You will be able to analyze the role of immigration and citizenship in U.S. politics after you've read this chapter.

Explain how the United States is a country and a culture.

There are competing narratives that drive partisan divisions in American politics.

What's at stake.

Donald Trump opened his campaign for the presidency in 2015 with a dramatic descent down an escalator in Trump Tower, followed by a speech that was best remembered for the words "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best." They're sending people with a lot of problems to us. They are bringing drugs.

They are bringing crime. They are rapists.

He promised to build a huge, beautiful wall between here and Mexico and force Mexico to pay for it.

Six years ago, immigration reform looked like the biggest no-brainer on the planet. Immigration reform was central to a future presidential win for the party after the Republicans lost the 2012 election by five million votes.

Romney won only 27 percent of the votes of Latinos, a group that was 10 percent of the electorate in 2012 and is sure to get bigger. Immigration reform is an important issue to the Latino community, but the Republican Party's base rejects any solution other than returning the estimated eleven million immigrants in the United States to their homes. Romney ran so far to the right that he was never able to find his way back to the middle. The party leadership decided after the election that the damage had to be fixed and other Republicans and Democrats agreed. In June of last year, the Senate passed an immigration reform bill that included a path to citizenship for those in this country without proper documentation. The Speaker of the House had the ball.

Any path to citizenship for those who had broken the law when they arrived in this country was too much for conservatives. President Barack Obama took executive action to spare the parents of citizens or legal residents from being deported and to defer the deportation of young immigrants who had been brought to this country as small children, when limited immigration reform finally came. Thousands of young people were left in legal limbo after the Trump administration canceled the Obama policy. It was as if the Republican angst over the issue had never been because the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a previous ruling blocking Trump's action. The Republican candidates were vying to outdo each other in their promises to voters that they would remove every illegal immigrant from the country. Donald Trump was angry with Congress for not including the full cost of the wall in their budget. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has had a tighter rule on deportations, deporting many long-time residents who did not have documentation. When the vote totals were counted in the fall of 2016 and again in the fall of 2018, the Latino vote was very important in solidifying the partisan divide between the Democrats and Republicans.

We are nation of immigrants, but they tell different stories about the consequences of immigration. The United States is a vast cauldron of cultures and ethnicities, all of which are boiled down into some sort of American stew. The other origin story is that we are a multicultural nation in which each individual ethnic and religious identity should be preserved and honored. The first vision sees the effect of immigration as something that should disappear, while the other sees it as worthy of recognition and celebration. Being able to get one's preferred narrative accepted is a form of political power, and that is certainly the case with those who are promoting these competing narratives about American diversity. Reality usually falls between the two extremes.

One of the United States' greatest strengths is its rich diversity of people from all over the world. Some of the nation's deepest conflicts have been contributed by our diversity.

Politics stems from who we are and what we want from government. Understanding where American citizens have come from and what they have brought with them, what their lives look like and how they spend their time and money, and what they believe and how they act on those beliefs is critically important to understanding what they choose to fight for politically and how they choose to carry As a nation, we have a choice to include those groups with their own stories as valued parts of the national narrative, or to face the tumult of identity politics--political conflicts based on the claims of groups who feel their interests are being ignored or undervalued because of who they are. White Americans whose families have been here for a long time and who see the waves of new immigrants, especially immigrants of color, as threats to their status in identity politics. In a mediated world, every group has a chance to speak out and create a compelling narrative.

Statistics are the next best thing since we can't meet all the Americans out there. The demographic trends that shape our national culture are examined in the book in the form of charts and graphs. We will use this information to understand who we are and how we relate to the political issues that shape our society.

Older people, whose pensions and nursing home care must be funded, compete for scarce resources with younger families, who want better schools and health care for children, and with college students, who want cheaper educations and better terms for their loans. Changes in law enforcement, immigration reform, and other social policies designed to protect whites and raise them up from the lower end of the socio-economic scale will soon outnumber the white population in the United States. Some whites feel threatened and fearful about the future of the country because of demographic changes, and sometimes feel like strangers in their own towns.

As you look at depictions of the American people and American life, try to imagine the political complexities that arise from such incredible diversity.

In Chapter 1 we said that citizenship confers rights on individuals. The American concept of citizenship contains both self-interested and public-spirited elements, and is challenged in new ways by the mediated lives we live. citizenship is more than just a prescription for how governments should treat residents and how they should act; it is also a very precise legal status. A fundamental element of democracy is not just the careful specification of the rights and obligations of citizenship but also an equally careful legal description of just who is a citizen and how that status can be acquired by immigrants who choose to switch their allegiance to a new country. In this section, we look at the legal definition of American citizenship and the long history of immigration that has shaped our body politic.

When we talk about American politics, we usually talk about huge numbers: of people, of votes, of incomes, of ages, of policy preferences or opinions. Statistics are bandied about in the media. They can be used as evidence to support a variety of arguments. As critical consumers of American politics, it's crucial that we are able to sort through the many numbers thrown at us daily through multiple media channels to understand their meaning, judge their veracity, and make sense of the ways in which they are displayed.

Take time to scrutinize the way numbers are plotted on the axes when looking at a line graph or bar chart. The numbers that go up the vertical axis start at zero and move up at regular intervals. If the baseline is not zero, the relationship between the numbers on each axis can be masked. Do not assume that you know what the baseline is.

