Migrants wait throughout the night on May 10, 2023, in a dust storm on land between the Rio Grande and the southern border wall, hoping they will be processed by immigration authorities. (Photo by Corrie Boudreaux for Source NM)
For reasons known only to its standard bearer, the Republican Party’s modern anthem is “Y.M.C.A.” But it’s another song from 1978, originally (and fittingly) the B-side to a track called “Little Hitler,” that would actually make a lot more sense: Nick Lowe’s “Cruel to be Kind.”
“You’ve gotta be cruel to be kind, in the right measure,
Cruel to be kind, it’s a very good sign.
Cruel to be kind, means that I love you, baby.
(You’ve gotta be cruel)
You’ve gotta be cruel to be kind.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m actually a fan of Lowe’s song and would rather it not be ruined by a “white man’s overbite” flash mob at CPAC, but lyrically it makes more sense than “Y.M.C.A.,” right? We’re now at Phase One of the song’s agenda — you’ve gotta be cruel — but the promise is that the “kind” part is totally going to happen someday. Eventually. When they get around to it. Maybe.
Immigration policy is a great example of this, and not just nationally but right here in New Hampshire. In terms of both rhetoric and action, the Republican vision of immigration reform is entirely punitive. After the New Hampshire House passed legislation targeting sanctuary city policies, House Majority Leader Jason Osborne was deliberate in his language, attaching words like “dangerous,” “lawless,” and “invasion” to migrants. Gov. Kelly Ayotte has done the same, describing the situation not in policy terms but through the cultivation of fear — among her chosen phrases are “destroying” (our cities), “overwhelming” (our communities), and “driving crime” (despite New Hampshire’s low and falling crime rate and the tired myth about migrant offenders). If you want to win votes on an issue as complex as immigration — and our complexity-averse president actually chose immigration as his party’s primary campaign focus over the economy — the easiest path is to stoke xenophobia.
So, it is no surprise that the debate over immigrants without legal status has centered on punishment: mass deportation, aggressive enforcement, and denial of due process. The “cruel” part of the Republican agenda is in full effect, and that has logically made protection of the vulnerable the most urgent immigration issue on the left. At a time when we should be working on thoughtful, long-term policy changes, many advocates for migrants must first and foremost focus on protecting them from state-sanctioned inhumanity.
Here’s what immigration numbers actually look like in New Hampshire:
The American Immigration Council estimates there are 9,500 immigrants without legal status in New Hampshire, a state of 1.4 million people. Meanwhile, the AIC reports, the state boasts 81,900 immigrant residents, who pay about $1.1 billion in taxes and make up roughly 7% of the state’s workforce. Put another way, the numbers show that 5.9% of New Hampshire residents are immigrants and just 0.7% of residents are here without proper documentation.
But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from using the language of invasion to fuel anxiety and win votes, nor will it. It is much easier to blame New Hampshire’s “others” for the housing shortage, crime, and cuts to public services than examine real causes — like bad tax policies and surging economic inequality that affects the entirety of the workforce, for example. Apparently it doesn’t matter that the people supposedly “overwhelming” the state wouldn’t come close to filling Manchester’s SNHU Arena, or that statistically they pose less of a threat than a crowd of 9,500 New Hampshire citizens chosen at random.
There is clearly no depth to such hardline positions on immigration beyond the cruel part — the outgrowth of a zero-sum, racially framed political philosophy that has long existed solely to fracture, and therefore weaken, the middle and lower classes. Within the GOP’s overarching narrative of the state being in the midst of an “invasion” — which requires not only a penchant for negative fantasies but a talent for misunderstanding data — there is real harm being done to a graying state that should be encouraging immigrants to move here and make our communities stronger. And it should go without saying that we should never allow cultivated fear to carry the day, because that is how cruelty as policy gains a foothold, spreads, and solidifies to the point that a state or nation can no longer recognize itself.
There is nothing easy about creating immigration policy that is both humane and universally beneficial to the working class — not in the United States, not in Canada, and not even in Denmark. But we can do a lot better than “cruel to be kind” — especially when the party in power intends to keep delivering only the first part of the refrain.