Religious Reds and Secular Blues

Alex Kranz:

You topped off one of your best columns ever with a glaring mistake. You've always been apparently myopic about the dangers of American mass immigration - at least I've never seen you take it on; you shouldn't let your own status scare you, David Frum and John O'Sullivan, among others, are for immigration reform - but your prediction that Red America is simply going to outbreed the Europe-esque Blue America is mistaken, unless you, unlike Michael Barone or anyone I have yet to see try, can refute the following: Notwithstanding the fantasies and spin of immigration enthusiasts on the Right, the largely Latino population of the immigrants, and even the other ethnic groups among them, vote mostly Democratic. And their birthrates are healthy. And it's likely that they, like the African-Americans of the immediate post-WWII period and the Muslim immigrants in Europe now, will give birth to a generation more alienated, and thus more Left, than they are now. The great American economy won't boost them into middle-class Redness because the endless importation of yet more workers will keep their services near-valueless.

So your theory of Religious Reds outbreeding Secular Blues only works if the massive influx of Religious Blues convert from strongly Blue to strongly Red. They are unlikely to do so any more than African-Americans (fairly religious Blues) have or will. (Or the very religious newcomers to Europe have or will.) If nothing else, their numbers are too great for them to assimilate to middle class America; they'll remain Latin Americans, sympathetic to socialism and unsympathetic to gringos.

There are greater, nonpartisan problems with current immigration - ethnic tension and balkanization, class stratification and poverty - but those are relevant too, as they are problems which empower the Left.

If the Left can just get through this current slump, and continue to convince Republicans that immigration is an unstoppable, beneficial force of nature and that anyway Latinos are natural conservatives, the Left's future in America is actually pretty sunny.

Alex Kranz outdebates Mark Steyn