You can check the scale or timeframe on the axes. When the data are plotted over years, patterns seem more predictable and less volatile than when a set of numbers are erratic.

Even though many residents are struggling, a small influx of multimillionaires moving into an impoverished neighborhood can raise the mean income into the middle-class range. Even though a few residents live far above the poverty line, the median income would show that most residents are near it.

Statisticians break down data into smaller pieces for comparison. If you divide a population into five or seven or ten segments, you can see how they differ in terms of earnings, grades, and so on. The way the data is chunked can affect a graph. If you compared the incomes of the rich and the poor, you would find that the top group earned nine times more than the low-income group.

You can only see a small part of the picture with graphs and visual displays. There is always more context to consider when you look at them, because they are usually limited to just a few variables. Population charts can show growth in the numbers of a group but not the population as a whole. If the entire population is growing, the percentage of foreign-born people may not change.

In 1965, a dollar buys a lot more than it does today.

The fact that two variables shift at the same time doesn't mean that one has caused the other. Causality is hard to prove, and the best you can hope for is to see if there is a relationship between two variables.

Design choices like color, icons, and even typeface can imply meaning beyond what the numbers actually say. In political science, the color red refers to the Republican Party, whereas the color blue refers to the Democratic Party. The perception of the data can be influenced by any one or a combination of these design elements.

Immigration to the United States reflects both historical events outside of our borders and policy decisions made within them. Public anxiety about changing demographic led to policies that limited the number of incoming immigrants and often targeted specific ethnic or racial groups. We may be a nation of immigrants, but they quickly integrate, often closing the door behind them.

Many Americans have stories similar to theirs in their family trees.

American citizens are usually born. If you are born in any of the fifty states or in most overseas U.S. territories, such as Puerto Rico or Guam, you are an American citizen. If one of your parents holds citizenship in another country, you may be able to hold dual citizenship, depending on that country's laws. The requirements for U.S. citizenship have changed a lot over the years.

America has been attractive to people from other countries who want to live and work here. If they follow the rules and regulations of the U.S., they can come here legally on permanent resident visas. They may be eligible to apply for citizenship through a process called almost all American citizens are themselves immigrants or have descended from immigrants, they have clamored for strict limits on who else can come in behind them.

Many people who come to the United States are not legal permanent residents. If they face persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinions, they may arrive in the United States. The debate about whether Syrian and other Muslim refugees from the Middle East should be allowed into the United States is a political decision that can raise security concerns. The final judge of a well founded fear is what the USCIS requires. There are annual limits on the number of refugees who can become legal permanent residents. If they wish to do so, they can accumulate the inresidence time required to become a citizen at that time.

Visitors, foreign government officials, students, international representatives, temporary workers, members of foreign media, and exchange visitors are some of the people who may come to the United States legally but without official permanent resident status. The people are expected to return to their home countries and not take up permanent residence in the United States.

Immigrants who do not qualify for one reason or another have arrived here by avoiding the regulations of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

American laws have become harsher with respect to illegal immigrants, but they have not stopped them from coming in search of a better life.

When we travel in other countries, we have the same rights and responsibilities as people who are not legal permanent residents of the United States.

The rights of immigrants in the United States are mostly legal and include the right to a fair trial and a lawyer.

They can't vote in our national elections or decide to live here permanently without permission. Congress has the power to exercise authority in immigration matters, and immigrants are subject to that authority.

Congress makes immigration law with the approval of the president. In the wake of September 11, 2001, security issues came to play a central role in deciding who may enter the country, and new legislation took the federal agency tasked with implementing immigration law out of the Department of Justice. The agency was named the U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security has jurisdiction over Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The United States can't absorb every impoverished or threatened global resident who wants a better or safer life.

It is a political decision to decide who to admit. When times are tough, nativism, or the belief that the needs of citizens ought to be met before those of immigrants can take on political force, as it did in Donald Trump's campaign in 2016 Jobs are a scarce resource over which political battles are fought. If times are good and unemployment is low, newcomers may be welcomed with open arms. Immigration can become an issue when the economy is bad. Immigrants are big consumers of social services and community resources. Immigrants do contribute to the economy through their labor and taxes, but because they are distributed disproportionately throughout the population, some areas find their social service systems more burdened than others, and immigration can be a much more controversial issue in places where immigrants settle. Large numbers of immigrants can change the demographic balance, as we already know that whites will be a minority group by the year 2050. Being a part of the majority is a source of political power for some people.

When the United States wanted to develop a rocket program, German scientists with the necessary expertise were desirable immigrants. When our labor force was insufficient for the demands of industrialization and railroad building, immigrants were welcomed. When our own labor force falls short or is unwilling to work for low wages, immigration law allows for temporary workers to come to work in agriculture. Our official immigration policy expects immigrants to be skilled and financially stable so that they don't become a burden on the American social services system. Politics is about how power and resources are distributed in society, and who gets to consume government services is a contentious issue.

Some areas of the country, particularly those near the Mexican-American border, have had serious problems brought on by unregulated immigration. This is one of the reasons that immigration is a hotbutton issue. Poor and unskilled residents can overwhelm communities. Because their children must be educated and they themselves may be entitled to receive social services, they can pose a significant financial burden on those communities. Some immigrants don't contribute to the tax base because they work off the books.

Most income taxes are federal, and federal money is distributed back to states and localities based on the population count in the census. Unscrupulous immigrants are reluctant to be counted so their communities are often underfunded.

