<Music> Welcome to Party Politics, where we prepare you for your next political conversation.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina, political science professor at the University of Houston.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus also a political science professor at the University of Houston.

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking politics.

We're going to deviate from our normal course of action where we hit the big news of the day.

Yeah.

This is surprise to you.

Okay.

I just shifted course.

Yeah, like an audible.

We're going to talk about the border in particular.

Why the border is such a potent politic issue.

We're going to cover the transition of politics in this country from about the 1980s to the present, going back a little bit further in some cases, to talk about why the border became such a pertinent issue.

This is critical because we're in Texas.

This is, epicenter for where the politics of the border are.

So it's, I think, useful for us to tease this out as a story about the way this is evolved over time and kind of where it's going, which is something you're an expert in.

But I want to set the stage for us here, because I'm really interested in the way that this issue has, migrated from, kind of minor issue to something that is now obviously of national importance and political potency.

In the year 2005, we had three governors assemble in Texas.

It sounds like a beginning of a joke, right?

Rick Perry, obviously the governor of Texas, Bill Richardson from New Mexico, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was governor of California.

Not a joke, because people didn't know that's a truth.

And good.

And, they came to Texas basically to partner together since they all had a contiguous border along their state's southern areas to oppose mistreatment of migrants, both documented and undocumented, and pledged to take responsibility for border security.

Boy, have things changed, right?

The politics of the border became so much more potent.

You had a transition in terms of the politics, obviously, with the Obama administration and the border.

Then became a flashpoint for all of these states, especially in Texas.

So just to set the stage for the way that this came about, what's your kind of initial take on why it is at the border?

It became such a potent political issue.

Well, I think the border has been a potent political issue since forever.

President Wilson was the first president sending military in the during the Mexican Revolution back in the 1920s.

The border has always been contentious, but more deeply, I think, is because borders represent the division between us and them.

And borders also represent the definition of the sovereignty of a state.

And borders are very important because states have in every single country, every sovereign country has the right to determine who enters, how they enter, and if they can settle down and eventually become part of the polity.

Yeah, kind of the cointegration of the exactly population to.

Exactly.

So it's it's it's something that is in the very own essence of how you define a nation state.

Interesting.

And migration how you since we have recorded human history, migration has been part of human history.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So it's that part in terms of how, I guess from a substantive point of substantial point, I think that's why it's very interesting.

But in terms of politics, because migration sells.

Yeah, it sells.

But I wonder about this.

And that's the notion that the kind of people who are already here who have then, you know, new migrants come in, are worried about the existing in-group sort of domination.

Right.

It's a story about the economy.

It's a story about kind of race.

And the concern is that it becomes very quickly a kind of dog whistle right where you've got kind of one party or maybe some case actually both parties and not just a Republican thing.

It's definitely the Democrats as well, especially because it's been historically so potent.

But that's been the case that the in-group has always been uncomfortable with the new outgroup.

So then you have things like, you know, the economy is the suffering because of this new migration, right?

Or you've got, you know, kind of difficulty in integration or crime issues that are resulting from this new group.

So that too seems to have important implications to the way that people feel about immigration.

Of course.

What's odd to me, I want to ask you this question.

And that's that, you know, immigration is so important to the economy.

Everyone sort of recognizes in some way.

And yet there's still this resistance to immigration, especially in kind of peak moments.

Right.

So when the economy goes bad, there's this sort of sense that there's needs to be someone to blame, and people blame immigration, which is usually not true.

Right?

Usually immigration is a driver of sort of economic success, especially in places that need labor, like Texas.

So how do you square those things together?

Well, it's very difficult to square them.

And just going back a couple of centuries.

Oh, okay.

Just going to like.

Yeah, yeah.

The differences between the in-group and the outgroup has always been present.

Yeah.

We saw these with, for example, the Chinese exclusion Act of the 1800s, gentlemen's agreement with Japan.

Then you have, anti-immigrant sentiment with southern Europeans, Italians, even with the Irish, that are very similar to the to to to the in-group in terms of, demographic characteristics.

