That leads us to the ugly underside of this political/cultural argument against immigration. In practice, it amounts to a complaint about the voting patterns, not of new or future immigrants, but of racial and ethnic groups who are native-born. It is an attack on our fellow Americans.

This “cultural” case against immigration is really a complaint about Hispanic citizens, who usually vote for Democrats by about two to one, and black citizens, who usually give more than 80% of their vote to Democrats. To those who make these arguments, let me point out: these are your fellow citizens, just as entitled as you are to claim this country as their home and its government as their servant. If you think they’re voting the wrong way, you can’t deport them. You have to convince them.

Instead, these complaints are a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather than seeking to persuade and convert our fellow citizens, this is a perfect way to alienate them by dismissing them as irreconcilable enemies. More than anything else, this is what plays into the hands of the actual Democratic Party strategy, which is not about recruiting some fantasy bloc of new immigrants, but about keeping native-born black and Hispanic voters voting in lockstep. To do this, the left needs to maintain and increase America’s sense of racial and ethnic division—and those who portray “non-Europeans” as permanent political enemies are doing the Democrats’ work for them, way better than they could have done themselves.