Many illegal immigrants act like citizens, obeying laws, paying taxes, and sending their children to school. Some people have lived here for a long time, perhaps because they were children themselves. The challenge of finding and repatriating them is formidable for those who believe that is the best solution. It's why many people think giving a path to citizenship is more practical.

Whether motivated by cultural stereotypes, global events, or domestic economic circumstances, Americans have decided at times that we have allowed enough immigrants to settle here, or that we are admitting too many of the "wrong" kind of immigrants. Immigrants are scapegoated for the nation's problems and demonized as a threat to American culture when this happens. This happened in the late 1800s and early 1900s with southern and eastern Europeans. Legislation in the 1920s limited immigration by creating a quota system that favored the northern and western nationalities, seen as more desirable immigrants.

The Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the immigration quota system. The act doubled the number of people allowed to enter the country, set limits on immigration from the Western Hemisphere, and made it easier for families to join members who had already migrated. Immigration was hard to control because of more open borders. The Immigration Reform and Control Act was passed in 1986 in response to the waves of immigrants who entered the country in the 1970s and 1980s. The law included sanctions for those who hired illegal immigrants, but people continued to cross the border to look for work. The Immigration Act of 1990 allowed even more immigrants. The Immigration and Naturalization Service was strengthened in the 1990s under President Bill Clinton.

What's at stake. On the one hand, there are those who want to wrestle with the issue of the estimated eleven million immigrants already in this country and the demands of American business for the cheap labor that immigrants provide; on the other hand, there are those who want the rule of law to prevail. Immigration reform, especially the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, was one of Barack Obama's top priorities. Relief would have been granted to young adults who were brought here without documentation. Obama decided to take executive action because he was unwilling to leave the job unfinished. In 2012 he announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy that allowed children brought in without documentation to apply for a two-year, renewable exemption from deportation during which time they would be eligible for work permits.

What's at stake.

The building of a wall along the southern border is seen by many of his supporters as a sign that the United States intends to crack down on illegal immigrants. He wants to limit the family members legal immigrants can bring in with them and limit the number of immigrants from countries like Haiti and Africa. The District Court in Washington, D.C. upheld a ruling that the program had to resume taking applications after he tried to end it. The Justice Department wants the Supreme Court to hear the issue quickly. Although there is a conservative majority on the Court, it's not clear if that will translate into a ruling that Trump wants. In the meantime, raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents under Trump have risen so much that even Trump supporters are having second thoughts.

When he got his driver's license, he didn't know that the papers that got him into the country were fake, paid for by his family in the hopes of giving him a better life.

His life was great, except for the weight of the secret he carried, forcing him into a virtual closet, afraid to let anyone, except for a few trusted confidants, know him.

He has made himself a voice for the voice-less, founding the nonprofit Define American and working as an immigration-rights activist and a filmmaker, despite being left to himself by immigration authorities. He has become an entrepreneur because he can hire others but can't hire himself.

I think I was putting my sanity at risk. I think I risked my sense of self. It felt like I had to create a different person to lie to my friends.

If you had known me six years ago, I would have never talked about my family, there were no photos of them in my house.

I hope that young people don't take their citizenship for granted. I hope they realize that what was paid for it paved the way for them to be free. That freedom is not comfortable.

Your crown has been paid for. Your ancestors gave it up for you.

This country has always been an experiment to me. It is still an experiment. In this age of globalization, where the migrant crisis is affecting all of Europe, I think it's important to ask how we define what an American is. The question of how we define "American" is at the core of this republic and how we keep it. It was a large group of black people that went to the screening and one woman came because she saw me on television. "Ah, Mr. Vargas," she said. I was interested to hear you say in the interview that you don't have a lot of papers. I thought about my great, great, great, great grandmother who landed in South Carolina and was given a piece of paper that said she was a slave. That's America to me.

At the state and local levels, some places are resisting the Trump administration's efforts by creating sanctuary cities where local officials do not comply with the federal effort to deport undocumented workers. Although a state was within its rights to require police officers to verify the status of people they had reason to believe were here illegally, it could not affect the federal right to set immigration policy. The issues have not been untangled by the courts.

An immigrant from Haiti, Alix Schoelcher Idrache earned his citizenship while serving in the Maryland National Guard before being accepted into the nation's most prestigious military school.

There can be an awareness of economic consequences when a locality is declared a sanctuary city.

One Alabama study found that in the wake of the passage of a strict immigration bill, up to 80,000 workers left the state, reducing demand for goods and services and costing the state between 70,000 and 140,000 jobs.

Sanctuary, prosperity, and an improved quality of life are what non-Americans who are threatened or impoverished in their native countries seek to gain by becoming legal or undocumented immigrants. People who are already American citizens have a stake as well.

The desire to be sensitive to humanitarian concerns, as well as to fill gaps in the nation's pool of workers and skills, and to meet the needs of current citizens is at issue. The goals are turned into law by policymakers in Congress and the White House, and their solutions are implemented by the bureaucracy of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

It's not easy to make a single nation out of such a diverse group of people. Most Americans share some fundamental attitudes and beliefs about how the world works and how it should work. Our political culture pulls us together and provides a framework in which we can disagree politically without resorting to violence and civil war.

Values are ideals or principles that most people agree on, even if they disagree on how the value should be defined.

Values and beliefs are not descriptions of how the world should be. Normative statements are dependent on the arguments that are made to back them up.

