In U.S. politics, perception becomes reality

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/03/2022 (1462 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MERE months out from U.S. congressional midterm elections, the crises are mounting for President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

Russia’s cold-blooded invasion of Ukraine has triggered a brutal clash between liberal democracies and illiberal authoritarianism. Sanctions against Russia and the war’s economic fallout are rocking global markets and fueling further inflation, which in the U.S. had already hit a 40-year high in January.

Domestically, Biden’s signature legislative proposals on infrastructure, climate change and social spending have all crumbled because rogue Democratic caucus members withheld their support. Republican-controlled state legislatures, meanwhile, have passed a wave of voter suppression bills — 34 new laws in 19 states as of December.

But if Democrats lose their majorities in the House and Senate on Nov. 8, it may be mostly the result of Republicans leveraging identity politics and polarizing social issues — perhaps none more so than a spike in irregular movement happening across the southern U.S. border.

Biden campaigned on a more humane approach to migration after four years of Trump’s hard-line policies; his election was no doubt a pull factor for many who have since tried to reach America. This was reflected in U.S. government data released last November showing border officers had nearly 1.7 million encounters with migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in the 2021 fiscal year — a record high.

Moderate Democrats have joined Republicans in sounding the alarm. Biden’s team has “completely bungled it from jump,” a Democratic strategist in Texas told Politico last September, predicting Democrats would pay a “massive” political price in the midterms.

But the issue is far more complex than that.

Evidence suggests irregular immigration across the southern U.S. border has actually plummeted since the 2000s, thanks to the massive expansion and militarization of border security operations. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimates the number of undetected illegal border crossings per year dropped by 92 per cent between 2000 and 2018.

Migration patterns culminating at the southern U.S. border are also a product of dynamics beyond America’s control. They are a natural outcome of worsening regional conditions that are convincing families and individuals in Latin America to trek north in search of the American dream — no matter how badly eroded that ideal has become in recent years.

Central American countries are increasingly plagued by a demoralizing combination of gang violence and severe corruption, choking off opportunities for social mobility and bleeding national institutions dry. More intense drought, hurricanes and floods due to accelerating climate change are also making subsistence farming untenable in such places as Honduras and Guatemala, whose economies — and countless families — are dependent on billions of dollars in remittances being sent back home from expats abroad.

Former drug traffickers in Colombia are profiting off political instability in Haiti and Venezuela by guiding hundreds of people per day through the infamous Darien Gap.

The dangerous 50-kilometre stretch of dense jungle swamp bordering Panama has historically been a natural barrier to movement. But now, for upwards of US$10,000, the trip is possible using pathways originally utilized for cocaine smuggling.

Yet none of this means Republicans won’t still deploy reductionist narratives to their advantage by stoking nativist sentiments to mobilize voters against Democrats.

The GOP has enlisted more than 100 far-right candidates to run for office in fall. Many of them have links to white-supremacist groups or have endorsed racist replacement-theory conspiracies that falsely claim western governments are deliberately using immigration to diminish the white race.

In the background is Donald Trump, having already amassed more than US$100 million in political fundraising. A spokesperson has said money will be used to enable the former president and his loyalists “to crash across the midterms and carry forward all the way through 2024.”

The American right has been highly organized at the state level to gain control of electoral mechanisms to subvert future election losses. But tapping into anger over culture-war flashpoints could help Republican candidates earn legitimate electoral victories.

When it comes to immigration, perceptions always carry more weight than reality. For Democrats, such misperceptions could lose them control of Congress.

Kyle Hiebert is a Winnipeg-based researcher and analyst, and former deputy editor of the Africa Conflict Monitor