16. The Compassion of “Compassionate Migration”

The total number of unauthorized migrants declined slightly between 2009 (11.3 million) and 2014 (11.1 million). The number of unauthorized migrants from Mexico declined from 6.3 million (2009) to 5.8 million (2014) while the numbers from Central America, Africa, and Asia increased. Thirteen states saw major demographic shifts, and Mexico remains the leading country of birth for unauthorized migrations nationwide (52 percent) and in at least 38 states.

By “enmification,” I mean consistent psychological and semiotic processes of creating an enemy, against which to delineate, organize, and mobilize opposition—“them” against “us,” “us” against “them.” Important to these processes are the identification, construction, and demonization of an “other” who inspires righteous hatred; the “other” is an enemy, and hated, precisely because “their” conduct and character expresses enmity toward “ours.” Immigration in general, and specific immigrant groups in particular, provide easy fodder for enmification, and opposition to the noncitizen “other” becomes ideological. “They” are cast as “outsiders” unwilling or unable to become like “us,” and “they” stand for, or tolerate, what “we” rightly reject and oppose. “They” are depicted as fearsome and loathsome for taking what “we” have created and destroying what “we” hold dear. The obligation to oppose such an existential threat takes on moral, civic, and sometimes religious significance, as conveyed and carried out through words, images, actions, and policies. The path of Trump’s rise to political prominence illustrates the sociopolitical utility and multifaceted cultural reliance on enmification. Trump parlayed his name recognition, media savvy (especially in gaining headlines and manipulating the conventions of “reality TV”), and willingness to espouse hateful and inflammatory rhetoric.

Trump stoked the animus behind anti-immigrant activism as useful to his political purposes, which included eliminating fellow Republican contenders Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio—two younger, more conservative, currently serving U.S. Senators who are the children of Cuban-American immigrants, each of whom has had a complicated relationship to “compassionate conservatism” (Mencimer 2011; Zengerle 2015; Silver 2016).

Berlant (2004, p. 11) characterizes “compassionate conservatism” as a “social referent posited against the traditional (liberal) association of compassion with personal and state practices of recognition and redistribution,” well-articulated by contemporary figures such as John Rawls (1971, 1993) and Martha Nussbaum (1996), that remains generally in want of a liberally oriented “book length study of compassionate conservatism as theory and practice.” “Compassionate conservatism” and the “compassionate conservative” have been used as ideological visions, policy orientations, branding strategies, social justice critique, and honorific phrases. Although Marvin Olasky is known as “the godfather of compassionate conservatism” (Grann 1999, Weisberg 2008), historian Douglas Wead may have coined the term “compassionate conservative” in a speech by the same name at the 1979 Washington Charity Dinner; Wead later became an advisor to the Reagan Administration. In 1981, National Urban League President Vernon Jordan chided that Administration for “its failure to exhibit a compassionate conservatism that adapts itself to the realities of a society ridden by class and race distinction.” By the early- to mid-1980s, some members of Congress extolled “compassionate conservatism” as a conscientious policy orientation of meeting social welfare obligations while maintaining fiscal conservatism.

These include a need to draw voters, rhetoric, and ideas away from Hillary Clinton and her campaign vow to enact “comprehensive immigration reform;” a wish to project the image of a wise political leader who can temper authority with compassion; and a fantasy of holding political subjects in thrall to the cult of personality of a “merciful” and “generous” autocrat.

When President Barack Obama introduced Sonia Sotomayor, then a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, as his nominee for Supreme Court Justice, he mentioned several traits he thought were important qualities of a Justice, including “experience,” “rigorous intellect,” and “recognition of the limits of the judicial role.” In speaking of experience, the President included life experience: “Experience being tested by obstacles and barriers, by hardship and misfortune; experience insisting, persisting, and ultimately overcoming those barriers. It is experience that can give a person a common touch and a sense of compassion.” President Obama then praised Sotomayor for “compassion and empathy.” Pundits seized on these remarks and the facts that the nominee was a relatively young woman of color with a short professional record; they voiced suspicion that Sotomayor would let emotion and identity politics taint her judgment and interfere with performance of her judicial role. During the Senate Confirmation hearings, Sotomayor distanced herself from President Obama’s remarks, saying “Judges can’t rely on what’s in their heart” (Cushman 2009).

Garber (2004, p. 25) concludes that “Compassion seems to waver politically between two forms of inequality: The benevolence of those who have (the power of the rich) and the entitlement of those who need (the power of the poor). The insoluble problem for society—and for government and law—is to behave as if there were no competition between the two. And in some quarters, at least, ‘compassionate government’ is regarded as either a contradiction in terms or a category mistake. Compassion, it appears, is a good campaign slogan but not necessarily a winning political strategy.”

In his dissent to PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin, 532 U.S. 661 (2001), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote “In my view today’s opinion exercises a benevolent compassion that the law does not place it within our power to impose” (emphasis added). In subsequent correspondence, Scalia asserted that the phrase “benevolent compassion” is not necessarily redundant, and clarified that “benevolent” was chosen as his means of “stressing the social-outreach, maternalistic, goo-goo character of the court’s compassion” in Martin. Scalia also suggested that “compassion” might be differentiated according to whether it was motivated by benevolence (suffering with the other) or by self-love (despairing of facing similar misfortune).

Empathy here does not necessarily mean the literal entry into the other’s situation, as both older notions of “sympathy” and “compassion” had done, nor does it mean actually feeling the other’s suffering or even necessarily feeling suffering (or any particular emotion) along with the other. Rather, empathy enlarged via moral imagination brings recognition that one’s own lot may be affected by and implicated in the other’s experience. This process need not, and perhaps should not, also involve trying to imagine experiencing what the other experiences or having similar qualitative feelings as the other has (Nussbaum 1996, p. 35).

Woodward (2004) argues that for compassion to be effective, it must recognize its non-universality, with each case addressed contextually.

The IIRAO and RRO imposed fines on employers for hiring unauthorized migrants and landlords for renting housing to them. They also imposed similar sanctions for those who contracted with unauthorized migrants, and required the use of English in conducting municipal government services.