But their version of one, because they were Catholic.

So every time you have that, pull and push tension between the in-group and their group because they're different, because there is something different about those coming.

Yeah.

In terms of, of immigration is very tricky.

And I think economic impacts, because people simply do not understand one way or the other, are the, the economic benefits and costs of migration.

Of course immigration costs.

Right.

And immigration is going to have an impact perhaps in at the local level.

Yeah.

In terms of some, cause that some municipalities may not be able to cooperate and especially when you have a huge influx, but it has to be a huge influx.

Then at the state level, I would think that immigration has a positive net effect.

And at the national level, that positive effect tends to multiply.

Yeah.

So the question is in which industries, migrants tend to be more represented.

You have obviously construction industry, agricultural industry, farming, so on and so forth.

And that has a net positive effect we have seen in the history of, of the country and more recently back in 2016, back in 2006, that when you tried to replace migrant labor with native born labor, it doesn't work.

It doesn't work.

He's like, no way.

That's it.

And it's something very complicated to to replace wages.

Yeah, it's a very, very hard labor.

And it's not that you're talking about unskilled migration.

You're talking about a different skill.

Yeah.

That the native born population does not want to do.

Yeah.

Speaking strawberries or oranges or olives or farming.

It's very, very, very hard labor.

Yeah.

And there is not enough supply of native born labor.

So once you create those conditions, you need migrant labor.

Yeah.

That's it.

You need it.

Yeah.

And you saw this transition really potent in the kind of time of Covid.

So polling in Texas suggests between, say, February of 2018 and April of 2022, that between 59% and 67% of Texas Republicans says that the U.S. allows too many migrants to come in.

So there is a sort of nativist attachment to this, which is obviously connected to it.

But this is not just a like, Republican thing.

Democrats have run on this issue as well.

Right.

In fact, if you look at the way that even better, O'Rourke, right, ran his Senate race, which people suggested was sort of too left leaning.

When he first got on the scene, he criticized the Biden administration, saying that they should do a better job on the border.

They need to kind of trim things and make sure that it's a priority.

And they frankly weren't doing it.

He made the case that there needs to be predictability.

There needs to be some order that, transpires because that's not what's happening right now.

He may have shifted a little bit in his expectations after he ran for president, but we also saw the same thing happen in the Senate race in 2024.

We're calling all red.

Yeah.

Called out Joe Biden saying that you're doing a bad job on the border.

So here it is.

The Democrats effectively running a kind of more kind of moderate campaign against the way that the, you know, Biden administration is running things.

Is there a recipe here where Democrats can gain politically from making these kinds of claims, or is this really a Republican led effort that is going to be forever potent for their voters?

I think, it's more Republican led.

And the problem here is that you talk about immigration, but you never talk about the solutions.

To be or to have a more predictable system, immigration policy in this country is completely broken.

Yeah.

Both Democrats and Republicans agree for different reasons.

Yeah, but it is the system does not work.

And it doesn't work because the border itself is too porous and or that the immigration sort of legal system, the judges and the process for doing things is inefficient as well.

Like what's the kind of cornerstone of the problem?

Well, I think because the status quo helps, both Democrats and Republicans and also business owners.

Yeah.

Or the industry.

So no one has a real incentive to change it.

There's no incentive to change it.

But again, if you want to diminish it, if you want to decrease it, if you want to have it, you need to have a guest worker program that is really efficient.

Interesting.

That is something that works.

The nation has tried this before and it's it's kind of gone away from that.

Is this something that you think could return?

I think that it needs we really need to start thinking about it in such a way.

Why?

Because these whole crisis, starting in the 1980s, were circular migration stops.

Okay, so when you have circular migration, that's what.

I see.

You have seasonal workers coming here, working here, moving, for example, the agricultural cycle all over the state, then going back to the countries of origin in mainly it was Mexico.

So you have that circularity that you have people coming to work and then say, thank you very much.

Yeah, I made my money for this year.

