Globalization 101

Sebastian Mallaby notes an interesting shift taking place. He starts by telling the plain truth:

Anyone who understands Globalization 101 knows that immigration, including large-scale unskilled immigration, is a fact of the modern world. Mexican laborers who migrate to the United States stand to see their wages triple or more: No amount of border security is going to keep them from coming. Chasing down and deporting illegal workers is costly to U.S. taxpayers, cruel to immigrants, disruptive for U.S. employers, expensive for U.S. consumers -- and, most of all, futile. People who yell "amnesty" merely reveal that they don't understand the world we live in.

The immigration issue has scrambled the usual positions of the parties. Regarding the Republicans he writes:

[T]he Republican Party, which prides itself on understanding globalization when it comes to capital flows or trade, is blind to the global labor market.

He points out that, while Bush and McCain are talking reasonably about immigration, the other candidates are not. The current front-runner, Mayor Giuliani, suggests with every speech he gives on the subject of immigration or health care that he is a total economic ignoramus.

And what about the Democrats:

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is sounding less bad on globalization than might have been expected. After last year's midterm elections, the Democrats seemed ready to turn against trade and foreign investment. They have duly forced dubious labor standards into trade pacts with Peru and Panama, and they have failed so far to renew the president's authority to negotiate trade deals, which expires at the end of this month. But the bill emerging from Congress on the process for putting inward investment through a security review resists the temptation for paranoid obstructionism. And leading Democrats have indicated that they'll support the Doha round of global trade talks if negotiators can revive it.

And what about immigration?

Compared with the immigrant bashing that has dominated Republican presidential debates, Democratic presidential hopefuls have sounded sweetly reasonable. With the exception of the no-hoper Dennis Kucinich, none has pressed protectionist themes. There is no equivalent to the Dick Gephardt of 1988, who won the Iowa caucuses on an anti-trade ticket.

Instead, the Democratic candidates are focusing on helping the economy's losers without restricting trade, which is exactly what they should be doing.

Indeed! It's been a long time since the Democrats have taken a reasonable position on much of anything, but maybe, just maybe, they are beginning to realize that with the power of governing comes great responsibility.

We can hope.

As the Republican Party spirals into the swamp of nativist insanity, Democrats are beginning to sound reasonable. If this keeps on, I may have to reconsider my vote.

Read the whole article here.

UPDATE:

One of my readers makes strong objections to my use of the term "nativist insanity". Perhaps that's too strong a term, but the similarity between the rhetoric of today's restrictionists and past nativist movements is unmistakable and the political divisiveness the movement has engendered threatens to marginalize the entire Republican party. In political terms, that is insane.

The situation raises a ticklish dilemma. Either we must marginalize the restrictionists or we must reassess nativists movements of the past. How many of you would be willing to say that the anti-immigration movements of the past had good and legitimate reasons for wanting to keep the Italians, the Jews, the Irish and other immigrant groups out of the country or the Blacks down on the farm and out of the cities?

Think about it.