We take our own culture so much for granted that we aren't even aware of it, and we just think we have the correct outlook and those who live elsewhere are simply mistaken about how things should be done. It's easier to see our own political culture compared to another's.

Some people find themselves at odds with political culture. "Americans think" is when we say it. The political culture itself may break down and we may lose the common language that enables us to settle those differences if we get more partisan. The legitimacy of our system was challenged during the 2016 election campaign, which showed how fragile the cultural ties that bind us can be.

In American political culture, our expectations of government have traditionally focused on rules and processes rather than on results, and we think government should guarantee a fair playing field but not guarantee equal outcomes for all the players. We believe that individuals are responsible for their own welfare and that what is good for them is good for society as a whole. Some of the major partisan divisions in American politics are due to differences on these matters, but they are more prominent in the United States.

To show this point, we can compare American culture to the more social democratic cultures of the Nordic countries. The United States and the countries in the Nordic region are all capitalist democracies, and they all agree that individuals should make most of the decisions about their own lives.

Chapter 1 compares political and economic systems.

Americans don't agree on a lot, but they still have the right to disagree. The government protects the most offensive speech, but most citizens don't like it. In South Carolina in 2015, a police officer flanks a marcher at a Ku Klux Klanrally.

There are some important ways in which these countries differ. The advanced industrial democracies do not repudiate the wholehearted substantive guarantees of communism, but they do not tolerate substantive economic policy. In order to better understand what American culture supports and does not, we have to explore these differences in more detail.

When we say that American political culture is procedural, we mean that Americans think government should guarantee fair processes, such as a free market to distribute goods, majority rule to make decisions, rather than specific outcomes. The social democratic countries of Sweden,Denmark, and Norway believe that the government should try to realize the values of equality in order to guarantee a certain quality of life for all citizens.

Government can be evaluated by how well it produces substantive outcomes, not just how well it guarantees fair processes.

Americans are generally more comfortable trusting that the outcomes of public policy will be good because the rules are fair, even though American politics sets some substantive goals for public policy. Although the American government is involved in social programs and welfare, and took a big step in a substantive direction with passage of the Patient Protection andAffordable Care Act, it aims more at helping individuals get on their feet so that they can participate in the market.

Americans are seen as responsible for their own well-being because of the individualism of the political culture. The collectivist point of view holds that what is good for society may not be the same as what is good for individuals. When Americans are asked by the government to make economic sacrifice, like paying taxes, it is more unpopular and less generous than in most other countries. When war or a national crisis occur in the United States, a collective interest that supersedes individual interests is invoked. This is similar to the American notions of self-interested and public-interested citizenship we discussed in Chapter 1.

The Nordic countries tend to have more collectivist political cultures. One of the reasons that the social policies in the United States are not as substantive as those in the Nordics is that they have a sense of themselves as a collective whole. Sweden used pension funds to equalize the wages of workers so that more profitable and less profitable industries would be more equal and society would be better off. Americans would reject this policy because it violated their belief in individualism.

When we look at the different meanings of three core American values, we can see our American procedural and individualism perspective.

Democracy in America is based on consent and majority rule. Americans believe that democracy should be used to make political decisions, to choose political leaders, and to pick policies for the nation. It is seen as a fair way of making decisions because everyone is heard in the process and interests are considered. We don't reject a decision because it isn't fair, we reject it because it's democratically made.

The value of freedom is defined as freedom for the individual from restraint by the state. The view of freedom is procedural in that it provides that no unfair restrictions should be put in the way of your pursuit of what you want, but it does not guarantee you any help in achieving those things. When Americans say, "We are all free to get a job", we mean that there are no legal barriers preventing us from applying for any particular position. A substantive view of freedom would make it possible for us to get a job so that our freedom meant a positive opportunity, not just the absence of restraint.

The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, guarantees our basic civil liberties, the areas where government cannot interfere with individual action. The civil liberties include freedom of speech and expression, freedom of belief, freedom of the press, and the right to assemble.

Americans believe in economic freedom, the freedom to participate in the marketplace, to acquire money and property, and to do with those resources as we please. Americans think government should protect our property, not take it away or regulate our use too much. Our commitment to individualism is also apparent here.

Equality is a central value in American political culture. Equality is probably the most clear example of the values we hold dear. Government should guarantee equality of treatment, of access, of opportunity, but not equality of result. We don't expect everyone to finish in the same place or start from the same place, but we do expect people to have equal access to run the race.

We believe in political equality and equality before the law, that the law shouldn't make unreasonable distinctions among people, and that all people should have equal access to the legal system.

The courts have to decide what constitutes a reasonable distinction. Even if the goal is to make people more equal in the long run, many Americans get upset when the rules treat people differently. There is controversy surrounding affirmative action policies. To remedy the long-term effects of discrimination, the point of such policies is to allow special opportunities to members of groups that have been discriminated against in the past. Such policies are against our commitment to procedural solutions. They wonder if treating people differently is fair.

To live as a nation, citizens need to share their views of who they are, how they should live, and what their world should be like. They break apart if they don't have a common culture. citizens who are different in other ways are unified by political cultures. Americans achieve national unity through a political culture based on procedural and individual visions of democracy, freedom, and equality.

Explain how the United States is a country and a culture.

Most Americans are united in their commitment to a political culture based on proceduralism and individualism and to the key values of democracy, freedom, and equality. This shared political culture gives us a common political language, a way to talk about politics that keeps us united even though we may use that common language to tell different narratives about who we are, what's important to us, and what direction the country should move in. There are different interests, different beliefs, different prejudices, and different hopes and dreams.