I'll see you next year.

Bye bye.

So you have a revolving door once you shut the door, the cost of going back are huge.

And you're not going to do it because it's harder to come back and it's harder to come in.

So you stay here.

So what you need to do is to be more efficient in terms of how you do that.

Because we have a labor need that is out of the question, and you cannot negate that.

So when you make it an efficient system, right.

And you have, for example, a market for futures, and you give these, laborers or migrants a contract for, let's say, ten years.

Yeah.

You have your contract for ten years.

You as an employer, you're not worried about, well, what happens if this happens?

What happens if they get deported?

Do I need to trade them again or anything like that?

You train them once and you know that for the next nine years they're going to come back.

Gotcha.

You provide whatever health care or whatnot a 401 K or whatever it is, right?

Yeah, whatever it is, even Social Security, so those contributions can really go into Social Security and then they're going to come here.

Yeah, they're going to make their money and they're going to go back.

And that also creates some sort of wealth back in countries of origin and help those countries of origin interest.

But yeah.

Yeah.

Unlikely.

Right.

Politically it's been such a fraught issue.

And I think one of the reasons it's so fraught is that it really did define the kind of state versus federal government political conflict that we see rising in the 1980s.

Right, right.

President Reagan institutes the sort of mindset for Republicans that the government is the enemy, right?

So he tries to kind of dismantle things and has some success doing it.

But the states really pick up the mantle and say, well, if the federal government is not going to change this, then we're going to do something about it.

To me, the core of the conflict is basically but, borders, bailouts and Band-Aids, right?

The border is a huge issue.

Bailouts became a big issue during the Bush administration at some degree.

During the Biden administration and then Band-Aids, Obamacare and the role of the federal government in providing health care and health insurance for people.

It has become a real just kind of conflict at its core.

So I think that that has become the difficulty of making there be an accommodation between kind of what the states need, what the economy needs and what the federal government.

Yeah.

So but here the problem with that is that if you allow states, as we currently are, in this political dilemma between, yes, who has the national prerogative to have immigration under control?

Yeah.

This is not health care that you can, you know, say to states.

Yeah, you can or cannot accept Medicaid.

Yeah.

It's like like incentives.

But it's not that.

No.

You have to have something that is going to be consistent across the nation, because if not, you're going to end up with a patchwork, immigration policy.

Texas is going to have one.

Illinois is going to have one sewn and sold.

Right.

And that would be a complete disaster because once again, this is not about healthcare.

This is about how the state, as a sovereign nation determines who is willing or who is able to come in and stay and be part of the polity.

Yeah.

So I think that's also a key notion, but obviously is not as politically.

Yeah.

I guess Doesn't possible.

Yeah, yeah.

For sure.

It's hard to get and probably just hard to get is that the borders becomes such a salient issue for Republicans that they're really become intractable about making changes.

So the definitely, with the exception of the Covid moment, where that was the most important issue, the border has been the most important issue for Republicans in Texas.

April of 23, polling had basically 57% of GOP voters saying immigration and the border is the most important problem, so it's hard to dislodge that.

It's been this way for a long time.

And part of it, of course, is reinforced by politicians who are saying there's a crisis, right.

And the way you kind of conceptualize it, the way it's visualized is so potent.

Right?

You've got to sort of like, often just like incorrect or misleading images of people kind of traveling over borders or through rivers or stuff, like there's just a lot of visuals that make people really worried about what's happening.

So like you said earlier, this is a kind of nativist response to a lot of what's going on.

But also, you know, really hits people kind of where they see it as a problem.

The other way, I mean, to counteract that, it would be thinking about especially let's think about construction, for instance.

Yeah.

So migrant labor plays a very important part in, housing development and construction.

Yeah.

So the question is, okay, migrant labor, let's say you can buy a house for 200,000.

Yeah.

And migrant labor in fantasy land.

Right.

Well I mean but whatever it is let's say the median price 350.

Yeah.

All right.

Not anymore non migrant labor.

It's it's going to go to 500,000.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's it.

