Still Time To Block Immigration-Induced Leftism—If We Act Now
In the 2004 election, California, the state with the
highest proportion of immigrants, ranked behind only
Texas and
Hawaii in having the lowest fraction of its
population vote. A mere 35 percent of the residents of
California cast ballots, in contrast to over 55 percent
in
Maine and Minnesota.
Just 12.4 million Californians voted in 2004, while
about 15 million adult residents didn`t go to the polls.
About four-fifths of those
nonvoters aren`t registered, either because they are
not citizens or because they just didn`t get around
to it.
California has already become a fairly left-of-center
state. While it went Republican nine out of ten times
from
1952-1988, it has
voted solidly for the last four
Democratic Presidential candidates.
So what will happen as the current nonvoters—who are
mostly immigrants or their kin—slowly filter into the
California electorate?
And, seeing what has happened to the once-Golden State,
why do George W. Bush and Karl Rove—
allegedly
Republicans—want to
Californicate the rest of the Union?
Last week, the Public Policy Institute of California
published a study by pollster
Mark Baldassare, entitled
California`s Exclusive Electorate. It details
just what those millions of the unregistered intend to
vote for when they, or their children, eventually do
vote.
The results should gladden the hearts of
Latin American leftist populists such as Hugo Chavez
and
Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
And they should terrify the capitalists of
Silicon Valley—especially when they consider how
California`s free-wheeling initiative system empowers
anybody with a plausible-sounding idea to put it in
front of the state`s already-undiscerning voters.
(Although initiatives were once a way for citizens to
rebuke politicians, as in the heroic days of
Propositions
13,
187,
209, and
227, interest groups have since learned how to game
the system for their own advantage.)
According to the PPIC`s report, California`s
unregistered would like to use the ballot box to, in
effect, take money from the highly-productive and give
it to themselves.
This is exactly the essential danger of democracy that
Aristotle pointed out: that the poor, who are many,
will vote to despoil the rich, who are few.
America, fortunately, has largely avoided that by having
a middle class society. But California is
leading the way toward a Latin American-style
social pyramid.
What`s striking is not that the unregistered, being
mostly
lower income, would use the vote to
line their own pockets, but that so many of them are
so disorganized or distractible or disconnected that
they haven`t gotten around to doing it yet.
Baldassare writes:
"Although the
state has become increasingly diverse, the adults who
frequently vote are predominantly white, age 45 and
older, and relatively affluent. In contrast, nonvoters
(those who are not registered to vote) are mostly
nonwhite, younger, and less affluent than frequent (or
`likely`) voters."
According to the
study, among current likely voters in California, 72
percent are white and 14 percent are Hispanic.
In contrast, among
residents who aren`t registered to vote, just 24 percent
are white and 63 percent are Hispanic.
Baldassare (email
him) thinks this is an injustice. But really the
unregistered Hispanics lack of interest in voting should
be seen as a bit of balancing justice—considering that
most of them either
came here illegally, or are the descendants of
lawbreakers and are citizens only because of the current
eccentric interpretation of the 14th Amendment
granting birthright citizenship to
the children of illegal aliens.
Baldassare continues:
"Likely voters and
nonvoters have very different political views. Likely
voters are deeply divided about the role of government,
satisfied with initiatives that limit government [such
as the tax-limiting Proposition 13], relatively
positive about the state`s elected leaders, and
ambivalent and divided along party lines on ballot
measures that would
spend more on the poor. In contrast, the state`s
nonvoters want a more active government, are less
satisfied with initiatives that limit government, are
less positive about elected officials, and favor ballot
measures that would
spend more on programs to help the poor."
Today`s California
voters, in the wake of the driving-out (political
cleansing?) of
so many conservative Californians over the last 15
years, are marginally pro big-government: 49 percent say
they would prefer to pay higher taxes and have more
government services, while 44 percent want lower taxes
and fewer services.
In sharp contrast,
two-thirds of the unregistered prefer higher taxes and
barely over a quarter want lower taxes.
Likewise, in May just
under half of current voters approve of Proposition 1C
on California`s November ballot, a $3 billion bond for
"affordable housing" (i.e.,
big handouts for certain politically favored or
just plain lucky homebuyers), while 80 percent of
the unregistered are for it. So, if all residents in
California voted, this giveaway would be ahead 60-37.
