Ezra writes:

I spent much of last night talking to Republican voters in Nashua, and, as would be expected, a fair number of them brought up their concerns over immigration. Surprisingly, though, the word “immigrant” never came up. Nor did “Mexicans,” “Spanish,” “jobs,” or “precious bodily fluids.” Instead, I kept hearing “terrorism.” Every one framed their concerns in terms of terrorism, as if there were hundreds of al Qaeda cells in Tijuana, just waiting to stream past the gates as soon as a puking frat boy sufficiently distracts the border guards.

On some level, I find it hard to believe that all this concern over immigration is really misplaced anxiety about a second terrorist attack. My sample here is small, and it could be influenced by the way right wing radio hosts are framing the issue, a desire to appear cosmopolitan before an out-of-state reporter, or a sense that straight nativism is not socially acceptable. Or, at least for some folks, it could be genuine, and they’ve simply been convinced that border security is a pressing front in the Global War on People Who Want To Consume Our Kittens, or whatever Giuliani is calling it this week. But I’d be interested to see how much of the issue could be defused by a candidate taking a strong homeland security approach, rather than a restrictionist approach. In other words, it would be interesting to see if you could allay concerns by focusing on stopping the flow of potential terrorists, rather harassing and persecuting immigrants.

One thing that I wish Democratic candidates would or could emphasize is that a more liberal immigration regime isn’t just compatible with better security, it may actually facilitate it. If you allow economic immigrants ready access to the country, then they have no reason not to come in through the front door, at which point they can get fingerprinted, get their visas and identification cards, be placed in the government’s databases, checked against terrorist profiles, etc. This way, we know who is coming into the country, and we know that anyone not using the front door is probably not a legitimate economic immigrant.

If we commit ourselves to preventing economic immigrants from entering the nation, then they’ll have an incentive to evade border security. This will involve many more people sneaking across borders, providing cover for other, non-economic immigrants. It will encourage innovation in border security evasion. It will fuel the development of networks to help immigrants–economic and non-economic–evade security. And it will regularize a very large shadow economy within the US in which unsavory people can hide.

Of course, if “terrorism” is just a cover for some other, perhaps uglier, anxiety, then this argument will accomplish nothing. I still think it’s worth someone making, though.