We have a variety of beliefs and opinions about politics, the economy, and society that help us make sense of our world, but that can cause us to split into opposing camps. These camps, or different belief values and beliefs that underlie our culture, are dependent on the arguments we make to defend them. We can't pretend to live in a world where we learn our values at our parents' dinner table. There are more and more arguments that are harder to sort out in a mediated age.

To a person who disagrees with our prescriptions, we are as wrong as they think we are. In fact, anyone who pays attention to American politics knows that we disagree about many specific political ideas and issues, and that our differences have gotten more passionate and divided in recent years.

Our range of debate in the United States is relatively narrow compared to other countries because we still share a political culture. We don't have any successful communist or socialist parties here because the ideologies on which those parties are founded seem to most Americans to push the limits of procedural and individualism too far. The two main ideological camps in the United States are the liberals and the conservatives, with many Americans falling in between. Even though he ran for president as a democrat, he lost the nomination to Hillary Clinton.

There are many ways to describe American ideologies. It is based on traditional social values, distrust of government action, resistance to change, and maintenance of a prescribed social order. We focus on the two main ideological dimensions of economics and social order issues for a more nuanced understanding of ideology in America.

Conservatives and liberals differ on how much they trust the government to regulate a market.

Conservatives think that government is not a good economic actor because it has too much power.

Conservatives who think government should be less involved in the economy are on the right, while liberals who think government should be more involved are on the left.

In the 1980s and 1990s there was an ideological aspect to the United States. Perhaps because, as some researchers have argued, most people are able to meet their basic economic needs and more people than ever before are identifying themselves as middle class, many Americans began to focus less on economic questions and more on issues of morality and quality of life. The new ideological dimensions, which is similar to the social order dimensions, divides people on the question of how much government control there should be over the moral and social order, whether government's role should be limited to protecting individual rights and providing procedural guarantees of equality and due.

Even though most people in the United States don't want to create a social order that makes all moral and political decisions for their subjects, some people still think that the government should create and protect a version of a preferred social order.

Conservatives aren't the only ones who want to tell people how to live their lives.

The more traditional liberal and conservative orientations toward government action are not compatible with this social order ideological dimensions.

Economic liberals hold views that fall into the upper- left part of the figure because they are willing to allow government to make substantive decisions about the economy. Liberals favor a hands-off stance when it comes to government regulation of individuals' private lives.

They are willing to allow government to regulate murder, rape, and theft, but they don't believe that social order issues such as reproductive choices, marijuana usage, gay rights, and assisted suicide are important for government regulation. Women, minorities, gays, and immigrants have historically been left out of the power structure in the American social order. Their love for their country is notCondensed by the view that the government should be held to the same strict procedural standard to which individuals are held--laws must be followed, checks and balances adhere to in order to limit government power, and individual rights protected, even when the individuals are citizens

Economic conservatives prefer to limit the government's role in economic decision making, like changing interest rates and cutting taxes to end recessions, elimination of unfair trade practices, and provision of some public goods. When it comes to immigration, they prefer more open policies since immigrants tend to work more cheaply and help keep the labor market competitive for business. libertarians believe that only minimal government action in any sphere is acceptable and are the most extreme holders of economic conservative views.

The government is held accountable for sticking to the checks and balances that limit its power by economic conservatives.

Although they still want the freedom to make their own moral choices, they are happy to see some government action to create a more diverse and equal power structure and to regulate individual behavior to enhance health. They want to name and shame those who do not share their substantive view of a community of disadvantaged groups that struggle against an oppressive power structure and they believe higher education should provide "safe spaces" where offensive language and popular culture should be banned. Their commitment to a community based on equality of all people is the most extreme. Because American political culture is procedural both economically and socially, not a lot of Americans are strong adherents of an ideology that calls for a substantive government role in both dimensions. Some of the policy prescriptions of social liberals, such as environmentalism, gun control, and political correctness, are picked up by many economic liberals.

Following the Great Depression, many of the social conservatives who were members of the working class were likely to be New Deal liberals because they shared economic conservatives' views on limited government involvement in the economy. They may support government social programs for people who are deserving. Their main concern is with their vision of the moral tone of life, which includes an emphasis on fundamentalist religious values, government control of reproductive choices, opposition to gay rights, and public display of religious icons. They don't like change or diversity that they think is destructive to the preferred social order. Immigration threatens the majority that keeps the social order in place by bringing in people who are different. In a world where groups make claims of discrimination for historical or social reasons, they believe that they themselves are discriminated against for being white and Christian. Social conservatives seek to protect people's moral character, and they embrace an authoritarian idea of community that emphasizes a hierarchical order rather than equality for all. A powerful state is seen as a sign of strength on the international stage since limited government is not appreciated here. Less worried about limiting government power over individual lives, they adopt more of a "my country right or wrong," "America First" view that sees criticism of the United States as unpatriotic.

Many people find it hard to identify themselves as conservative or liberal because they consider themselves liberal on some issues.

If we distinguish between economic and social-moral values, major groups in society might line up. The religious right, who are very conservative on political and moral issues, but who were once part of the coalition of southern blue-collar workers who supported Roosevelt on the New Deal, are the real spatial distances that we can see. It can be difficult for a Republican candidate on the national stage to hold together an unwieldy coalition.

