I just linked to this discussion between Borjas and Glenn Loury. At about 27 minutes in, Loury asks Borjas a question (this interview was before the 2016 election) about the fact that immigration is a big issue in the election and the American Latino voters are being courted by both parties, and in fact the very nature of the country is potentially being decided by such matters because more immigration along the lines of current trends means a political transformation of the country. Borjas responds by talking about a phrase he considered putting into one of his earlier books, along these lines: if some group wanted to influence American politics fundamentally, the most effective way to do it would be to migrate here and change the country internally.
There are lots of data to support this idea that post-’65 immigration has been slowly transforming the country in terms of political demography. The two minority groups that make up a very large chunk of both high skill immigration and low immigration (Asians and Latinos, respectively) lean decisively to the left. In 2018, 70% of Latino voters and nearly 80% of Asian-American voters voted for Democrats for Congress. While some elements of the Republican Party have for several decades now been talking about Latinos as a ‘natural constituency’ for them given their purported cultural conservatism, the evidence actually seems to suggest that Latinos lean fairly consistently to the left on most political and social issues with the single exception of abortion. Younger Asian-Americans especially tilt heavily to the left and the entire demographic has leaned even further in that direction in recent years.
Given all this, it could be reasonably argued that one of the central consequences of the 1965 Immigration Bill was to move the country from a more ideologically balanced state (in which Democrats and Republicans were more or less equally represented in the political preferences of the country) to a situation that tilts more and more every year to the left. In these data, over just a 25 year span, the increasing tilt to the left in party identification (and the same skew is present in partisan leanings of those who identify as ‘independent’) is evident.
One of the most interesting bits of information there is how much the politics of the well educated have shifted to the left–in 1992, there were more Republicans than Democrats among college grads, and roughly equal percentages of Americans with post-graduate education identified with the two parties, but by 2014, the gap in college grads was in favor of Democrats by 10% and in post-grads by nearly 20%. What do you think is driving that shift? Why would the college educated, once ideologically fairly balanced, now lean so far to the left?
And what do you make of the broader effects of post-’65 immigration on political affiliation and ideology in the country? Loury suggests there is something “disquieting” about this as a way of altering the political landscape of the country. Is he right? Why or why not? Should Americans be concerned about this at all? Why or why not?
2 replies on “Immigration as a way to change the political landscape of the country”
When looking at college students nowadays, the world is very different: economically, culturally, and educationally. Students have grown up in an atmosphere where diversity is now becoming accepted. The transition of this new era is still in occurrence, but the shift is changing more drastically with each generation, even each decade. College students who were once very conservative only had these views because of the lessons, the theories, and the beliefs that they grew up with in their own family home and school life. When they enter the college atmosphere they begin to take notice that the bubble they once grew up in is now popped. This bubble being popped, has allowed college students to think for their own, to hear new ideas, and to see the acceptable diversity within the United States. Being able to see and decide decisions and opinions on their own has led college students to lean towards the left and leave their conservative ways.
I wanted to talk about this topic, because it relates personally to myself. In my younger days, I grew up in a very conservative family, went to a conservative school, and was surrounded by all conservative people. Yes the democratic view was talked about here and there, but what was instilled in my brain and all I knew was the conservative way. Leaving this world and entering Bucknell, I have been able to take classes that I want, which has opened my mind. I have been able to see other views and decide which way I lean. Society is changing and changing fast. The old views on education, culture, and economy are almost not acceptable. This is why the drastic change in college students is happening.
This implies that only conservative ideas were present in the educational system before the 1990s, when the political shift of college students began. But that’s not so. I went to college in the 1980s and read Marx and lots of other non-conservative thinkers then. And college professors have leaned politically left for *much* longer than the period of this shift in college student political views. Even, for example, in the 1950s, which are often caricatured as a very conservative era, college professors were much more likely to be on the political left than on the right. So it can’t be quite as simple as you make it here.