Need for a strategic approach on immigration
Alfredo Martin Bravo de Rueda Espejo
Author of Gatito Inmeegrante
(Part III of my three-part series on how to make immigration reform possible and expel the far right from electoral politics at the same time)
What follows is a review of the poor strategic approach engaged by many immigrant advocates at the light of my proposals of 2008. Had I been wrong, this article would be unnecessary; had others articulated similar approaches, this article would’ve been redundant, Trump would have found more difficult to invite voters to rationalize his cruelty against immigrants and, even more important, we could have prevented the destruction of thousands of lives.
a) Need for sound political marketing
1. As mentioned in my article “Need for a New Immigration Narrative,” politics is marketing and marketing without a product (policy or candidate) is a joke, a bad one. If so, where is the product offered by pro-immigrant organizations?
Traditionally, these organizations have demanded to be courted by both parties with a product of their like because Latinos are going to decide elections in 30 years. Problem: Very few politicians care about what’s going to happen in 30 years. Most of them think just of the next election, trusting on their ability to spin their platforms in the next two years if events go the other way. Is it surprising then that since January 2004, when Bush announced his proposal of temporary workers, this approach has not worked?
In first place, if you offer a product (or, even better, a couple of compatible products appealing to both liberals and conservatives and which can be easily harmonized in Conference: let’s say the 1033 of 2005, the Kennedy-McCain bill, and the legislative proposal I designed to counter the false narrative of the xenophobic Right (1)), you own the parameters of the debate. Then, when you are attacked, you can counterattack quickly with some statistic, newspaper article or, simply, by showing the ridiculous consequences of taking that attack seriously and immediately move to sell your product: you show why the status quo doesn’t address properly the issue invoked in the attack (for instance, speaking English and integration to the American mainstream culture) while your product does, why it is superior when considering the interests of both immigrants and the native born. One example? Just consider President Obama and Senator Schumer selling the 2013 bill by saying that it would send undocumented immigrants to the “back of the line”(2) even when “the line” (cf., Note 4) doesn’t exist in the law, only in xenophobic propaganda. What you have in the law is multiple lines for some (some lasting a few months and other over 20 years, depending on the immigration status of the sponsor and the country/family of the applicant) and no line for those who simply lack the sponsors required by the law (for instance, a spouse, but even in case of marriage, your sponsor must prove he can make at least $50,000 a year regardless of the sincerity of the marriage). And this is particularly important because of the connotations the concept of “waiting your turn in line” has for vast numbers of Americans as equivalent to fairness(3).
Also, having a product prevents you from ending up with undesirable consequences. Let me present a bizarre alternative to show my point: Let’s say you finally get Republicans to agree to some path to legalization for undocumented immigrants. Scenario 1, they agree to lift the inadmissibility created by their status on the condition that they apply under the current system. Scenario 2, they allow undocumented immigrants to roll a dice; 1 to 3, the applicant stays; 4 to 6, he leaves. Apparently Scenario 1 presents the most serious proposal and yet, because most undocumented immigrants don’t have the sponsors who would’ve allowed them to come legally in the first place(4), they would follow into inadmissibility almost immediately. If so, rolling a dice, a 50-50 chance, would be the most generous proposal, serious or not. In short: having a product of your own could prevent you a nasty surprise (like a requirement impossible to fulfill, a trick that could derail a significant number of applicants during the process or a bottleneck).
One more thing: A good product allows you to divide your adversary by exposing its ugly, racist face, which they carefully try to hide behind different code words (Today even more than in the early XX Century(5), at least until Trump).
b) Need for an educated sales force (activists)
You can’t win a war if you have good generals but poorly trained lieutenants and captains. Now, when I say an “educated sales force” I am not necessarily saying a “college-educated sales force.” What I am saying is a disciplined sales force that is properly informed of the qualities of your product and can defend it when debating or doing a pitch sale. If you don’t have one, you will miss the few opportunities the media will give you to make your case or, even worse, spread counterproductive messages.
1. Why it has to be disciplined? Because otherwise everybody will come with his/her own lines and that would hurt the communication of your message. You need people but you will be better off without people who create distractions. That doesn’t mean a top-down organization. An organization has to have channels to get input from its sales force. But once a plan and a message are agreed, everybody has to be on the same page. (This point can be enhanced by using ‘Personalized Emails,’ a proposal I made to some organizations based on my experiences as volunteer.)