In the summer of 2009, with the nation in economic crisis and the new African American president struggling to pass his signature health care reform in Washington, a wave of populist anger swept the nation. The Tea Party movement created a narrative that was pro-American, anti-corporation, and anti-government, except for programs like Social Security and Medicare, which benefited the Tea Partiers who were older. Mostly it was angry, fed by emotional appeals of conservative talk show hosts and others, whose narratives took political debate out of the range of logic and analysis and into the world of emotional drama and angry invective.

The Freedom Caucus is sympathetic to many of the Tea Party values.

The shakeup ended in a rejection of the party establishment. The election of that year signaled a turning point for a party that had been in crisis for more than a decade. Tea Party favorites fell as establishment candidates fell in the primaries. Donald Trump had an opening due to the split in the party. Trump's candidacy proved to be more about his personality and the anger of his followers than it was about the Republican Party, which dismayed party leaders like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority LeaderMitch McConnell.

Before the rise of the Tea Party, Republican leaders had made it clear that they would not cede any political victories to the President. The members of Congress elected by the Tea Party wave in 2010 enthusiastically committed to this no-compromise stance toward policymaking, demanding the fulfillment of their wish. They held out for substantive policy ends rather than participate in the give-and-take, compromise-oriented procedural narrative of American politics. The country was on the verge of economic disaster because of the Freedom Caucus' refusal to raise the debt ceiling. The federal government was shut down for more than two weeks in October. Their threats succeeded. He resigned from Congress in 2015, after giving the Speaker's gavel to a reluctant Representative Paul Ryan. Ryan decided to step down from the office.

Many social conservatives are outside the circle that defines mainstream American beliefs, posing a challenge to Republicans who run statewide or nationally because they need to satisfy two different groups. The late Sen. John McCain discovered this in 2008 when he found himself upstaged by his vice presidential running mate. During the 2012 Republican primary season, Tea Party members supported Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich in their effort to pick someone other than Romney.

The anti-establishment fury displayed in 2016 came to a peak in the anger of social conservatives who felt inadequately represented by the Republican Party's mainstream.

Ted Cruz tried to address the anger of that group. They felt betrayed by the party that had promised to defeat Barack Obama and that INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals A mix of populist anger against the economic elite who profited at their expense, nativist anger at the perception that whites seemed to be falling behind while government was reaching out to help people of color, and partisan anger that economic conservative Republicans had been promising them socially conservative accomplishments since the days of

Some social conservatives are attracted to authoritarian narratives that seek to secure the old order by ignoring the perceived danger when they feel that proper order and power hierarchy is threatened.

In case of moral threat, lock down the borders, kick out those who are different, and punish those who are morally deviant, according to a scholar who studies this. Those who score higher on the authoritarianism scale hold the kind of ideas one would expect from social conservatives seeking to keep faith with a familiar and traditional order. Although there have been major splits in the Democratic coalition in the past, their current divisions are minor, even after a presidential election season when a self-avowed democratic socialist challenged a more moderate liberal. The Democrats have to satisfy the party's economic liberals, who are very procedural on most political and moral issues, but relatively substantive on economic concerns; the social liberals, substantive on both economic and social issues, and the more middle-of-the-road Democratic groups. The party moved left in 1972, putting it out of the American mainstream, after it almost broke under the weight of anti-Vietnam War sentiment. The current disputes are relatively minor compared to the earlier ones, which may intensify in the 2020 race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In the 2000 election, Al Gore's commitment to the DLC position left him vulnerable to attack from the lower left, who was represented by the Green Party. In an election as close as the one in 2000, this position probably drew enough support from Gore to cost him the election. John Kerry did not have to worry about appealing to voters who disliked George W. Bush so much that they were willing to vote for him in order to oust him from office. In 2008, Barack Obama had an advantage because of Bush's unpopularity, drawing support from across his party's ideological spectrum. The president adopted some of the movement's anti-Wall Street, anti-inequality rhetoric and made it a central part of his campaign to ensure that we wouldn't face an interparty challenge. Hillary Clinton moved to adopt some of her more substantive economic positions in response to the challenge from the democratic socialist. Although Clinton's loss of the presidency has caused the party to do some soul-searching, the Democrats have been able to manage the ideological dissension in their ranks more easily than the Republicans.

American ideology shows effects on generations. We have to be careful when we say that a given generation begins in a certain year, but it can be helpful to look for patterns in where people stand in order to understand political trends. Older white Americans get a lot of media attention because they are reliable voters and they tend to be more conservative.

There will be many, many exceptions to the rule, and you may very well be one of them, so keep in mind that all we can do is talk about generalities here. Government's economic role has traditionally been the focus of these differences, but now also involve views on establishing a preferred social order and what the preferred social order should be. There are fundamental views of what the political world should look like and control of the channels that promote those views at stake in ideological conflict. It can be difficult to contain the ideological conflict in a two-party system.

There are competing narratives in American politics.

One of the core values of American political culture is democracy, an ideal that unite citizens--both those who are born here as well as more recently naturalized citizens--in the activity of self-governance. The right to vote has grown more democratic in the past 200 years. Women, African Americans, and eighteen-year-olds can participate. Although it has been subject to some authoritarian battering lately, as have other democracies around the world, our national narrative, one shared by most Americans, is that we are a strong and active democracy, if not the premier democracy in the world.

