The Tribune

There is a superficial irony in the immigration controversy in the United States. Conventional wisdom says that anti-immigration sentiment generally peaks when economic times are tough. It is in such dire times that people already established in a society fear for their economic livelihood.

But in the United States under Donald Trump, the American economy still seems to have solid positive energy. So why is there such discord about immigrants and whether they are corroding American society and values and safety?

The answer is likely to be found in the United States ten years ago. That was the time of the onset of what came to be known as the Great Recession. The American stock market lost a huge percentage of its value in September and October of 2008, and the US economy staggered through a terrifying period of uncertainty during which serious observers began to speculate that the most accurate term for the collapse was depression, not recession.

As it turned out, investors and their well-paid advisers chose the correct path if they stayed the course and did not panic and bail out of the stock market. As some of the biggest banks and financial institutions on Wall Street faltered and in some cases failed, a new American president was elected and Barack Obama and his advisers opted for a massive government bailout plan which eventually restored the American automobile industry and most investors’ stock portfolios.

The bailout also provided a basis for the ultimately complete recovery of many large financial institutions whose careless greed with worthless securities had precipitated the colossal financial collapse in the first place.

But the bailout also left behind millions of ordinary Americans, many of them lower income white voters.

Exactly ten years ago, the US economy was apparently in respectable shape, although most observers believed it was artificially superheated. Fast forward to 2018. Now, after 18 months of the Trump administration, major leading economic indicators point to a healthy economy. Unemployment is still down, and the stock market has retained major gains under Trump. The Federal Reserve Bank has resumed nudging the prime interest rate higher, and there is little evidence of inflation in the economy.

But those white Americans who didn’t stay in the market or weren’t in it to begin with ten years ago never have really recovered. The rosy economic picture that prevails today hasn’t touched them under Trump, and it didn’t touch them under Barack Obama either.

So they were angry. They voted in vast numbers for Trump, because for them, economic times were bad and not improving, and like voters everywhere when the financial picture is dire and remains so, they looked for a scapegoat. And like many others in similar circumstances in many different countries, they looked in the direction of those who were different. They looked at immigrants.

Now Trump is leading the hatred and the xenophobia, because he correctly believes it resonates with his 35 percent voter base. His policies, and those of his Attorney General, have led the US to its immigration catharsis. Sessions has pursued a sharply anti-immigrant policy in the Senate and in Alabama elective politics even before he was elected to the Senate, so he is an enthusiastic recruit to the present policy of hatred and scapegoating.

As recently as two weeks ago, Sessions began aggressively pushing the nation’s federal immigration judges, who report to the Department of Justice. The Attorney General wants faster case processing, with a concomitant reduction in the likelihood of a fair hearing. Many observers think immigration judges will now be pulled into the administration’s zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration, a term Trump also applies casually to political refugees and other legitimate would-be immigrants.

There is presently a backlog of nearly 700,000 cases in the immigration court system in the United States. Trump and Sessions are pushing policies that will only increase that backlog.

Their solution is not to reflect on any lack of wisdom in their policy. It is instead to throw more judges and prosecutors at the problem. Now the Defense Department has agreed to loan 21 lawyers to expedite the real goal, which is even more prosecutions and unfairness. More controversy and pathos seem inevitable.