And, while 50 percent
of voters want to see more spent on health and human
services, 70 percent of nonvoters do so.
Similarly, likely
voters (77 percent of whom are
homeowners) approve of the overall effect of
Proposition 13, the famous 1977 property tax-cutting
initiative, by a 56 percent to 33 percent margin.
Meanwhile, the unregistered (only
34 percent of whom own their own homes) disapprove
of it 47 percent to 29 percent.
Obviously, a lot of
the unregistered, not having been in
America 29 years ago, aren`t exactly sure what
Proposition 13 is. A key provision of Proposition 13 was
the fixed tax burden for existing homeowners. It keeps
the elderly from being evicted from their homes during
housing bubbles when they can`t pay
rising property taxes.
When this is
explained to nonvoters, who are mostly renters, they
oppose Proposition 13 even more—68 percent to 20
percent.
Although Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger has swung sharply to the left over
the last year, his Republican label still leaves him
intensely unpopular with the unregistered. Only 21
percent approve of his job performance, which is half of
his popularity among probable voters.
So why is George W.
Bush trying to put illegal aliens "on the path to
citizenship" when they will vote for Ted Kennedy`s
policies?
As you will recall,
back in early 2004 Bush defended his amnesty plan by
denying that it was amnesty. He concocted the wholly
novel definition of "amnesty" as being utterly
restricted to providing citizenship to illegal aliens,
which he said he was against.
Yet, as I pointed out
on
February 1, 2004, Bush`s call for helotry was
politically untenable:
"But Bush`s new
Machiavellianism automatically cedes the
rhetorical high ground to the Democrats, who are
already pushing for `
earned
legalization` (i.e., giving illegals the vote). Bush
is left contradictorily sputtering about how
wonderful immigrants are and how we don`t want them
to become our fellow citizens."
The Democrats duly
offered to put them on the path to citizenship…and,
thus, to becoming good little Democratic voters.
Last May, Mr. Bush
comically
defined "amnesty" down even farther:
"They should not be
given an automatic path to citizenship. This is
amnesty, and I oppose it." [Emphasis mine.]
Inevitably,
President Bush has now endorsed the Senate bill
originally sponsored by
Senator Kennedy, who has been pushing immigration in
order to import
new Kennedy voters since
1965. Not surprisingly, the bill the Senate passed
in May would give most illegal aliens the vote.
The President and
his consigliere
Karl Rove have justified this long series of
self-inflicted political disasters with the rationale
that the Hispanic electoral tidal wave will be here Real
Soon Now. So the only possible response for Republican
politicians, they suggest, is to preemptively surrender
to Hispanics by letting in even more
of their relatives before they start voting
against us in truly huge numbers.

Where we have heard this logic before?
Oh, yes, in the
1994 "Deep Space Homer"
episode of The Simpsons. Airhead newscaster
Kent Brockman, mistakenly convinced that Earth is about
to be conquered by "a master race of giant space
ants,"
famously announces:
"[Grimly] One
thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the
ants will soon be here. [Suddenly ingratiating]
And I for one welcome our new insect overlords.
I`d like to remind them that as a
trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding
up others to toil in their underground sugar caves."
But the
swarm of new Hispanic voters that the conventional
wisdom expected to be unleashed by the
huge illegal immigrant marches last spring simply is
not appearing. The
AP recently reported:
"But an Associated
Press review of voter registration figures from Chicago,
Denver, Houston, Atlanta and other major urban areas
that saw large rallies shows no sign of a historic new
voter boom that could sway elections."
In the long run, of course, California is in for ever
more trouble as its huge reserve of leftist nonvoters
trickles into the electorate.
And as the recently unveiled mini-Census of 2005
reveals, California has been raked over so hard by
illegal immigration that
the illegals themselves are now fleeing for greener
pastures in the other 49 states—bringing
California-style problems with them.
Still, for now this is the good news implicit in the
PPIC report: contra the Brockman-Bush Theory of
welcoming our new overlords in the hopes that betraying
your own fellow citizens will incline the incoming
master race to be merciful to you (sorry about everybody
else), Hispanic voting is still so weak that it`s not
yet too late politically to shut off the influx from
abroad…if we act now.
[Steve Sailer [email
him] is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and
movie critic for
The American Conservative.
His website
www.iSteve.blogspot.com features his daily
blog.]


