Mike the Mad Biologist

With Trump’s blut und boden immigration policy in disarray, many of his enablers are now retreating to a position of “we just want to deport the bad ones.” But there are two problems with that. First, as a matter of policy, it’s impossible to calibrate accurately (boldface mine):

The basic fallacy in chasing votes by being “tough on immigration” is that the modal American’s position on the issue is “Deport the Bad ones and keep the Good ones,” and they alone know who is which, and that simply does not translate into workable policy. So this kind of gestapo stuff horrifies some of the same people who cheered when Trump promised to do it. There are true sociopaths who love this, but “No, I meant only the BAD people!” is as likely a reaction as enthusiasm. You cannot do immigration policy that satisfies these people because what they want is nonsensical.

So by the time center-left parties fully commit to chasing the far right by “getting tough” on immigration, the backlash has already begun to build and they walk right into it.

“I thought you people wanted this!” No, they want something impossible and convinced themselves they’d get it.

It is hard to grasp but large masses of Americans are both racist/xenophobic AND not racist/xenophobic enough to applaud what Trump is doing. It’s goldilocks shit, they want a level of racism/xenophobia calibrated exactly to their personal preferences, and you just can’t make that policy. Don’t try.

And! If you DO try it hurts you in two ways. You fail to give people what they want (because that’s impossible!) AND you reinforce the impression that you’re a party of glib empty suits who believe in absolutely nothing and will say whatever a poll tells them is popular. Lose-lose. Not great.

The second problem is that, even with a very expansive definition of “bad ones”, what this means is that the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants–north of ninety percent–would remain in the U.S. Not only is this not what the blut und boden wing wants, but it doesn’t really solve the (imaginary) problems conservatives frequently whine about, like “they’re taking all of our tax dollars.” Either they’re going to have to remove far more immigrants than they have the stomach for, or they’re going to have to actually reconsider their stance.

Conservatives are about to learn that running on bullshit issues occasionally does collide with reality, and they’re not going to like this.