MEGAN MCARDLE: Five Reasons Decent People May Want To Back Trump:

4. Immigration. Trump supporters are not wrong to say that elites of both parties have basically conspired to keep both immigration and trade off the agenda. Nor are they wrong to be annoyed when any opposition to increased immigration, or to legalizing people who are here illegally, is immediately dismissed as racist. No one who wrings their hands about gentrification can reasonably dismiss “I like my community the way it is” as an inherently racist and illegitimate sentiment.

Moreover, in a country with birthright voters, immigration means importing your future electorate; this, of course, sounds splendid to people on the left who think that this electorate will be more friendly to social democratic programs, but it is perfectly reasonable for people who prefer a more conservative government to oppose greater immigration for the same reason. Opposition to immigration can be racist, but it isn’t necessarily so. Trump’s pledge to deport all immigrants who are illegally in the U.S. is ludicrous, but it’s not ludicrous to think we should not reward people who have broken our immigration laws. Tarring these arguments as racist has not made them go away; rather, it appears to have made people less worried about being called racists. And empowered Trump, the only politician who has refused to be cowed by the epithet.

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