Let me bring you some painful examples. When Prince Williams’s, Virginia(6), passed its infamous illegal immigration ordinance of 2007, some pro-immigrant activists had the unfortunate idea of demonstrating with a defiant message: that if the ordinance passed, they would make the county feel the “immigrant muscle.” After this, the Republican proposal passed by unanimity with votes of both Democrats and Republicans. Not satisfied with this, these leaders called for a boycott on Prince William’s businesses, which also backfired (Martin Luther King had an experience with a much more limited boycott but it was enough to persuade him of preferring other forms of protest). When negotiating, never make threats you can’t fulfill. Want another example from Prince Williams’s? When some of these activists were asked about the Specter bill of 2006 (a watered down version of the S. 1033 Kennedy-McCain of 2005), they objected the amount of the fine, which was absurd because most immigrants lose much more money every year as a result of the economic constraints imposed on them by their immigration status (for instance, denying them licenses or FAFSA credits). The most intelligent option would have been to request a term to pay it in installments instead of upfront.
2. An educated sales force will also be better prepared to negotiate before the public opinion. An example? Frequently you hear advocates speak about the economic contribution immigrants make to the economy, which is true (What brings the point of how necessary would be an update of the Ottaviano-Peri study of 2005(7), which debunked the mistakes made by the Borjas study of 1990), but meaningless when it comes to negotiation because in a negotiation you don’t offer what you already gave (past contributions of immigrants) or what you have to give anyway (taxes paid by immigrants) but what the other part would not get unless it gives you what you want. That’s why a larger fine payable in installments is a much more intelligent offering than a small one payable upfront, especially if you establish that that fine is not going to get lost in the USCIS bureaucracy but it’s going to go to a fund to help that 9% of the less educated part of the native born that are negatively affected by immigration (at least in the 2005 study). For a detail about this suggestion, see my proposal of 2008 (8).
Another example? You might have heard the multiple times pro-immigrant advocates defend the idea of immigration reform based on how much it would help the needs of immigrants’ families abroad while anti-immigrant groups attack that same idea by crying fallacious arguments about how immigration affects the families of the native born. Your messaging has to focus on the needs of the native born because only they have the numbers to rationalize another vote for Trump (or for his successor if he’s impeached and disqualified). That why, instead of invoking their own bigotry (their real motivation), xenophobes regurgitate their usual lines about preserving the mainstream of the American culture, about preventing immigrants from affecting negatively wages or the unemployment rate, about the importance of speaking English, about how immigrants are poorly educated and likely to become a public burden, about how not blocking or metering immigrants would be unfair to those who have “waited in line,” etc., etc. Proposing a 5-year probation plan that addresses these issues based on character, on what the undocumented immigrant is willing to achieve in that term, would be a much more intelligent counter-proposal not because it would change the minds of nativists and xenophobes but because it would disarm their argument before the native born to whom they direct it. And that is exactly what my proposal of 2008 tried to do(9).
3. Use the flaws of the current anti-immigrant narrative
One last idea on this point. The anti-immigrant narrative has many flaws because it’s based on propaganda. Just consider the eugenic positions adopted by the Heritage Foundation in 2005(10), the times Robert Rector has abandoned all pretense of impartiality and spoken fiercely in anti-immigrant rallies(11) or the infamous “enforcement by attrition” plan proposed by the Center of Immigration Studies(12). So far, the norm has been that pro-immigrant advocates have ignored the attacks and repeated endlessly that they are human beings. No need to say that the results have been poor. Just imagine, if the attack was about the role of immigrants in criminality and you had a product, how you could counterattack. First you could quickly quote the statistics about undocumented immigrants committing less crimes than the native born. Then you could strike by mentioning how the current system has been unable to address the problem of the few immigrants who commit crimes, and finish your opponent by saying how your product could contribute to make those numbers even smaller by, for instance, requiring pro-immigrant organizations to establish programs of collaboration with police departments in exchange of direct lines to the top officers when it comes to making sure bad policemen who bully Latinos are disciplined and/or separated and of developing after-school programs that keep the young busy in productive activities that can give them a richer sense of identity and away from gangs. Again, that’d be a plan we would not get unless we pass immigration reform. Your sell.
