During the 1960s, the Southern Strategy was an election strategy by the Republican Party to gain a majority of white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans. The Southern Strategy resulted in the political realignment of the South, with Republican leaders very effectively appealing to white Southerners’ racial grievances and winning their support.
This strategy ultimately helped to transform presidential election dynamics in ways that led to the election of President Trump, although the focus largely shifted from African Americans to foreigners, particularly Black, Brown, poor and Muslim immigrants.
The Southern Strategy contributed to many harsh immigration policies that transformed immigration and created record backlogs. The Trump administration used various xenophobic tactics:
- Institution of the Muslim travel ban
- Extreme vetting of all immigration applications, creating costly processing delays
- Reopening of closed cases and mandating of processing procedures, creating even further delays
- Child separation, with over 1000 children still separated from their families
- Use of a 1944 health policy called Title 42 to shut down all asylum applications from the southern border
- Deprioritization of Diversity Visa applicants
While some of the above policies have been revised or rescinded by the Biden Administration, more needs to be done by the White House, especially ending the use of Title 42. These policies affect foreign nationals from various countries, but they disproportionately affect Black and Brown immigrants. In both function and practice, these policies decreased the immigration of people from African, Caribbean and Central American countries. Although these policies have been challenged in court, even a favorable resolution of the litigation will not fix the harm created by their use to date or the narrative that these individuals are unworthy of acceptance.
With the United States stepping up to address the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, an opportunity exists to address the southern immigration strategy.
A refugee is a refugee, and war is war. It is time for consistent standards of humanitarian relief across all countries.
Why have Ukrainian Nationals been granted Temporary Protective Status in the U.S. in mere weeks, while Cameroonians have been asking for protection since 2021, with a clear record of the atrocities happening in Cameroon? In the last year alone, the United States has returned over 20,000 Haitians, including over 500 children, to the tumultuous island of Haiti, suffering from environmental and political crises. These disparities must be addressed by Congress and the White House.
In advance of the midterm elections, some Republicans will travel to the border, as they did last Friday, to claim the border is open and not secure. This is theater and part of a larger fear-mongering campaign.
Over the last 20 years, Congress has been unable to address our outdated immigration system. Needed changes include increasing the number of visas available and clearing the backlog by re-capturing visas not used previously, and modernizing the processing of immigrant visa applications.
