If I had a nickel for every time I have heard a Black friend, associate and even relative loudly complain that all these illegal immigrants pouring into the country are taking jobs from Blacks and hogging all the social service and educational benefits, I'd be a multi-millionaire. Trump certainly has masterfully exploited that horror. His new hit point on illegal immigrants is that if reelected president he'll conduct the greatest mass deportation in American history, and to boot, slap an iron clad lock on the border.
This is all textbook Trump sensationalist bloviating, and almost none of his inflammatory, naked borderline racist, chauvinist, nativist pandering has a prayer of passing legal and constitutional muster. Yet as evidenced by the concerns and fears of many Blacks most of whom have absolutely no love for Trump or his politics, illegal immigration has touched a sore spot with them.
Black fears about the alleged negative impact on Black job, education and services are certainly nothing new. In times past, Black illegal immigrant foes even called illegal immigration the greatest threat to Black America since slavery. That eye-catching, over-the-top, outrageous bit of hyperbole set more tongues wagging than celebrity sex gossip.
Blacks have been
loudly protesting illegal immigration since it became a stormy national issue
and did much to propel Trump into the Oval Office in 2016. A decade before that
an odd assemblage of writers, preachers, a homeless rights advocate,
professional anti-immigration advocates, and a few local Black community
residents from the Washington, D.C. area, grabbed some momentary camera time
with a press conference in Washington, D.C. They called themselves Choose Black
America and claimed that the overwhelming majority of Black Americans agreed
with them that illegal immigration was the prime threat to Blacks.
That was hardly a spontaneous gathering of public-spirited Blacks outraged over the impact of illegal immigration, and neither was their red-hot rhetoric against the bill. The Federation for American Immigration Reform paid for the airfare, hotel accommodations, and expenses for most of the participants as well as the rental fee for the press conference. The organization long demanded the toughest possible immigration laws and the tightest possible border control enforcement.
Their Washington, D.C. flutter was the high-water mark at that time for the Black immigration foes. With the death of the immigration reform bill in Congress, the group quickly vanished from the public's radarscope.
The signs that illegal immigration continued to be a point of worry for many Blacks were there all along. The first big warning sign of Black frustration with illegal immigration came during the battle over Proposition 187 in California in 1994. White voters voted by big margins for the proposition that denied public services to undocumented immigrants. But nearly fifty percent of blacks also backed the measure.
Then Republican governor Pete Wilson shamelessly pandered to anti-immigrant hysteria and rode it to a reelection victory. Wilson also got nearly 20 percent of the black vote in the 1994 election. It was double what Republicans in California typically got from Blacks. Wilson almost certainly bumped up his Black vote total with his freewheeling assault on illegal immigration. Blacks also gave substantial support to anti-bilingual ballot measures in California.
More than a decade later Black attitudes toward illegal immigrants, which almost always is seen as Latino illegal immigrants, was put to the electoral test in Arizona with another ballot initiative. Proposition two hundred mandated tough sanctions on employers for hiring illegal immigrants, and tighter border enforcement. Exit polls showed that more than 65 percent of Blacks backed the measure. As with Proposition 187 in California a decade before, it passed by a landslide.
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