Republicans are pushing for a national law requiring voters to prove citizenship. Part of the overall Republican “vote fraud” fraud. Long claiming Democrats cheat, especially through non-citizen voting. In fact voter fraud is close to nonexistent (and the rare cases tend to be perpetrated by Republicans, as in the absentee ballot fraud trial now unfolding in nearby Rensselaer County). Non-citizen voting is rarer still — because that would risk severe penalties, including deportation.
The more extreme incarnation of these lies is “Great Replacement Theory,” a conspiracy theory that Democrats are trying to swap out good Americans for foreigners whom they import to harvest their votes. This is not true.
Meantime the vote fraud claims are actually a pretext for Republicans’ true objective: to make voting harder, believing they benefit from lower turnout. So they invoke fake ballot fraud concerns to impose voter ID requirements tailored especially to impede lower income and minority people from voting. They’re also often forced to wait on line for hours, almost never true in white areas.
Proof-of-citizenship is just another ploy in that game. A lot of voters would find it very problematic to prove citizenship. Helping Republicans to shrink the electorate.
Trump pushes this phony vote fraud stuff because he hated losing the 2016 popular vote, and of course in trying to overturn the 2020 election. He’d even created a national commission to investigate — which disbanded after finding zero evidence of 2016 ballot fraud. Likewise his 2020 complaints were all adjudicated baseless.
At least J.D. Vance’s “childless cat lady” shtick is grounded in a legitimate concern — our birth rate falling (as in all advanced nations) below replacement level. Vance’s fix includes awarding parents extra votes (not sure the Constitution allows that). But there is a far better answer: more immigration. Immigrants’ birth rates exceed the average for natives. And we desperately need them to fill workforce gaps created by so many people retiring (ever earlier, and living longer).
Ameliorating those labor shortages will also curb inflation. Because when businesses have trouble finding workers, they must offer higher pay. Those wage costs flow through to higher consumer prices. So more immigration would, again, help.
But such economic sense is no part of Trumpism. Instead all about demonizing immigrants, whipping up fear and hatred. “Poisoning our blood.”
Exemplified by the “Haitians eating pets” lie. Which Trump repeats even after it’s been wholly debunked. Vance too has been pushing this whopper; doubling down, now darkly saying it shows immigrants bring alien cultural practices.
Supposedly afflicting Springfield in Vance’s state of Ohio, which has indeed seen a big influx of (legal) Haitian immigrants. But get this: a Springfield factory owner says he employs about 30 Haitians and wishes he had 30 more. Because they’re such good conscientious workers, with no problems.
Note the contrast with what Vance himself wrote in Hillbilly Elegy. Which starts off describing the opposite kind of worker — a real feckless slacker — something Vance deemed all too typical of Americans with lower class backgrounds like his own. Lamenting that pathology was the theme of his book.
We need more immigrants. Fewer Republicans.