The prevailing narrative is that the American idea of democracy doesn't ask much of us except that we pay attention to the news and come together to vote. The news we get is influenced by people who are trying to influence us. The percentage of people who go to the polls and vote on election days is abysmally low in the US, and many Americans are not interested in politics. In 2008, a year of high turnout, only about 60 percent of eligible voters cast a vote.

One theory claims that it doesn't matter if people participate in politics because all important decisions are made by elites. One explanation claims that Americans don't need to participate individually because their views are represented in government through their memberships in various groups. A citizen can make her views heard through membership in an environmental group, a professional association or labor union, a parent-teacher organization, a veterans' group, a church, or a political party.

Some educators and social scientists argue that falling levels of involvement, interest, and trust in politics signal a true civic crisis in American politics. The fabric of American political life is at risk because of a swing from the collectivist citizens of republican virtue to the self-interested individualism of Madisonian theory. Benjamin Barber says that citizenship is the "price of liberty" because of the tendency of Americans to take their freedom for granted.

The question of how democratic the United States is may seem to be an academic one, but it is really a question of who has the power, who is likely to be a winner in the political process. The question has a lot to do with your life, as government starts to make more demands on you, and you on it.

Let's revisit: What's at stake.

We looked at the political circus surrounding the issue of American immigration reform. In order to improve their chances with Latino voters, the Republican leadership decided to pass immigration reform. What had seemed like a slam dunk for everyone had become too toxic to touch by the 2016 Republican primaries.

The stakes were mixed for the Republican Party. The guest worker program meant affordable labor for jobs Americans were not always willing to do. They argued that the policies that punished employers for hiring them hurt the economy and that there were jobs for them.

Getting a difficult issue off the agenda, one that portrayed the party in a divisive, unflattering light and sent a negative message to an important and growing voting bloc was what Republican Party leaders had in mind when they passed reform. They knew that the Latino vote was important in battleground states like Colorado, Nevada, and Florida. They believed that the policies of economic individualism and social conservatism they advocated should be attractive to Latino voters but that until immigration was off the table, they would not get a hearing.

Reform means giving a pass to law-breakers who would be rewarded for coming here illegally, according to many conservatives in the party. Tough economic times and a diminishing white majority are threats to the social order that would prompt the slamming of the immigration door and the rejection of outsiders. The party leadership want to get it behind them because the rhetoric on this side of the argument sounds like racism. It is not clear if the Republican agenda will become Trump's agenda.

The Democrats passed immigration reform to be responsive to their core constituency. The failure to act meant that one of President Obama's campaign promises would be undone, the main reason he used executive action to address the issue. Immigration reform was one of the top priorities of the Democrats when they took back control of the House.

The secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union said after the 2012 election that the Latino giant was cranky and taking names. There will be a lot on the list.

You need the tools to improve your study skills.

The stories in the daily news are just as important as elegant prose and poetry in a literature course. The Statue of Liberty is one of the first places where immigrants to the United States would see America, and a part of this poem is familiar to most Americans. The Statue of Liberty was not intended to be a symbol of immigration, but a gift from France celebrating American freedom. It has become so because of the words put in her mouth by this poem. We should think about this poem as a work of art and also as a politicalstatement because of the decision to associate it with a nationalmonument.

Mother of Exiles is the name of the imprisoned lightning.

The refuse of the shore.

The poem was put on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty's pedestal after she submitted it to an auction to raise money for it.

She calls her statue the "Mother of Exiles" because she implies that the statue's purpose is to welcome immigrants but also that the policy of the United States is the same.

It's due to Lazarus's words.

Citizenship in the United States promises certain rights and responsibilities, as well as a precise legal status. U.S. immigrants are subjects of another country who come here to live and work. They need to fulfill requirements in order to become full citizens.

Some people come to the United States for other reasons. The influx of illegal immigrants in the southwestern states has caused a national debate. Proponents of strict immigration policy complain that immigrants don't pay taxes. The provision of basic services for people who are escaping hardship and hoping for a better future is supported by opponents of these policies. Immigration law is made by Congress with the approval of the president.

Americans share common values and beliefs that allow us to be a nation despite our differences. The American political culture is described as procedural. Our culture has a procedural nature because we focus more on fair rules than on outcomes. Our individualism means that we assume individuals know what is best for them and that they are responsible for their own well-being.

The three American values are democracy, freedom and equality.

Americans think democracy is the best way to make public decisions.

Economic liberals, social liberals, economic conservatives, and social conservatives all have different views of the economy and the social order in America.

America's political apathy is well documented. Despite abysmal voting rates, the country continues to function, a fact that may be explained by several theories. Many people claim that apathy may signal a crisis of democracy.

Two graphs compare the composition of the United States by generation, race, and gender in 20 10 and its projected composition in 50. The largest generation in the United States in 20 10 was the Baby Boomers, who were in the age range of 45 to 64 years and were mostly white. The baby boomers were the largest generation, but they were mostly white and had a smaller percentage of Hispanic, Black, and Asian members. Gen Xers were the third largest group.

They were in the age range of 35 to 44 years and had the same racial makeup as the younger generation. The Silent Generation was 65 to 74 years old, and the Greatest Generation was over the age of 75. White individuals made up more of the groups than any other group. The Baby Boomers will be the oldest generation in 20 50. A larger percentage of this group will be Hispanic, Black, or Asian than the older generation of 20 10. The racial composition of both groups will be the same in 20 50 as they were in 20 10. The majority of the working population in 20 50 will be non-White, according to the graph. All groups retain the same number of males and females from 10 to 50.