c) Be honest to yourself. Understand your opponent
A photo-op, no matter how cute, is not victory. And I mention this because during the Trump administration we could frequently see lawyers smiling and claiming victory when they blocked some executive order in a lower court while Trump kept opening new fronts and, from time to time, ignoring previous court decisions, especially when he started using the pandemic as an excuse. That’s why, as these lawyers kept rejoicing in their victories, the number of visas plummeted or collapsed entirely, as in the case of the asylum system. This was as if a tsunami were announced and I called for an evacuation plan while these activists called for more buckets (for the water, of course). This doesn’t mean that lawyers are not important in pro-immigrant advocacy. They certainly are essential. But they are no substitute for a sound strategy aimed at precisely preventing the causes of those tragedies. And Trump’s tactics of opening multiple fronts simultaneously to overwhelm you and/or of disregarding court decisions are nothing new. That’s why you have to know your opponent.
d) Consider your target market
To whom are you directing your message? Maybe to Republicans to show them that you are really serious about enforcing the current unjust and inefficient system, which Bush did in his second term only to see that the xenophobes in his party kept the concessions and gave him nothing in exchange and which, despite that experience, Obama repeated only too get, predictably, the same results? If so, you are wasting your time. They will keep the concessions and still call you “weak on borders.”
Then maybe you should direct your message to the constituencies in which a rationalization of Trump’s cruelty is more likely in order to make for them more difficult to get along with a new Trump vote? Yes, though first you still have to take care of the issue mentioned in e).
The Naleo polls about Latino priorities have never placed immigration at the top. Yet, as ANES polls show(13), Latinos for whom a Latino identity is important are much more receptive to pro-immigrant messages. Then you have suburban voters who have struggled to rationalize Trump’s cruelty towards immigrants. Then you have progressive Christians on your side, what clearly allows you to invoke the Main Commandment as part of your message to gain other faith-based constituencies that are not part of the Christian Right. And then, if you do the proper alliances with other groups and address their legitimate interests (so far manipulated by the xenophobic Right), you might even part of the working class on board.
Once you have answered the Who question, then it comes the How question. The first seasons of The Simpsons are pretty good at portraying American culture. Consider the lines of Sideshow Bob in the episode where he runs for mayor of Springfield: “Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic. But deep down inside, you secretly long... for a coldhearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals... and rule you like a king! That's why I did this- to protect you from yourselves!”(14) Xenophobic messaging prefer code words because they easily trigger their product (fear, prejudice, what “deep down inside, you secretly long”) in the minds of their market target. If you are an immigrant advocate, you don’t have that advantage (especially if you don’t even have a product). So, you have something in your target market on which you can tap when delivering your message. In the case of suburban voters, an appeal to guilt might work better (“Are these traumatized children in cages the right price to pay for your tax cut?”); in the case of Christians, you may invoke the essence of their faith (The Main Commandment and how it is incompatible with xenophobic policies); in the case of Latinos, you may invoke a Latino identity in order to reach a target inside the Latino community; and even in the case of working class, if you have something to offer them in terms of culture and the economy (for instance, if fines paid by undocumented immigrants go to a fund directed to help the most vulnerable part of the working class), they might at least reconsider xenophobic atavism. Here we could learn a bit from our adversaries: Xenophobic propaganda is very diversified. They talk to suburban voters about crime, to the working class about jobs and wages and they even have an environmental brand: NumbersUSA (which I exposed in detail in 2009 (15)). All this while immigrant advocates pretty much keep repeating that they are human beings.
e) Learn from recent history
Since January 2004, when Bush announced his program of renewable 3-year work permits to solve the immigration problem, the only two bills that have been passed by the Senate (though only to die in Conference) have been the Specter bill of 2006 and the Schumer bill of 2013. What happened? Members of Congress returned to their districts only to see the xenophobic Right warning them of a primary if they dared to vote for the Senate bill, warning them that they could be the next Eric Cantor even before the then Number 2 Republican in the House was defeated in 2014(16). And if you followed the Cantor upset, you have to remember that Dave Brat and his Tea Party followers didn’t challenge Cantor because he was a big tax and spender, for favoring job-killing regulations or for any other of the sins the Tea Party has condemned since 2009. They challenged him because he called for piecemeal bills to save, at least partially, the immigration reform push incarnated in the Schumer bill of 2013(17). Therefore, unless you want to repeat the experience in 2021, you have to weaken the forces that torpedoed immigration reform in 2006 and 2013. Otherwise, it will be of little use to introduce a bill in 2021. To do that you have, first, to pass open-primaries reform (to dilute the power of the far right in primaries) and gerrymandering reform (to make much more likely the defeat of a xenophobic candidate in a competitive election in case the Far Right prevails in the primary anyway -Lawrence Lessig has other proposals that could enrich a move of this kind even more(18)). Furthermore, gerrymandering and open primaries present also an opportunity to forge alliances with others who also need to level that obstacle to get legislation passed. And yet, as Republicans are in an optimal moment to design another decade of gerrymandering after their 2020 wins at the state level, this has become an especially difficult path. Nevertheless, in the short term, you can enhance the chances of the 2020 Biden bill by offering sympathetic Republicans to replicate the Thad Cochran experience of 2014. That year, Thad Cochran requested the help of Democratic black constituencies to defeat Chris McDaniel, a Neoconfederate. Of course, that would require to get Carlos Gutierrez (https://www.republicansforimmigrationreform.org/) on board to outreach to those sympathetic Republicans. But offering them this help in primaries would counter the fear of primary challenges from the far right.
