Republicans Should Embrace Immigration — Like Canada’s Right
How Canada’s Conservatives used immigrant communities to enhance their agenda in 2011.
Many who pay attention to American politics assume that the right is anti-immigrant, and an “autopsy report” revealed this contributed to their loss in 2012. It seems like rather than learning from the autopsy report, the GOP has doubled down on these sentiments. In 2015, Trump first announced his intent to run for President with his famous speech where he said Mexicans were bringing drugs and crime. Recently Trump has moved to tighten skilled worker visas and returned to pre-Coronavirus mass deportations.
Yet, it would not be right to conclude that all western right-wing movements and parties are necessarily racist or anti-immigrant. If you take a look up north to Canada you’ll see, that at least for a moment, Canada’s Conservative Party openly catered to the immigrant vote.
It was not always this way, but through a focus on personal politics and finding common ground, for a brief time, many immigrant communities voted for the Conservative Party of Canada.
Historically, under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker the concept of un-hyphenated Canadianism was pushed, but Canadian multiculturalism really took root under Pierre Eliot Trudeau (many people who immigrated to Canada during his tenure still have a loyalty to the Liberal Party of Canada).
Afterwards, such communities were taken for granted and so were ripe for targeting by political parties. Through an effort to find commonality between family-oriented cultures and building personal connections, Conservatives swung a large number of immigrant voters.
During the 2015 election that this all slipped away as the nativism that was fomenting in the GOP presidential nominations crept into Canada. Yet, for a brief period, immigrants enjoyed being embraced by all three of Canada’s major national parties.
How the right connected with immigrants
Any political activist knows this scene: you’re in a dark bar, and instead of attempting to poorly flirt with someone you’re trapped in a deep conversation with fellow political nerds. In this case, it’s 1994, and a 35-year-old Stephen Harper is speaking with a 26-year-old Jason Kenney. The former a newly elected Member of Parliament who would later become Prime Minister in 2006. The latter the head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a conservative advocacy group, who eventually became one of Harper’s top cabinet ministers (he now is Alberta’s Premier, which is the Canadian equivalent of a Governor).
At this time the Conservative Party of Canada did not exist but was divided between the Progressive Conservatives and the insurgent Reform Party. Kenney posited that a united right-wing base did not have the sufficient numbers to win on its own, but that they needed to expand their base to immigrants.
Immigrant communities are multi-dimensional but are often courted by progressives on issues of anti-racism and immigration. However, many of these communities are collectivist and culturally, if not religiously, conservative. It would follow that if a right-wing party were to simply be less discriminatory towards such groups and not tighten borders, they could attempt to win some support from immigrant communities. In Canada, this made sense, because while immigration has been politicized, quotas have consistently gone up as arguments are more along the lines how they evaluate who enters the country.
Previously, such communities tended to look to the Liberals and New Democratic Party (NDP) as they actively made an effort to court these them and at a constituency level become a point of contact for resources they could access. During Stephen Harper’s minority government in 2006 (when your party holds the most seats in Parliament, but not an absolute majority) Kenney became his Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. It was at this time that Kenney put his thesis to the test and actively tried to do what the Liberals and NDP had done so long with these communities.
Another minority government was won in 2008, but in 2011 it paid off when Stephen Harper won a majority government, and the Liberals were reduced from second place to third (before Justin Trudeau became party leader there was active speculation that the party was dead).
During this time, the Conservatives also had a series of apologies for historical wrongs committed by the Canadian government against various communities. Most notably there were apologies for the Chinese Head Tax and the Komogata Maru incident where Indian migrants were turned away in 1914. Additionally, there were recognitions of the abuses suffered by Indigenous Canadians under the residential school system, and the Armenian and Ukrainian Genocides.
For a short moment, immigrant communities were held in high esteem and courted by all three major national Canadian parties. The old loyalty to the Liberals had now been challenged by the Conservatives who rode this new support to victory.
How the Conservatives alienated immigrants
This newfound support from immigrants for the Conservative Party was short-lived. 2015 felt like a long time ago, but let’s set the stage: Western countries were fighting ISIS, and with it, residual Islamaphobic sentiments were in the air. As a result of the fighting, hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis were being displaced. South of the border a certain candidate for the Republican nomination was speaking about building a wall with their southern neighbor. Right-wing sentiment on both sides of the border was turning anti-immigrant once again.
Enter the Conservative Party trying to face off against an inexperienced but insurgent Justin Trudeau and a combative Thomas Mulcair in an election.
Rather than try to maintain their base, the Conservatives decide to mount a culture war. It starts with proposing a police snitch line for Canadians to report “barbaric cultural practices”. In an effort to gain a foothold in French-Canadian Quebec, they proposed a niqab ban for public servants and during citizenship ceremonies.
Meanwhile, photos of a drowned Aylan Kurdi appear after his family tried to flee Syria for Turkey. This resonated with the Canadian public, as his relatives in Canada shared that they had issues trying to get him a visa.
Harper slips out a comment about “old stock Canadians” and is derided by many for using coded language.
Contrast this with the Liberals with their charismatic leader Justin Trudeau who promises to take in 25,000 refugees. Immigrants, nostalgic of his father’s legacy of expanding immigration, give the Liberals a majority government.
Since then the Conservatives have not been able to recreate their widespread from immigrant communities. The NDP picked Canada’s first Sikh leader of any political party with Jagmeet Singh, and the Liberals continue to enjoy strong support amongst immigrants.
Additionally, the Conservatives have not had a consistent pro-immigration message since then. Kellie Leitch, a major candidate in their 2017 leadership race wanted a “Canadian Values Test” for new immigrants and referred to Trump’s election as “an exciting message and one we need covered in Canada as well.” She didn’t win the party’s leadership, but she did signal a noticeable shift in the tone of the party, which they have had trouble shaking.
After Prime Minister Trudeau was caught doing black and brown face multiple times, the Conservatives and NDP may have a new opening to win over immigrant communities.
Republicans can import a pro-immigration message
The right in Canada shows that progressive parties winning immigrant votes is not an inevitability, and so all parties need to work hard to win the trust of these diverse communities. In a democracy, it is advantageous for a group to be catered to by all parties. It signals that they are part of mainstream society, and are deserving of attention from all sides of the political spectrum.
Especially at a time like this, all parties need to look at ways to support immigrant communities whether they be Hispanic, Asian-American, African American, or any other minority group. Here are three shifts American conservatives should make if they want to capture support from immigrant communities:
- Focus on integration by providing them with the resources and ties to the community through constituency work and encouraging other forms of participation in civil society.
- Appeal to the collective and family-oriented values many of these communities may have. In his book The Next Evangelicalism, Professor Soong-Chan Rah argues that as religious adherence wanes amongst white Americans, national rates of religious adherence are held up by the religious immigrating from more culturally conservative countries to the US.
- Acknowledge historical wrongs towards earlier waves of immigrant communities since it is easier to get everyone to agree on past wrongs. It is a lot harder, especially on the right, to argue about contemporary systemic issues. Apologizing for historical wrongs can be seen as a token gesture of goodwill to various groups.
Issues such as affirmative action leading to the unintentional discrimination against Asian-American students in college admissions are issues ripe for American conservatives to pursue. Additionally, certain communities tend towards supporting strong economies for ease of finding employment and low taxes. They would just like the ability to move legally and not be discriminated against.
The American right does not need to be associated with racism — just look at Canada.
