c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ In one final, hysterical burst of presidential campaigning in California, Bob Dole decided to run against the immigrants. There are four million illegal aliens in California, he ranted, and it’s all President Clinton’s fault.

By implication, Dole would clean them out of the state if he were elected president. No one asked him what that would do to California’s fragile economy. No one wondered what would happen to the state’s fruit and vegetable industry _ which would collapse in the absence of illegal immigrant labor.

The issues did not arise because no one seriously believes Dole or anyone else is capable of stemming the flow of migrant workers into the United States. It’s basically a question of supply and demand: there are jobs on one side of the border and jobless people on the other.

Immigration, like welfare, is a non-issue that has been siezed upon by demagogic politicians. They all know that welfare represents only a tiny portion of the budget, but they deliberately mislead the public into thinking that a large amount of tax money goes to support those who cannot or will not work.

They all know that immigrant labor is not a threat to the American economy. But they still deceive the people into thinking that immigrants pose a hazard to American workers, that they are an invading army ready to swallow taxpayer money.

The truth is immigrants are an asset to the American economy. They are willing to do the work that most Americans will not do and in the process add to the aggregate demand. Yet so great is the latent hatred for immigrants in this country _ especially if their skin is dark _ that even President Clinton, who surely knows better, occasionally pays lip service to the idea that we must stop the immigrant flow.

Anti-immigrant demagogues seek to turn men and women who come to America looking for jobs into inkblots onto which the angry and sick can project their frustration and fury.

The immigrant-haters pretend that the country has no past history of immigration. In fact, one of the secrets of the success of this country is that its energies have been renewed in every generation by ambitious people who come here searching for jobs and freedom. It is the ambitious personalities that migrate. Cut off that flow and you lower the level of ambition and energy in the country.

In the years ahead, America will need a constant influx of ambitious young immigrants to produce the income and the taxes to provide retirement benefits for the so-called baby boomers as they grow old. If you are a boomer, you should live in terror that the nativist bigots will keep out of the country the very people whose future taxes will protect you from suffering a miserable old age.

Pete Wilson was elected governor of California in part because he successfully played the nativist card. Bigotry seems to work wonderfully in that sunny state.

Dole has chosen to play the game Wilson’s way, which is his privilege. But for him to then assert that he is the candidate with”character”is hilariously ironic _ just as it is for a man who dumped his wife and daughter to celebrate his support for”family values.” Politicians like Dole have pursued a strategy of crypto-racism, ever since Richard Nixon’s famous”southern strategy”used race as a wedge issue to convince white Southern voters to support the GOP.

This year the politics of hatred don’t seem quite so strong. But I won’t believe that the nation is entering a new era of good feeling until our political leaders stop playing the nativist card to win elections.

JC END GREELEY