Now, take into account that, if you are for immigration reform, you are now in an uphill battle due to structural changes that not only are making increasingly difficult to succeed at that task but also contributed to Trump’s victory where Romney’s self-deportation failed and where Tancredo and Buchanan could never get beyond the fringe. If you consider changes suffered by the labor market in the last decades that have resulted in immigrants competing with the native born where before they didn’t and demographic changes that have resulted on immigrants living in areas where the native born didn’t see them before, all this in a country where just 60% of eligible voters vote in general elections, it was a matter of time before a con man borrowed the playbook of the European Far Right to bring new voters from the remaining 40%. Consider the effects of these structural change with just one example: For Latino voters immigration isn’t the top issue but when a candidate adopted xenophobic postures, they punished him (Ask Mitt Romney about 2012). And yet, in 2016 Trump adopted openly racist and xenophobic postures and he still improved his approval among Latinos in 2016 and in 2020 he increased his participation among Latinos even more, by 4%.
Therefore, it will be impossible to get immigration reform or at least control damage if you don’t take into account the gravity of the situation because if you don’t, you might wake up only to see immigration as a bargaining chip between Democrats (uncommitted to immigrants after that 4%) and Republicans (still in Trump’s grip) in order to get something done in the Biden agenda. So, here the question is, considering the restrictions imposed by the before mentioned changes: What do you have to give to these constituencies in exchange of their support and how are you selling the problem before you sell the solution?
Next question is whether there is room to grow beyond the most likely groups (if only to make more difficult for them to repeat a Trump vote). Fortunately, there is. Trump got 74.2 million votes out of 158.2 votes cast in 2020. That is 46.9% of the total. Now consider that 77% of those 74.2 million (19), believe the most delirious charges of fraud mumbled by Trump. That is 57.13 million votes or 36.1% of the total number of voters. (Or you can use as proxy the answers to the 2018 Monmouth University survey quoted by John Dean and Bob Altemeyer to the questions about accepting Trump’s defeat in the 2020 elections and about the “stomp out the rot” line(20), which would reduce that 77% to 66% -which is the percentage to which that 77% would have fallen in other polls. Now, the number of people siding with racist positions or at least feeling comfortable rationalizing them has, depending on the polls, landed somewhere between 15% and 25% of the population. If we settle in, let’s say, 20%, we could extrapolate and assume that 16% (25.3 million, among whom you can count the 4% gains Trump had among both Blacks and Hispanics) who are not hardcore racists have found comfortable to rationalize a vote for Trump not in 2016 (when some of them could’ve rationalized Trump’s xenophobia as directed only against the ‘bad hombres’) but in 2020 (after the images of children in cages and other immigration-related tragedies)! And, in the polls presented by Dean and Altemeyer that 66% would shrink the 36% mentioned before only to 31%, giving us still plenty, some 11%, to whom we can direct a message challenging a rationalization of Trump’s message.
Of course, growing in this field is conditioned to not repeating the mistakes that have brought us to this pitiful situation in the first place. And an important ingredient on that recipe to prevent a new failure is selling the problem before selling the solution (Set the record straight). If you leave that step up to the Far Right, the only thing you will get is the Stephen Miller plan: Extending DACA in exchange of the whole list of the Far Right’s wet dreams because you will have to debate inside the parameters set by the Far Right regardless of how truthful you are and how deceitful they are. Remember the part about the importance of having a product to own the parameters of the debate?
