National Review editor Rich Lowry is opposed to the immigration reform bill that passed the Senate yesterday, but he’s not sure where Lincoln would be on it.
During a wide-ranging discussion about his terrific new book, Lincoln Unbound, Lowry discussed Lincoln’s various positions, including his take on immigration. Here’s an excerpt of our conversation:
“[Lincoln] opposed the ‘Know Nothing’ agenda of his time — which wanted to deny some basic political rights to immigrants, and he rejected that root and branch. The Republican Party of his time had sort of the same problem the contemporary Republican Party does with…getting the votes of immigrants … I think, whenever a party represents a core cultural coherence, it’s going to have a problem attracting immigrants.
So what Lincoln would think particular about this immigration bill, I’m not sure. I do know that he would have a generous attitude towards illegal immigrants, because one of the phrases he said often was, ‘They’re just the way we would be in their circumstances.’
… I think that’s exactly what he would say about illegal immigrants, that all of us who excoriate illegal immigration and oppose it — if we were in Mexico or someplace in Latin America, and we were ambitious, and there was no way to get ahead and you had this colossus to the north that doesn’t care about immigration laws — you would probably go [there] to better yourself, to better your family. So I think that generous spirit should inform the immigration debate.
Now, it’s a challenge for someone like me, who’s a hard-liner against this bill. So squaring that circle is difficult.”
You can listen to our full conversation via an audio stream, or download the podcast on iTunes.