Misjudging American xenophobia: Bernd Debusmann

(Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

By Bernd Debusmann

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Here are two preliminary conclusions from the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign: 1) stoking fear and xenophobia in the debate over illegal immigration is not a winning strategy. 2) American nativists are a noisy minority with less clout than they claim.

The first to learn that lesson was Tom Tancredo, the Colorado congressman who aired controversial television ads suggesting the U.S.-Mexico border serves as a gateway to "Islamic terrorists (who) now freely roam U.S. soil." Open borders have consequences "beyond the 20 million aliens who have come to take our jobs," the ads warned.

(Most estimates put the number of illegal immigrants at around 12 million, the majority of them Mexicans).

Once the race began for the nominating contests for the Democratic and Republican candidates, Tancredo consistently scored at the bottom of the Republican field, never more than two percent. He dropped out early.

In most of the contests, candidates with a hard line -- "close the border and kick them all out" -- fared worse than those in favor of more nuanced reforms that would eventually allow illegal immigrants already in the country to gain permanent status.

That may have come as a surprise to those who thought Tancredo-like rhetoric would resonate widely ahead of the November election. But the signs were there. "In 22 national public opinion polls conducted last year, 50 percent-83 percent of Americans supported some type of pathway to legalization for undocumented workers," Rosa Rosales, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) noted in an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal.

"In almost every competitive race in the 2006 congressional elections that matched an anti-immigration candidate against one that supported comprehensive immigration reform, the anti-immigrant candidate lost."

The one hard-liner still standing in the presidential race is Mike Huckabee, who has a nine-point "Secure America Plan" which provides for all illegal immigrants in the United States to leave the country within four months. That would mean 100,000 a day and require a logistical miracle.

Huckabee, a former governor from Arkansas, won't have to put his plan to the test. His rival John McCain has virtually locked up the Republican nomination -- despite strident criticism from his party's right for having co-sponsored an immigration reform bill that provides a path to citizenship.

Only last summer, it was conventional wisdom that immigration would be uppermost in the minds of American voters and they would be hungry for harsh action against illegal immigrants, a term which is becoming synonymous with Mexicans. Judging from polls, things have changed. The economy, the war in Iraq, and health care are all of greater concern.

NATIVIST REVOLT?

In February, Gallup asked more than 1,000 people across the U.S. to list the issues "extremely important/very important ... in influencing your vote for president." Illegal immigration came 14th.

What happened? If you followed inside-the-Beltway analysis and listened to conservative talk radio and TV show hosts since last summer, when the Washington debate over immigration ran at a fever pitch, you came away with the impression of a country seething with anger over immigrants, legal or illegal. One commentator wrote of a "brewing nativist revolt."

As in other debates over contentious issues, the question is to what extent over-the-top rhetoric reflects popular sentiment and to what extent popular sentiment is stirred up by rhetoric.