Top New York Times writer: "Loose immigration policies are driving Latino voters away from the Democratic Party"
David Leonhardt looks at the latest New York Times / Siena College poll and says the Democratic Party's policies on immigration (along with other issues) has "simultaneously attracted progressive college graduates and repelled more culturally conservative working-class voters."
"If you're trying to figure out why Latino voters have shifted right in the past few years, even during the Trump presidency," Leonhardt writes, "this dynamic offers an explanation."
Earlier in July, Leonhardt was a guest on the virtual YouTube series "America at a Crossroads" with Larry Mantle. In the hour-long episode, he discussed the "golden age" for American workers between the 1930s and 1970s (coinciding with low levels of immigration), while advocating for stricter immigration enforcement:
"People often look back to the 1930s to the 1970s as the Golden Age for the American worker. Wages rose really rapidly for the poor, for the middle class. They rose really rapidly across racial groups. What else was the case during the '30s, from the '30s to the '70s? We didn't have a lot of immigration. Rank and file workers faced less competition for their services. And it was also a period of greater political consensus.
I'm not saying we would magically go back to political consensus with less immigration. But historically more immigration does tend to include increased political tensions. I do think that immigration policy that took serious the arguments for restriction, but also figured out how to admit people would be better than this what we've had, which is this growth in system with a lot of immigration without really debating it, and also a lot of illegal immigration.'
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