'Two Immigration Panics, 20 Years Apart: What Happened in Farmers Branch?'

(TPM) "In Frisco, Texas, far-right activists are seizing upon the growing community of immigrant families from India as an example of the racist 'Great Replacement' theory, with white Americans being supplanted by newcomers of color. The recent furor has a certain political logic to it that echoes events from exactly 20 years ago in the very same part of the Lone Star State. This may be the far right’s attempt to revive the spirit of 2006."

"In that year, the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch (located just 22 miles from Frisco) witnessed a somewhat parallel outbreak of xenophobia. That January, the chief of police responded to a question about the lack of Asian Americans on the police force by saying that there would be 'no gooks in this department' as long as he was in charge. The subsequent outcry led to his resignation, but tension over immigration and identity re-emerged a few months later when a city councilman blamed local problems on what he described as an 'influx of illegal aliens' mostly from Mexico. That fall, the Farmers Branch city council unanimously enacted a local ordinance barring landlords from renting to people without proof of legal residency. Over the following months, local voters turned out to support anti-immigrant ordinances by two-to-one margins, and the municipality would spend $470,000 defending their anti-immigrant ordinances against legal challenges."

"This local controversy soon turned into a national cause célèbre that displayed GOP divisions on issues of immigration. Republicans could hardly have been more discordant on the issue at that time. The George W. Bush administration had sought to expand its electoral coalition by leading a push for immigration reform, requesting and then backing a bipartisan bill sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) that included a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. At that point, however, the nativist wing of the party, led by talk radio figures including Rush Limbaugh, rose up in revolt against the measure, coalescing in support of a draconian House bill that redefined undocumented people as second-degree felons, threatened anyone who sheltered an undocumented immigrant with three years behind bars, and called for a feasibility study of a Canadian border fence. The bill passed the House of Representatives and gained the support of a chastened President Bush, who completely disavowed the immigration reform bill his White House had previously championed. Only the massive pro-immigrant marches of the spring of 2006 stalled the bill’s momentum in Congress long enough that the Democratic sweep of both House and Senate in the 2006 midterm elections made it a legislative dead letter."

"Despite the defeat of the bill, and the fact that the Supreme Court ruled the Farmers Branch anti-immigrant ordinances unconstitutional, the episodes were clear harbingers of the Republican Party’s path to America First-style xenophobia under the leadership of Donald Trump. The GOP’s internal conflict over immigration had been settled in favor of the nativists."

Continued at link:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/what-a-2006-anti-immigrant-panic-tells-us-about-texas-in-2026