Thread by @emeriticus

These talking points are unrolled every few years: "the GOP can win big by embracing mass immigration, if they just soften their hearts!" It never pans out, and relatively small gains are framed as shadings of an illusory red wave to come on the back of mass immigration 1/

https://twitter.com/ZaidJilani/status/1367181768198135811

How has that worked out for California? The GOP there has basically become the diet Democratic Party. For example, why didn't Reagan's amnesty put California's immigrant population squarely in the GOP corner? "But look at the gains in this county this election!" 2/

Trump made gains with Hispanics, OK--but Trump got a smaller share of their vote than previous GOPers, and this despite him backing off on immigration rhetoric and floating amnesty for DACA and the American Dream plan. Nevertheless, they were decisive in helping Biden win 3/

This is not to say immigrant populations can't help the GOP win, but that they're always hyped as the secret sauce to elections, which is never actually true--white moderates/white economic populists are 3/

Moreover this debate usually deliberately or otherwise misses the structural problems with immigration and assimilation: first generation immigrants might be based and trad but their kids/grandkids end up brainwashed liberals who hate white people and think America is racist 4/

In other words America is in such a bad state that we take trad minded immigrants and turn them into abortion loving automatons that find the traditions of their parents problematic--Latino becomes Latinx--and drink from decolonial waters of Western resentment 5/

A lot of this comes down to a bizarre resentment or indifference to white Americans couched in rhetoric of inclusiveness. People will find literally any excuse not to lend their white countrymen a hand, going so far as arguing for their literal replacement via immigration... 6/

...as they continue to die of suicide, opioid overdose, and economic despair resulting from a remarkably irresponsible ruling class that when it wasn't offshoring their jobs, it was outsourcing their work to foreign nationals/visa workers and telling them they deserved to die 7/

Those who actually care about *all* Americans on a basic, human level would support an immigration moratorium and focus on helping the people already here. There are millions of impoverished Hispanic children in California--but you want to import more as an electoral strategy? 8/

There is no compassionate case for more immigration when we can't feed or educate millions of people who are already here. Importing more immigrants so you can feel good about yourself and forget about the ones that are already here and starving doesn't make you compassionate 9/

It makes you a sociopath who fetishizes the foreign and actually quite cruel to your own countrymen 10/

Ironically, outlets like the NYT picked up on the atavistic tendencies of some first generation immigrants as the reason for their Trump support--a point I also made. "Latino men support Trump because there is a lot of patriarchal notions in Latino culture"--uh, yeah 11/

But liberals/mass immigration advocates see this is a bad thing. So we import the trad immigrants, then teach their children why the patriarchy (traditional family) is bad, masculinity is toxic, colorism is a real problem--oh wow why are 70 percent of them voting Democrat? 12/

The American immigration system is basically "blood for the blood god" except it's "blood for the GDP." Note that the GOP is positioning itself as more open to immigration while also adopting liberal notions of the family--we need more women out of the house working! 13/

Even I notice that my "conservative" peers are taken aback by my supposedly reactionary views. Yeah, I got these from my Mexican dad, I lost them for a time because I became a left then right liberal (conservative), but recovered them by happy accident 14/

The pro immigrant, pro American position is not more immigration but economic populism: support families, better education, safe communities, a better future 15/

The GOP's insistence on becoming the LEGAL mass immigration party because they think it's the only way to win isn't slick, it's not compassionate, or "data driven"--it's an admission of weakness, cowardice, and reflects a poverty of imagination 16/