The foreign-born population is depicted as a percentage of each state's population.

New Hampshire, Delaware, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Idaho, Oregon, and Alaska have immigrants. Immigrants make up 10 to 14.9% of the states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois, Arizona, and Washington. Immigrants make up 15 to 19.9% of the states: Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Hawaii.

The percentage of immigrants arriving from each continent in 18 50, 18 70, 18 90, 19 10, 19 30, 19 50, 19 70, 19 90, and 20 10 is shown in the second aspect of the visual. In 18 50, 92 percent of immigrants came from Europe, 6.71 percent came from North America,.94 percent came from Latin America,.05 percent came from Asia, and.03 percent came from Africa. In 18 70, 88.81 percent of immigrants came from Europe, 8.87 percent from North America, 1.16 percent from Asia, 1.04 percent from Latin America, and.05 percent from Africa. 96.05 percent of immigrants came from Europe, 1.36 percent from Asia, 1.28 percent from Latin America,.17 percent from North America, and.03 percent from Africa. In 19 10, 87.44 percent of immigrants came from Europe, 8.6 percent from North America, 2.07 percent from Latin America, 0.08 percent from Asia, and.03 percent from Africa. 83 percent of immigrants came from Europe, 9.23 percent from North America, 5.58 percent from Latin America, 1.94 percent from Asia, and.13 percent from Africa. In 19 50, 64.59 percent of immigrants came from Europe, 17.86 percent from North America, 11.42 percent from Latin America, 3.85 percent from Asia, and 1.52 percent from Oceania. In 19 70, 61.71 percent of immigrants came from Europe, 19.39 percent from Latin America, 8.87 percent from Asia, 8.73 percent from North America, and.86 percent from Africa. In 19 90, 44.35 percent of immigrants came from Latin America, 26.26 percent from Asia, 22.97 percent from Europe, 3.98 percent from North America, and 1.92 percent from Africa. In 20 10, 53.94 percent of immigrants came from Latin America, 30.14 percent from Asia, 8.75 percent from Europe, 4.97 percent from Africa, and.65 percent from Oceania.

Major American and global events from 18 to 20 are presented in a third aspect of the visual. Yearly immigration to the United States is depicted in the timeline. During the 19th century, immigration to the United States increased gradually, with peaks during the Irish potato famine, the emergence of anti-Semitic policies in Russia, and the passage of the first Chinese Exclusion Act. The twentieth century began with an increase in immigration. After the stock market crash of 19 29 and the initiation of the 19 17 Immigration Act, immigration continued to decline. Immigration increased after the Displaced Persons Act was passed in the late 19 40s. Mass immigration from Cuba and the passage of the 19 90 Immigration Act increased in the 19 80s and 90s.

In the 90's immigration slowed to less than one million people a year. A gradual increase to over one million people a year began in 2000 and continued until 20 15. About 1.1 million people came to the United States in 20 16.

The fourth aspect shows how immigrants fare over time. 13 percent of Americans are foreign born and have a median household income of 51,100 dollars a year.

This increases to 58,200 dollars for second generation and third generation immigrants.

The visual shows that 19 out of 20 Hispanic children in the United States under the age of 18 were born in the United States, and 40 percent of Fortune 500 firms were founded by immigrants or their children.

The cartoon depicts common American feelings towards immigrants. John Jay was the first chief justice of the Supreme Court. A white family is featured in the vignette. The father says they have nothing against the Mexicans.

The immigrant groups are broken down by country of origin. 63.31 percent of Latino immigrants are Mexican.

Of Asian immigrants, 24.23 percent are Chinese. 59 percent of Asian immigrants are foreign born, while 41 percent are born in the United States.

There are 19.1 percent of the population that is Indian, and 9.7 percent of the population that is Filipino, and 6.9 percent of the population that is Korean, and 2.5 percent of the population that is Pakistani. These states include California, Oregon, Washington, North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado, New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Wyoming, New Mexico, Minnesota, and Florida are some of the states with these jurisdiction.

States with a few of these are Nevada, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Georgia, and Louisiana.

The tax rate for an average family is shown in a bar graph.

The lowest tax rate is 6.8 percent in the Czech Republic, while the highest is 32.2 percent.

Economic beliefs are shown on a horizontal spectrum of more to less governmental control, while political beliefs are shown on a similar vertical spectrum. "Economic Liberals" are those who believe in an expanded government role in the economy but a limited role in the social order.

Welfare, national health care, maximum individual freedom, civil rights for immigrants, and the regulation of Wall Street are examples.

Moderate Democrats are included in the group who align with this ideology, as are liberal Democrats.

"Social Liberals" are those who believe in an expanded government role in both the economy and the social order.

Welfare, social programs, censorship of pornography, and affirmative action are examples. "Social Conservatives" are those who believe in a limited government role in the economy but an expanded role in the social order. Low taxes, prayer in schools, censorship of books that violate traditional values, anti-gay rights, tight restriction on immigration, and authoritarian values on the roles people play in society are some of the examples. There are two ideologies of conservatives: the Social Conservative and the Social Liberal. "Economic Conservatives" are those who believe in a limited government role in both the economy and the social order. Low taxes, maximum laissez-faire capitalism, individual freedom, and the guest worker program are examples.

Moderate Republicans are the majority of Americans who align with this ideology.