Also remember that his base allowed Trump to deviate from his promises on taxes, social network, etc. The only issue on which it didn’t allow him to spin was immigration. The time he tried to show a soft side to the Dreamers, Ann Coulter attacked him mercilessly and Trump, who blasts against whoever dares to expose him, didn’t utter a peep (21).
f) Be realistic
As mentioned before, this is an uphill battle and the future doesn’t look friendly. In the long term (whenever it materializes) we’ll have to face a process of automation that is going to reduce the number of jobs available mostly in areas where immigrants work (ultimately redefining the role of immigration in American society) and the consequences of climate change (that is going to create a huge number of new immigrants unable to continue making a living in their countries of origin).
So, we have structural forces working against us right now, the precedent of the Trump era (Before Trump, xenophobes were skeptical of the system and many didn’t even vote because they found the Republican party too soft for their taste. With Trump, they realized they could win, what makes them more dangerous) and Long Term restrictions. If there is a chance to compromise, on what we should settle and on what not.
1. Eric Kaufmann (22), not precisely friendly to immigrants, offers ingredients we could partly use on two issues:
i) A visa for undocumented immigrants that won’t include the right to vote, even after gaining citizenship. If that’s the price we have to pay to stop all the pain the next Trump can create, I’d pay it as long as voting is the only political right stripped from that visa. In other words, an immigrant that has been awarded that visa should still be able to volunteer in political causes, contribute and even run for office on behalf of one party.
ii) A special regime for asylees so asylum-seekers don’t compete in the local labor market with the native born. It’s a price I’d pay if asylees can still work, study and adjust status to the general system (Definitely not the unhealthy Australian model for which Kaufmann shows sympathy). A charge commonly made against asylees, refugees as well as against immigrants who come as spouses using sham marriages, and students who come with the intention of staying (like Hamilton) is that they are using a back door. What they don’t say is that the system doesn’t have a path for them unless they have the right sponsor or are born in the right caste. So, why not clearing the general system from caste considerations and stripping the right to work from these visas? Too many times legitimate family reunification or asylum claims are dismissed just due to the suspicion of them actually being economic immigrants.
Is the Lottery Visa a solution to the problem presented in ii? No. It’s people who apply to those visas, not countries. The Lottery Visa is actually based on a very racist consideration: people are mechanical reflection of the culture of their countries of birth and so they’re awarded more visas if their “culture” (=country) is underrepresented in the American landscape. This only adds a less restrictive caste criterion to the pool of unjust criteria we currently have. The chances to get a visa should be determined by the character of the applicant, not by their country of birth. The country of birth is nothing but another “accident of birth,” as Kennedy called these criteria that are alien to the character of the applicant in his work “A Nation of Immigrants”(23)
g) The need for a new narrative
How many more tears do you need to realize that the current immigration narrative has failed, that despite all Trump’s acts of cruelty against immigrants, his popularity among Hispanics grew by 4% among Hispanics and didn’t affect the upward trend of his job approval from mid-2019 to June 1st, 2020(24)?
1. Here I would like to invite you to review the concept of Deserved Residency and the image of Alexander Hamilton from my proposals of 2008 (25), much of which can still be applied to a new immigration messaging, as well as and my work Gatito Inmeegrante (26), which brings a new immigration narrative to the field of culture and entertainment.
Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s right hand in the battlefield and government and designers of our economic system, is also our most important immigrant. Not just that. Alexander Hamilton (who was born poor in the Caribbean, and who, with no sponsor in America, came as a student but with the intention of staying, what would have violated the principle of Double Intention), to whom no patriot could dismiss, would have been an illegal immigrant had he come with the current system (He would have been able to adjust his status after his marriage with a solvent American woman though). More, identifying with Hamilton should be easier for a native born than with a non-European immigrant as empathy is easier with those you consider are like you. Even more, with Miranda’s musical, more people are familiar with the image of Hamilton than when I proposed to use it to some organizations in 2008 (when the easier reference to Hamilton was the $10 bill). And the concepts of Deserved Residency and Hamilton as symbol of immigration reform can be easier to transmit using tools of activism I have mentioned somewhere else like Personalized Email and Carpa Docente.
2. Set the record straight. As I mentioned in Need for a New Narrative on Immigration, “If I said that undocumented immigrants are those who “jumped” the line, don’t pay taxes and don’t speak English, too many would agree even though none of these assertions is true.” This is fundamental because it prevents you from looking apologetic even when you have the truth on your side. Set the record straight, address those issues in your product and own the parameters of the debate.