Because the native born force is not willing to work at that wage price.

Let me ask you about like the preferences for restrictive policies on immigration.

So it's one thing to have kind of people who say immigration is a big problem.

And, you know, there are too many people who are coming here and it's a problem.

But it's another thing to have kind of real kind of punitive notions about what to do about it.

So, for instance, in 2016, 60% of Texans opposed the comprehensive immigration reform.

You had in 2017, 80% of Republicans say they oppose sanctuary cities, the sort of option of having people come there and, and be protected from deportation effectively.

In 2018, a plurality, 46% supported separation of children from their parents when families were apprehended at the US-Mexico border.

These are pretty punitive type policies.

And I'm wondering kind of how you get from the point where people say immigration is a big issue has to be changed to being really hard on people who have come here.

Yeah, well, I think it's first of all, in terms it's a matter of how you communicate the issue.

In terms of sanctuary cities, you know, it's it's not a sanctuary city.

If you commit a crime, whether you are in L.A or in Houston.

Yeah, you're going to be punished.

Yeah.

After that, then you're going to be deported, one way or the other.

So it's a matter of how you construct the narrative around it, and it creates fear because it's unknown.

You don't know.

It's something that is going to have important implications for that.

But I think eventually is how, you really take control of that narrative.

Obviously, comprehensive immigration reform is absolutely impossible.

Yeah.

I mean, it's not going to happen.

Forget about.

It.

So I want to ask you about this, the Senate tried in a bipartisan fashion in 2018 to put together an immigration package.

Correct.

It would have been sort of, you know, address some of the issues that I've been talking about.

It effectively got killed.

Yes.

It was attempted to be kind of reinvigorated, but the sort of national forces sort of, you know, objected.

So Donald Trump in particular said, I don't want that to pass.

Not for us.

Yeah.

And then, you know, the efforts sort of went to zero.

So what was in this plan?

And do you think that that's the kind of thing that might eventually sell in a world where you do have a kind of sense that immigration is important, but we have to control the border?

Well.

Immigration is a cross-cutting issue.

Yeah.

So if you do.

Across party lines.

Across party lines and across, policy issues, it affects health care.

Yeah.

It affects, education.

Yeah.

It affects a lot of things.

So to come here, it's extremely complicated.

Yeah.

It's very, very, very, very complicated.

And you have to be very determined, to follow the whole rules it takes when you're arrival one, not, maybe 16 to 20 years.

Wow.

To to be able to become a naturalized citizen, if you're lucky, one way or the other.

But the system is completely broken, so you cannot fix the whole thing on one city.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

So what I would say is that you need to find issues in which Republicans and Democrats agree.

Yeah.

And start fixing that.

Yeah.

You need to solve also the immigration court system that everyone agrees.

Yeah.

So you still need to fix those little parts and then focus on the other parts that they might not be a lot of agreement, but you can achieve an agreement.

Yeah.

Securing the border.

That's once again a prerogative that every nation state has and every nation, state takes it very seriously.

So it's very clear, how you secure it, the 11,000 different ways, technology, decent that, etc., etc..

So that's easy, you know, because that's just money, right.

Like you can spend money on something, but like getting consensus on how to fix the legal arrangement for what to do and then just to have the agreement that like we're all going to sort of fix this together is another.

So it just takes a lot of effort and political kind of capital to make it happen.

And like you say, the kind of incentives to keep things sort of as they are.

Right.

Republicans have got a good talking point.

Democrats are able to sort of, you know, say that the Republicans are doing enough, but everyone's winning economically, more or less interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

Because obviously if you are employing you're hiring undocumented migrant laborers, workers.

Yeah.

You know, it's right.

Which is illegal.

Right.

So it.

Is need.

People getting away with this.

Well, I mean, it's they don't ask, it's a don't ask, don't tell type of situation, right.

If you implement E-Verify, then that's a different question.

Right.

Which the state of Texas has attempted but has never followed through on because of this issue.

Right, right.

