yet, in today’s climate, these matters are conflated and exploited by new nativists like CNN journalist Lou Dobbs and Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) into a general closed-door policy.
This movement thrives largely because no one stands up to it. Dobbs, for example, has generated lots of noise in the media echo chamber, yet his show’s audience is just 689,000.
Protectionists like Buchanan, Perot, and Gephardt attract attention, but they don’t win a long-term national following. Most Americans recognize both their own immigrant roots and the many deep contributions to American life that now come to us from overseas.
But I’m not completely sanguine about the current flare of nativism fizzling out. Legitimate concerns about national security are providing fuel for the nativist bonfires.
Things could even get worse. In The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, Benjamin Friedman warns that economic stagnation often breeds intolerance and fear. Today’s new nativism was ignited while U.S. wages are growing briskly, unemployment is just 4.8 percent, and GDP is zipping along. Imagine what might happen in a recession.