3. No childish slogans like “Abolish ICE;” no prankish postures like the reward for whoever called Trump racist; no humor presenting undocumented immigrant’s drama in a sassy way. If you trivialize your own position, you can’t complain when people start rationalizing Trump’s cruelty because, thanks to you, it doesn’t seem to be a big deal after all. If you want to use humor, in “Need for a New Immigration Narrative” I presented a good example of one that could help.
Now “Abolish ICE” can be especially counterproductive because it conveys the idea that the problem is in the enforcement organization instead of in the whole system, a system of castes who gave no fair chance to those not acquainted to the right sponsors or born in the right countries or families. And it can be even dangerous. More than once I’ve heard positions saying that our immigration system is family-based (conveniently, from those born in the right families and so favored by the current system), so the solution consists simply of finding nicer ways of deporting undocumented immigrants; that we should abolish ICE, which deports you with a bad stare and replace it with COOL, which deports you with a smile and a departing gift. This is the position I call “Destroy Them Humanely.” Your slogans have to trigger the image of your product. Is “Abolish ICE” your product?
4. If you are an organization, keep open channels for new ideas. Nowadays it’s consider a qualification to have been fan of the failed strategies and narratives that have led us to tragedies like the Children in Cages. And these fans make sure voices like yours don’t reach the boards of these organizations. So, what happens if you agree with these guidelines but you don’t have “institutional support” (= You don’t belong to the happy club of pillow-fighters whose record is an uninterrupted chain of failures for at least the last 17 years, whose main mission is to express themselves? Do as Gatito Inmeegrante (27) when the traditional activists of Nayak dismissed him. And, if you want, I‘ ll help you.
5. Use your PR constructively. Use your alliances wisely. For instance:
i) You should aim at managing the pipeline of ideas that goes from think tanks (many of which are a form of lobbying) to op-eds, to bill proposals directed to members of Congress and, ultimately, to ads and slogans, which should trigger the ideas sold through this chain. This is what Heritage Action and ALEC do. But you don’t need another think tank. Coordinate with them. How can you start? Invite them to make proposals to enrich your products.
ii) Invite not only lawyers but people in trade organizations and marketing to enrich your product. Lawyers are a necessary but not sufficient condition. Of course, they can challenge anti-immigrant executive orders in court but they are no substitute for a strategic approach as recent experience has painfully proven: While lawyers won numerous victories in the courts, the number of visas plummeted mercilessly because Trump kept opening new fronts (In total, just counting the executives orders, he issued about 450 in his 4 year-administration) and then, new ways of defying court orders (being family separation the clearest case). A strategy based only in legal challenges is, as I have mentioned somewhere else, as if a tsunami were announced, I called for an evacuation plan and you dismissed me saying that what we need is more buckets (for the water). Immigration should be a huge issue on social marketing. Convoke more PR firms to enrich your product!
Collaboration with lawyers is, again, necessary but not sufficient. When it comes to lawyer organizations, collaborate with them in exchange of their help to promote your brand of activism. When it comes to individual lawyers who want to help, refer them to those organizations. As you don’t need another think tank, you don’t need another legal clinic. No need to add another star in the firmament. And even more important, you should prevent the Charity Approach (= Celebrating when you save one life at a time) because it ultimately leads to discouragement and apathy when you can’t keep ignoring all those to whom you can’t help because you can’t get enough buckets. This is what has happened sometimes in the sanctuary movement, where the inability to help but a few has led to discouragement and fatigue (28). Charity is a poor substitute of strategy and, remember, this is an uphill battle.
g) How activities reflecting that strategic approach would look like
Imagine:
1. Rallies and marches as conveyor belts for your message. In terms of marketing, rallies and marches are not that different from commercials. Commercials don’t introduce you to the product; they just trigger in your mind the image of the product.(29) Does this mean they should be choreographed and that only the few who are going to present your message should speak? Yes. Rallies should not be a cathartic event or, worse, a free-for-all with fistfights (like those that happen in Oakland in the mid 2000s and which, like any street fight, could have ended tragically, so tarnishing your cause’s message. And yes, your adversaries can send you provocateurs so, if you want to organize a rally, a security team should be in your plans. A rally should not be a picturesque ethnic parade either. It would be much better to adapt the model Madres de Plaza de Mayo used against the Argentinian Junta after the 1976 coup. The correct appreciation of your case by the native born depends on that.)