If you start asking questions that it means that you're liable for the oh, yeah.

That's not a good thing for them.

And then it's going to be raising eyebrows and say like, oh, now I don't have any more workers.

What am I going to do?

Yeah.

Good point.

Okay.

Yeah.

I want to ask you about the, kind of Latino vote in this, right?

I remember in 2016 thinking there's no way this is going to be an argument that sells.

Yeah.

Along the Texas border.

Yeah.

But it turns out that it kind of has.

Right?

Yeah.

Part of the reason is that some of the scholarship on this suggests that a lot of people who are like in these arrangements, like Latino voters in particular, don't think of their identity as being Hispanic.

They think of themselves as Americans or think of themselves as Anglo.

That's interesting, because then the notion of kind of priming them on the kind of more problematic elements of the policy, which maybe more nativist and more restrictive, are, aren't going to work.

Right?

Yeah.

And we would sort of assume that they would.

And Democrats, I think, assumed that they would.

So what do you think about that?

Like, how is that play into the nature of the way that the Latino vote is going to shift to politically because of these issues?

So that's a big misconception.

Yeah.

Since the 1940s, Latinos and, and and that time, the majority of Latinos, Mexican Americans, were not across the board in favor of, for example, the Bracero program.

Yeah.

So the country there were say, no, there taking jobs away from us.

And then that's the other important part that is, you know, a political socialization issue in terms of being recognized as a member of the polity.

And then someone coming in and, you know, mainstream thinking, oh, you are with them is no, no, no, no, no, I'm playing on this.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm from your team.

Yeah.

So it may be a reaction of signaling that mainstream.

I'm as American or more American than you are.

Yeah.

And I'm part and rooting for this team.

Interesting.

So that's one issue.

And the other issue, especially when you think at the border is, CBP that is the Customs and Border Protection employs a lot of people in that region.

Yeah.

So there's also an economic, an economic interest.

Gotcha.

So it's it's clear, but Latino voters do not 100% blank check in favor of immigration.

Yeah, there is a lot of variation.

Yeah.

And political parties in in some cases in this case, Democrats have understanding that, oh, you're Latino.

You're for immigration.

Yeah.

And he's like No.

Not quite yet.

Nope.

Yeah.

And the whole thing is really made Texas politics like national politics.

And I've said this for a long time, the kind of spirit of Texas politics is really changed since this issue became a predominant issue.

Yeah, it was bound to be something.

Maybe it was going to be abortion, obviously the economy.

But this is a uniquely kind of Texas ish.

Oh yeah.

And it's transitioned the entire state apparatus into this kind of political, you know, hot potato.

So governors like Perry and Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton, to some degree, like all of this sort of, you know, statewide Republican leaders have spent a lot of time campaigning on basically, it's a national issue, but it's obviously Texas focus.

And this is a huge change from previous immigration law, in the sense that when immigration law at the Farrell, at the national governments had to be very strict.

Yeah.

There was these provisions that the was called the Texas proviso.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And the Texas proviso said like you're going to apply all these law here.

Yeah.

But not in Texas okay.

Basically.

Yeah.

They got a carve out.

Exactly.

Carve out.

He's like you know yeah.

If ain't broken I'm going to fix it.

This guy like we're just going to, you know blind eye and just keep pushing forward.

How does this come about.

This is sort of from the power of the leaders, who are many Texans in that era.

And the role that immigration play in building the state of Texas, especially the agricultural.

Sector.

Interesting.

Yeah, that's a great point.

Yeah.

And it's become such a hot potato for the Republicans.

And they've used this to leverage into national kind of politics.

Right.

So and I think kind of being attentive to these issues politically is good for them.

It lets them raise money.

It gives them a high profile.

And even though we don't have too many Texans who are national governments in the 1950s and 60s, it's about to come around.

Yeah.

Because, you know, the decision is not.

Oh, no, he's not going to him.

But that's another issue that we might explain to different, I'm Jeronimo Cortina, I'm Brandon Rottinghaus The party keeps up next time.

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