Immigration Didn’t Have to Tear America Apart

The standoff over immigration in the U.S. Congress that shut the government for three days looks strange to a world that sees the U.S. as a nation of immigrants fighting over immigration. “America was a model for immigration, but that image has collapsed,” says Hidenori Sakanaka, head of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, which promotes more newcomers to insular Japan.

Americans with a sense of history find it odd, too. That’s because the deep partisan split over immigration is actually quite new. Anti-immigration sentiment has waxed and waned over the centuries, to be sure. But as recently as 2006, Democratic and Republican voters were only 5 percentage points apart in their favorability toward immigrants, according to Pew Research Center. Back then—just a dozen years ago—­business advocates of more open borders found a warmer welcome in the Republican Party. And on the Democratic side, a first-term senator named Barack Obama could write, “When I see Mexican flags waved at pro-immigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment.”