2. Cultural symbols that trigger easier in the minds of the native born and are resistant to condescension, like the concepts of Deserved Residence and Hamilton (cf. f.1) or cultural products that challenge the failed immigration narrative and the misconceptions that have grown at its shadow (as the pilot Gatito Inmeegrante, mentioned in Need of a New Immigration Narrative and linked here in Note 27, does.)
Cultural symbols are better than toxic labels. And, if not toxic, can cross informational bubbles like the Fox News bubble. Consider the slogan “Defund the Police.” For White suburban voters the police represents safety. It’s what the number 911 represents when they are afraid. If your goal is to sell your product instead of making childish and provocative postures, “The Camden Model” would have been a much better one because if reflects something that has already been tried and works (in Camden, New Jersey).
And, again, your slogans should sell your product. If you demand to “abolish ICE” and they do that but leave this unjust system intact, you won’t be able to complain because that’s what you asked.
Also, make sure the words you use have the meaning that trigger the connotations your product needs to flourish. I still remember the angry comments I received when I published an article where, inadvertently, I wrote “illegal immigrant” instead of “undocumented immigrant.” Actually, the term used by xenophobes is “illegal alien,” not “illegal immigrant.” And yet, while “undocumented” conveys the idea of an administrative problem (lack of documents), I still prefer the term “illegal” because it allows me to trigger the case of the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks were jailed because they rose against an unjust law (Jim Crow; current immigration system in the case of immigrants) that marked them invoking what JFK called accidents of birth (skin color; having been born in the wrong country/family or being unable to count with the right sponsor in the case of immigrants) in a country (America) that should be defined by the content of your character. Thus, “illegal” helps me transmit my message more than “undocumented” (which I keep using here to avoid opening unnecessary fronts. After all, new proposals need to reach a critical mass to make a difference. Hopefully this is a start.).
3. An educated sales force (activists, leaders) that advance your product and your message. It would be especially important to train debaters to, again, push your product in the media. There is nothing more counterproductive that a poorly prepared leader sinking in the chair of a TV studio, even though he has the truth on his side, simply because he has surrounded himself not with marketers but with fans who never trained him for that moment. More, watching a good debater could inspire others and help recruit more activists and allies besides gaining favor with the audience.
Selling your product implies much more than placing your product in your Web page as part of the decoration (=known now as digital activism). It implies selling it, taking it from the Web page to every forum, to every corner, to every street conversation you have.
4. Address the problems that have historically blocked immigration reform (gerrymandering and close primaries), as shown in e) so the few opportunities you have don’t end up in sour experiences as most probably will happen with Biden’s 2021 proposal. In the short term, replicating the 2014 Cochran-McDaniel experience may create the foundations for a much better chance in 2025.
5. Immigration as a stand-alone issue is hopeless, even if you target only the Latino community(30). That’s why you need to make alliances with other organizations on compatible causes (to join forces to canvass for a candidate, as Unite Here (https://unitehere.org/) did for Biden in 2020; to introduce candidates to PACs; etc.), starting especially inside your own ethnic community (as Gatito Inmeegrante did in my story when he fought the gangs ravaging Nayak before he could gain them for the cause of immigration justice).
Also, join forces with PACs like Immigrant’s List (https://www.immigrantslist.org/) and Carlos Gutierrez’s Republicans for Immigration Reform PAC (https://www.republicansforimmigrationreform.org/). These were the two that existed when I drafted a plan to push for immigration reform in 2008. Add new ones of which I might have lost track to the list if you can. And yes, you can find allies among honest conservatives. Some of the best papers on immigration have been written by the CATO Institute (https://www.cato.org/research/immigration).
Finally, join forces with politicians, especially those willing to push your product in Congress and even organize fundraisers for them. Your alliance with PACs could make you more attractive to them.
Alliances with compatible organizations should also help you mobilize volunteers to the right candidates as alliances with PACs should help you bring money to their campaigns. Only this way politicians will take you seriously. Most of them don’t care whether the Latino vote will decide elections in 30 years. They care about what you can do for them in the next elections. As simple as that.
If you clear the path of the disinformation that have been spread without opposition for decades(31), immigration is not that complicated. But before you sell the solution, you have to sell the problem. You have to set the record straight.
