10 Dec Immigration’s Opportunities
All history, and modern history especially, in some sense is the account of the decline of community and the ruin consequent upon that loss. In the process, the triumph of the modern state has been the most powerful factor. “The single most decisive influence upon Western social organization has been the rise and development of the centralized territorial state.” There is every reason to regard the state in history as, to use a phrase that Gierke applied to Rousseau’s doctrine of the General Will, “a process of permanent revolution.” Hostile toward every institution which acts as a check upon its power, the nation-state has been engaged, ever since the decline of the medieval order, in stripping away one by one the functions and prerogatives of true community – aristocracy, church, guild, family, and local association. What the state seeks is a tableland upon which a multitude of individuals, solitary though herded together, labor anonymously for the state’s maintenance. Universal military conscription and the “mobile labor force” and the concentration-camp are only the most recent developments of this system. The “pulverizing and macadamizing tendency of modern history” that Maitland discerned has been brought to pass by “the momentous conflicts of jurisdiction between the political state and the social associations lying intermediate to it and the individual.” The same process may be traced in the history of Greece and Rome; and what came of this, in the long run, was social ennui and political death. All those gifts of variety, contrast, competition, communal pride, and sympathetic association that characterize man at his manliest are menaced by the ascendancy of the omnicompetent state of modern times, resolved for its own security to level the ramparts of traditional community.
–Russell Kirk, “Ethical Labor,” The Sewanee Review 62, no. 3 (Jul.–Sept. 1954).
In the five weeks since Donald Trump won re-election, Blue state and city politicians have ramped up their rhetoric in response to his immigration plans. We will protect our residents, they say. We will fight Trump tooth and nail. We will not aid Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) efforts to deport our friends and neighbors. We will resist! For example:
“I want to emphasize that the California DOJ is here to protect immigrants’ safety, immigrants’ freedoms, and immigrants’ rights,” [California Attorney General Rob] Bonta said during a recent press conference. “Let me be clear: President-elect Trump’s immigration agenda is draconian and his rhetoric, xenophobic. You can be sure that as California Attorney General, if Trump attacks the rights of our immigrants, I will be there.”
Bonta has been involved in California politics for more than two decades and has been the state attorney general since 2021. Bonta is a key figure in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) plans to “Trump-proof” California.
“My office will continue to use the full force of the law and every tool at our disposal to protect the rights of California’s immigrants — and we need staff at these critical locations to do the same,” Bonta said. “We cannot let the Trump deportation machine create a culture of fear and mistrust that prevents immigrants from accessing vital public services.”
Denver Mayor Mike Johnson went so far as to promise to go to jail resisting Trump, or even to use city police resources to “fight” the president’s immigration efforts. The plan – throughout the Democratic Party – is to make enforcement of Trump’s immigration promises as difficult, as ugly, and as costly as possible to enforce. Democratic politicians and activists want to ruin his second term and, at the same time, make the case that it is reprehensible to treat people like criminals just because they committed a crime (or…something like that).
Now, I know this is a radical idea, but what if President Trump were to say in response to all of this showboatastical hysteria, “Well…OK”? What if he were to tell Blue state governors and Blue city mayors that they can do what they want to do, that he strongly advises against their actions but won’t start a war (proverbial or, as in Mike Johnson’s fantasies, real) with them over immigration? What if he were simply to go about securing the border and deporting the illegal immigrants from Red states and Blue cities that ask for help? What if he allowed the Blue states to have their way, to be, in Justice Brandeis’s words, “laboratories of democracy” on the question of immigration? What if he let Blue-state politicians reap the rewards of their self-destructive virtue-signaling?
That’s a lot of questions, I know. And I don’t have all the answers, unfortunately. I do have a few of them, however.
The first thing that would happen if Trump were to do this is that illegal immigrants would self-deport in massive numbers from Red states to Blue states. Just like Portland and Seattle have become refuges for young, mentally ill drug users because of their permissive attitudes toward drug use, vagrancy, and petty crime, so Blue states and cities would become refuges for the “undocumented” who wish to stay in the United States. Why would anyone risk being rounded up and shipped back to Venezuela in Texas, when they can be welcomed with open arms by Mayor Mike? Why would they stay in neo-fascist Florida, under the governance of neo-Nazis like Ron DeSantis, when they can just as easily feel the warm and tender embrace of the generous and beatific Gavin Newsom? Let the Blue states have their way – and say so publicly – and that will take care of a big part of the problem.
The second thing that would happen is that the residents of these Blue states and cities would learn very quickly what H.L. Mencken meant when he said that “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” As we have seen over the last four years – and especially since Florida Governor DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott started paying to ship illegal immigrants to other parts of the country – taking care of massive numbers of new residents can put an enormous strain on government resources. Housing, education, health care, law enforcement, and heaven knows what other public services have been overwhelmed in cities like Chicago and New York. New York’s Mayor, Eric Adams, has recognized that he and his city are in over their heads. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, by contrast, has insisted that he and his city want it all gooder and harder.
Part of the process of enabling Blue states and cities to understand Mencken’s dictum would be for the federal government to cut as much funding as possible for the aid and comfort of undocumented immigrants. “If you want to defy federal law and federal law enforcement, that’s your business, but don’t expect the law-abiding regions of the country to subsidize your choices.”
The Trump administration will have to be careful, naturally, not to be too aggressive about its refusal to subsidize Blue-state obduracy, but it can limit their funding, and it can make a public point of doing so. As the legal analyst Jonathan Turley recently put it, “Under constitutional law, the federal government cannot be a bully, but it does not have to be a chump.”
The third thing that would happen is that the Trump Administration could begin its second term with a policy that encourages states to reassert themselves, to take action on behalf of and responsibility for the well-being of their citizens. As I have argued over the past few weeks (mostly here and here), centralization is one of the greatest risks to American economic liberty in the 21st century. It is also true that centralization is one of the greatest risks to American political liberty. The two are, in fact, part of the same larger process. Saving American capitalism as well as the American constitutional republic will require considerable decentralization. And the Trump team can begin the decentralization process almost immediately by being judicious in how it plays the immigration question.
By encouraging decentralization – a return to states’ authority and a rebirth of federalism – the Trump team would not only allow states to address issues in the best interests of their residents, as the Founders intended, but would also provide a blueprint for salvaging the republic and pre-empting the “national divorce” many on both the Left and the Right seem to favor (particularly when they are out of power). While it is inarguable that many of the differences between the goals and values of residents of California and those of Iowa are irreconcilable, that doesn’t necessarily mean that divorce is the only viable option. Perhaps all they need is separate bedrooms. Perhaps the Founders knew what they were doing when they created a federal republic, which would allow states not only to manage their own affairs at a level closer to their citizens but also to manage them in keeping their citizens’ unique desires.
As the great Russell Kirk noted (in the quote at the top of the piece, among other places), the centralization of authority in the hands of a few is the road to both serfdom and authoritarianism. It is also a process that has largely been inevitable. Perhaps by finessing the immigration issue, President Trump can score a victory for those who support his policies, allow the Blue polities to try their darnedest to score a victory for those who support their policies, and set the foundation for an unprecedented decentralization effort.
It can’t hurt to try.