Finally, considering that this is an uphill battle, most probably the best we will be able to do in the short term is damage control via executive orders. In 2010 I predicted that 2013 was going to be the last chance for immigration reform in a long time (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2010/12/29/932179/-So-far). Unfortunately that time was wasted and it’s gone. Let’s not waste more time or the next episode of the Children in Cages will be on us for not preventing the next Trump from using the pain and tears of immigrants as battle cry to pander to his base.
Notes (Optional):
(1) “Obama vs. Firm, the Most Stupid Fight of Our Times” https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2008/12/10/671565/-Obama-vs-FIRM-the-most-stupid-fight-of-our-times.
(3) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28695425-strangers-in-their-own-land
(4) For an introduction to how the immigration law actually work, John Oliver on immigration (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXqnRMU1fTs&t=9s) and asylum (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtdU5RPDZqI). For a more academic approach, see Aviva Chomsky’s works.
(5) In the early XX Century the Dillingham Commission reflected what was moderate compared to the opinion of leaders like Albert Johnson, chair of the House Immigration Committee, who considered Eastern European immigrants “unassimilable” (sic), and “abnormally twisted.” (Not Like Us: Immigrants and Minorities in America, 1890-1924, Ivan R. Dee Publisher, 1997)
(7) https://www.nber.org/papers/w12497.
(8) “Obama vs. Firm, the Most Stupid Fight of Our Times” (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2008/12/10/671565/-Obama-vs-FIRM-the-most-stupid-fight-of-our-times) and “Betraying Hector Perez Garcia” (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2008/12/8/670801/-Betraying-Hector-Perez-Garcia-or-the-FIRM-rsquo-s-extraordinary-service-to-the-xenophobic-Right)
(9) “Obama vs. Firm, the Most Stupid Fight of Our Times” (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2008/12/10/671565/-Obama-vs-FIRM-the-most-stupid-fight-of-our-times) and “Betraying Hector Perez Garcia” (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2008/12/8/670801/-Betraying-Hector-Perez-Garcia-or-the-FIRM-rsquo-s-extraordinary-service-to-the-xenophobic-Right)
(10) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/heritage-foundation-jason-richwine/315481/
(12) https://cis.org/Report/Downsizing-Illegal-Immigration
(13) Though, from a political marketing point of view, we should target preferably Latinos for whom a Latino identity is important (Identity Crisis, John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck; Princeton University Press, 2018, p. 184). As ANES polls show, Hispanics for whom a Hispanic identity are important, are more receptive to a pro-immigrant message.
(14) The Simpsons, Season 6, episode 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideshow_Bob_Roberts
(15) https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2009/6/6/739587/-The-charming-racism-of-NumbersUSA
(16) https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/us/politics/eric-cantor-loses-gop-primary.html
(18) https://lessig.org/
(19) https://news.yahoo.com/quinnipiac-poll-77-republicans-believe-204100654.html
(20) “Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and his Followers” by John Dean and Bob Altemeyer, Melville House, 2020, p. 225 (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/53952310-authoritarian-nightmare).
(21) https://thehill.com/latino/444124-ann-coulter-slams-trumps-immigration-plan
(22) “White Shift” Eric Kaufmann, Abrams Books, 2018: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-political-scientist-defends-white-identity-politics-eric-kaufmann-whiteshift-book
(23) John F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants, 1958: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nation_of_Immigrants (also in a 1963 speech National Origins Quotas Should Be Abolished)
(24) https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html
(29) You get to know the product because you trust the brand as you have experience it in other products, because people you trust have referred it to you, because you have felt satisfied with a free sample or even because it has been endorsed by a celebrity you admire. But if you experience with the product is bad, a commercial is not going to change it. It just triggers it in your mind.
(30) For a recent sample of the polls Naleo does periodically on the top issues of interest for Latino voters, cf. https://naleo.org/COMMS/2020/NEF%20LD%20Polling/Week_7_Toplines.pdf?_t=1603135396
Historically, as Romney learned the hard way in 2012, immigration has never been the top issue for Latinos. Nevertheless, before Trump, candidates displaying xenophobic attitudes resulted in Latino votes against that candidate.
(31) Among the false arguments that have spread undisputed through speeches and debates you have that immigrants are a burden to the economy, that they are a source of crime, that they create an unbalance in the mainstream culture, that they have skipped their place in “the line,” etc. It’s very telling how Obama and Schumer were trying to sell the 2013 bill by saying that, if passed, undocumented immigrants would have to go to the “back of the line” when that “line” doesn’t exist in the law, only in xenophobic propaganda.